Four weeks out from the midterms, NPR's latest poll with PBS News and Marist finds that 45% of registered voters say their vote for Congress is a vote against Donald Trump. Only about a quarter say they're voting to support him. The man isn't even on the ballot, and he's still running away with the top slot on everyone's mind.
The Numbers Nobody in the West Wing Wants to Read
According to NPR, the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll has registered voters favoring Democrats for Congress over Republicans by 12 percentage points. Twelve. In a midterm. In a country that spent the last decade being told it was hopelessly split down the middle.
Then there's the Trump question. NPR reports that 45% of voters say their congressional vote is a vote against the president, compared with about a quarter who say they're voting to support him. That is nearly two to one.
And Trump himself seems to know it. NPR's Steve Inskeep notes that Trump is not on the ballot but has urged voters to act as if he is. Congratulations to the president on successfully turning a House and Senate election into a performance review. The reviews are in. They're not glowing.
Everything Costs More and Everybody Knows Why
Across the political divide, NPR reports, one concern keeps rising to the top: the cost of living and what it means for people's economic futures. Republicans and Democrats are both campaigning on promises to make everyday life more affordable, because nobody has ever won an election by promising to make groceries worse.
But here's the twist NPR flags this year. Some of the forces driving those costs are coming from far beyond voters' own communities. The war with Iran is affecting prices at the gas pump. Tariffs imposed in Washington are reaching the checkout counter. NPR puts it plainly: foreign policy, economic policy and household costs are becoming harder to separate.
In plain English, a war and a trade policy are now showing up on your receipt. Nobody has to explain the connection to a person filling up a tank. They can do the math themselves.
Maine Is Where the Tariffs Meet the Heating Oil
NPR's Leila Fadel is reporting from Maine, where Republican Sen. Susan Collins is seeking another term against Democrat Troy Jackson. The outlet says voters there are worried about heating oil, gas and Canadian tariffs, and anyone who has spent a winter in Maine understands why those three things belong in the same sentence.
Maine's long border with Canada gives the trade war a different dimension, NPR reports. Tariffs and tensions over cross-border trade are hitting businesses and communities with close economic ties to Canada. These are people who did not wake up one morning and demand a fight with their northern neighbors. They got one anyway.
The state has also been affected by the administration's immigration crackdown, according to NPR. Fadel says she'll be asking voters whether the party delivering their preferred message even matters anymore. That's a question worth asking in a state that has a habit of ignoring party labels.
Springfield, Ohio Is Still Living With the Consequences
NPR's Michel Martin is headed to Ohio and Michigan. In Springfield, Ohio, she'll look at how the end of temporary protected status for Haitians is affecting a community where Haitian immigrants make up a significant share of the population. Yes, that Springfield. The one that became a national punchline and a political weapon before anyone bothered to ask the residents what they thought.
NPR says Ohio has competitive races for governor and Senate against a backdrop of economic anxiety. One of the questions Martin will explore is whether disagreements over immigration are changing how voters see their own parties.
In Michigan, an open Senate seat and a governor's race offer another test. NPR notes that Trump won the state narrowly in 2024, when anger over the Biden administration's handling of the war in Gaza was a major issue for some voters, particularly in Arab American communities. Young-voter turnout also jumped. Martin wants to know if those shifts carry into November. Her framing is perfect: "Are they mad? Sad? Or just exhausted?"
The Voting Process Itself Is Now on the Ballot
Voters are weighing more than their bills. NPR reports that immigration and the rapid growth of massive data centers are part of the conversation, and so is the voting process itself, including new restrictions that are raising questions about how ballots will be cast, secured and counted.
NPR also points to its reporting that Trump officials changed forms for overseas voters amid a GOP push to restrict voting. Think about where we are. Four weeks before an election, a major news outlet has to flag that the rules for how people vote are in flux and that some voters are confused about it.
That isn't a side issue. If you're running a party that is behind by 12 points, tinkering with the machinery looks a lot like a strategy. NPR doesn't say that. We will.
Georgia, North Carolina, and the Question of Loyalty
Inskeep is reporting from North Carolina and Georgia. NPR says North Carolina has an open Senate seat and newly redrawn congressional districts. Georgia has competitive Senate and governor races after several elections in which voters backed candidates from both parties.
Inskeep says he's listening for people who feel this election is personal, those directly affected by the administration's changes to immigration, government, education, taxes, foreign policy and the economy. That is a long list. It's also the whole job description of the presidency.
And across all six states, NPR says the underlying question is the same: do old political loyalties still hold? Fadel put it bluntly. Are votes up for grabs, or locked in along party lines? The poll suggests a lot of them are not locked in the way the president would like.
The Dingo Take
Imagine a Democratic president whose own party's voters said, 45% to 25%, that they were casting ballots mainly to stop him. Imagine a war that was pushing up gas prices and tariffs that were hitting the checkout line, all while his allies fiddled with voting forms. Every cable panel in America would be calling it a collapse, a crisis, a political extinction event. Nobody would be asking whether it's too early to draw conclusions.
But that's the situation Trump is in, and the polite phrasing is that voters are "weighing" their options. They're not weighing. A twelve-point generic ballot gap and a 45% anti-Trump vote is what it looks like when people are angry about prices they can feel and decisions they never asked for. The cost of living is not an abstraction in Maine or Ohio. It's the heating bill.
None of this means November is a lock. Polls aren't ballots, and the Democrats have a long record of finding creative ways to blow a lead. But if you're the party in power and your best argument is that the president wants voters to act like he's on the ballot, you might want to check what they're planning to do once they get in there.
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