How unpopular is Trump really? The election that will provide the first clear indication of how US voters feel about the current president's policies
Polls suggest that most Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump. A series of elections that will take place on Tuesday in the USA will represent a more accurate indicator of this state of panic, writes The Economist.
New Yorkers will choose their next mayor on Tuesday, with leftist Zohran Mamdani, the antithesis of President Donald Trump, the front-runner.
In California, a redistricting proposal called Proposition 50 will give Democrats more seats in the House of Representatives, competing with similar schemes by Republicans in conservative states.
Both states are dominated by Democrats, and the vote here is always predictable.
The most important results will therefore come from the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, two states that voted similarly in 2024 but may now be heading in opposite directions.
The results in these two states will provide clues about the political climate ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections and especially about the popularity of Donald Trump's policies.
A mood indicator
Ever since Donald Trump entered the political scene, Virginia's gubernatorial election has served as a national benchmark.
In 2017, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, won by a margin of 8.9 percentage points. The following year, Democrats won the popular vote for the House of Representatives by 8.6 points.
In 2021, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, won the governorship by 1.9 points, before a Republican victory by a 2.7 percentage point margin in the House of Representatives the following year.
Analysis of a YouGov poll for The Economist suggests voters in the state have an increasingly unfavorable view of Donald Trump.
The vote of the suburbs
Loudoun County, an affluent enclave in the state, can serve as an indicator of the mood in the suburbs on election night.
Joe Biden, who won the suburban vote nationally by eight points in 2020, won Loudoun by a 25-point margin that year.
But just a year later, spurred on by the politics of the culture war, Youngkin narrowed that margin considerably. His result foreshadowed Kamala Harris' difficulties in 2024.
When preliminary results on election night last November showed her leading Loudoun County by just 16 points, many observers accepted for the first time that she was on course to lose.
Moderate suburbanites who had drifted away from Trump during his first term have returned. The results in Loudoun on Tuesday will show whether the pendulum has swung the other way.
The average of recent polls suggests that Virginia Democrats could pull ahead in 2024. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate for governor, has an average lead of 9.6 percentage points in the polls.
Hispanics no longer trust Trump
Another cause of Trump's victory was the shift to the right of Hispanic voters. In 2020, Biden won the Hispanic vote by 26 points. Harris only managed a margin of eight points.
Ten months after Trump took office, however, polls suggest that Hispanic support for the current president has fallen sharply.
Since January, while his net popularity among white voters has fallen 17 percentage points, his support among Hispanics has fallen 28 points.
On Tuesday night, northern New Jersey's Passaic County will test whether that drop in popularity will translate into an erosion of the Republican vote in the governor's race. The state's population is over one-fifth Hispanic, and in Passaic the percentage is about 43 percent.
The county swung 19 points to the right in 2024, voting for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in 32 years.
Recent polls suggest that New Jersey's Hispanic voters have lost interest not only in Trump but also in local Republicans. In two statewide polls, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill enjoys a nearly 30-point lead among Hispanics over her Republican rival, Jack Ciattarelli, whom Trump has endorsed.
But, in general, the electoral race remains extremely close. In the last six nonpartisan polls, Sherrill leads by an average of about five points, a margin small enough that small polling errors or changes in turnout could be decisive.
Mobilization at the polls will be crucial
There would be something else: elections outside the election cycle might reflect enthusiasm rather than persuasion.
In 2021, 43% fewer voters participated in New Jersey's gubernatorial election than in the previous presidential election, and 26% fewer in Virginia.
Democrats are hoping that anger at Trump will mobilize their base this time.
Barack Obama was sent to the two states to generate excitement. But disapproval of Trump is particularly strong among young people, who are less reliable voters than older ones.
Several polls have already reflected how voters feel about the administration's policies, but this week's election will be the last big chance to gauge the outlook of actual voters before next year's midterm elections.
