The first numbers of election night are in, and they are brutal for President Donald Trump.
Early exit polls released Tuesday evening put Trump’s job approval at just 38% among the voters casting ballots in the 2026 midterm elections. Both CBS News and NBC News reported the 38% figure in their early results.
The lowest of any president in a midterm
According to CBS News, Trump is on track for the lowest approval rating for a president in a midterm election. At 38%, he is lower than he was during his own first term, and lower than George W. Bush was in 2006, the year Bush’s party lost both houses of Congress.
NBC News noted that the number is substantially lower than in Trump’s first midterm in 2018, when 45% of voters approved of his performance. CNN’s early Voter Poll found roughly 6 in 10 voters nationally disapprove of the job he’s doing, with about half saying they disapprove strongly. CNN also found that about one-fifth of voters who backed Trump in 2024 now disapprove of his performance.
A referendum on Trump
Voters are treating this election as a verdict on the president. CBS News found that roughly six in 10 voters say Trump is a factor in their vote for the House, driven largely by Democratic voters who are overwhelmingly motivated by opposition to him. NBC News found that nearly half of voters view the midterm as an opportunity for a major rebuke of Trump’s performance.
An angry, anxious electorate
The mood is sour. Per CBS News, roughly three-quarters of voters are at least dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and more voters are angry about how things are going than were in 2024. Voters are more than twice as likely to say their finances have gotten worse rather than better, and more of them hold negative views of the economy now than two years ago.
Government corruption is weighing heavily too. Roughly nine in 10 voters nationally say corruption is a major factor in their vote, about the same share as cost of living, and about six in 10 think Trump puts his own personal interests over the country’s.
The war with Iran is also unpopular. Most voters think the U.S. made the wrong decision to take that military action, including about a quarter of Republicans, according to CBS News.
What happens next
Exit polls are early estimates, not final results, and the numbers can shift as more data comes in and the surveys are adjusted to match the actual vote. No House or Senate races had been called as of early Tuesday evening. Democrats need a net gain of three seats to flip the House and four to take the Senate.
But if these early numbers hold, they paint a clear picture: voters walked into the booth on Tuesday deeply unhappy with the president and the direction he has taken the country.