Tag Archives: Party images

If Democrats are so unpopular, why are they winning?

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Discontent doesn’t mean defection

The Democratic party has spent the last year with a net favorability rating considerably worse than that of the Republican party. Yet the Democrats have had strong successes in picking up seats in the Virginia and New Jersey legislative races in 2025 and in special elections around the country. How can the more unpopular party be winning?

Here is the net favorability rating for the Democratic and Republican parties since early 2025. While both parties have had net negative ratings all year, the Democrats have been consistently worse, with a net rating hovering around -30 percentage points, except in November. Republicans by contrast have generally been around -14 with a recent decline to almost -20 points.

The one brighter moment for the Democrats was in November when their net favorability rose about 13 points and momentarily matched the GOP, before sinking again in January. The November poll was conducted during the shutdown. Democrats benefited, if briefly.

Why is the Democratic party so unpopular relative to the Republican party? Do Republicans give especially unfavorable ratings to the Democrats? Yes, of course they do. Just as Democrats deeply dislike the Republicans. Is it that independents are especially sour on the Democrats? No. Independents dislike both parties but by about the same amount. So the answer lies within the Democratic base. Democrats have much lower net favorability of their own party than Republicans do have for their party.

Republican net approval for their party has been as high as +80 points and remains above +60 points all year. And their disdain for Democrats is strong, consistently a net -80 points or lower.

Democrats return the favor by giving Republicans net negative ratings of close to -90 points. But when it comes to their own party, Democrats give a net favorably rating of just about +30 points, or about 30 points worse than Republicans give their party. This is who is pulling down Democratic party ratings. It is coming from inside the house.

The exception is November, when Democrat’s net favorability toward their party rose not quite 25 points, falling only a little short of Republican favorability of the GOP. But it was short lived. The shutdown ended and Democrats who were buoyed by their party’s shutdown stand, once more settled into discontent.

A party with weak ratings from its own base voters would not expect promising electoral outcomes. One partisan group is relatively pleased with their party’s performance, the other relatively displeased. Seems like a bad omen, yes? No. The actual performance of Democratic candidates has been quite strong for a year, with a number of seat pickups and general over-performance of 2024 margins even in losses. What gives?

Democratic partisans are, indeed, disappointed with their party, while Republicans are not. But disappointment is not producing defection. The same Democrats who are unfavorable to their party are nearly unanimous in their dislike of Donald Trump. Here is Trump favorability by party ID. Within each panel the green line is people with a favorable view of the Democratic party while the purple line is those with an unfavorable view. In the right-most panel we see that among Democrats the profound dislike of Trump is virtually identical no matter how one feels about the Democratic party. Less than 10% feel favorable to Trump.

On the Republican side, those who dislike the Democrats give Trump favorability ratings in the high 80s. The small number of Republicans who are favorable to the Democrats (this is just 6% of all Republicans), however, have shown a steady loss of affection for Trump, sinking to under 50% favorable in January. This shows that there can be defection within a party, and ironically it comes in the GOP where support for Trump is often said to be unshakable. Not to make to much of this. It is only 6% of Republicans with a liking for the Democratic party– hardly a collapse within the party. But the contrast with the Democrats is striking. Some 35% of Democrats have an unfavorable view of their party, but virtually none of them are defecting and saying they like Trump.

How about looking to November’s midterm election? My Marquette Law School Poll has asked the generic ballot question only twice so far, in November and January. Here are those results.

Net support for the Democratic congressional candidate among Democrats is nearly identical regardless of how Democratic partisans feel about their party, with a net vote in the high 80s or low 90s in both November and January. Party disaffection doesn’t matter.

For Republicans though, disaffection does matter. Among contented Republicans who dislike the Democratic party, net loyalty is also around 90 points, a mirror image of Democrats. But in that sliver of 6% of Republicans who are favorable to the Democratic party, substantial vote support goes to the Democratic candidate, at least on the hypothetical generic ballot. That defection seems to have jumped in January, but caution is in order—this 6% of Republicans is a very small sample and the January movement could just be noise.

Independents give a somewhat firmer foundation. Those independents who are favorable to the Democratic party give Democratic candidates a substantial vote margin. But even those independents unfavorable to the Democratic party produce a net margin in favor of the Democratic candidate.

Lots of people, including me, have pointed to the poor favorability rating of the Democratic party relative to the Republican party this year but haven’t tried to explain how the more unpopular party can be outperforming their rival in elections. I think the solution is here. Democrats are disappointed with their party’s performance in Congress. If we switch from favorability to approval of how each congressional party is handling it’s job we get results virtually identical to these. Disappointment doesn’t produce defection because Democrats are united in their abhorrence of the Trump administration and the GOP. The disappointment comes from the inability of the congressional Democrats to do anything. That’s why the shutdown produced a brief embrace of the party. But when the congressional Democrats settled for an end to the shutdown, with little to show for it, disaffection returned.

So far the Democratic base is unified by the negative: they are deeply against Trump and the GOP Congress. They are joined by a majority of independents who also are supporting Democratic candidates, even if they dislike each party about equally.

So long as disappointment doesn’t produce defection, Democrats can win even if they are unusually grumpy about their party.

ICE, Renee Good shooting, deportations and Trump approval

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Plus party images, most important issues in new MULawPoll national survey

On Feb. 4 and 5 we released my latest Marquette Law School Poll national survey. The link to the full release, toplines, crosstabs and methodology are at the bottom of this post.

I’ll be posting a series of deeper dives on these results over the next week, each more narrowly focused but with more detail than the release is able to get into, so stay tuned. A quick look for now.

For new listeners, our national polls are released over two days. The first focuses on political topics while the second is devoted to topics related to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Thanks to SCOTUSblog’s newsletter for headlining our Court poll this morning.) 

This poll was in the field Jan. 21-28, 2026, interviewing 1003 adults nationwide, with a margin of error of +/-3.4 percentage points. The poll was conducted after the killing of Renee Good. About 2/3rds of the interviews were completed before the killing of Alex Pretti, with 1/3rd after. Therefore, this poll reflects reaction to the Good shooting but does not fully reflect opinion following the Pretti shooting.

In headlines, we find 60% disapprove of the way ICE is handling immigration enforcement, 40% approve. Sixty-two percent say the shooting of Good was not justified, and 37% say it was justified. Of seven recent news events, attention to the Good shooting was the most followed, with 76% saying they had read or heard a lot about it. 

On the other hand, support for deportations is virtually unchanged. We ask 2 questions, each to a separate half-sample:

  • Do you favor or oppose deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home countries?

And

  • Do you favor or oppose deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home countries even if they have lived here for a number of years, have jobs and no criminal record?

For the first item, with no qualifications, 56% favor deportations and 44% oppose them. That is down 2 points from 58%-42% in November. As for deportations of longtime residents with no criminal record, the numbers reverse, with 44% favoring such deportations and 56% opposed. That is unchanged from November.

Trump approval on immigration is 44% approve and 56% disapprove. That is slightly better than his overall job approval at 42% approve, 58% disapprove. Trump’s approval was at 41% approve, 58% disapprove in my September 2020 poll, shortly before his election loss to Joe Biden.

The generic congressional ballot finds a Democratic lead at 48% to 44% for Republicans among registered voters. That widens to 52% Democratic and 45% Republican among likely voters. 

Looking at which party would do a better job on each of eight issues, Republicans are seen as better on four, Democrats better on two and two issues are essentially tied. Between 1/4th and 1/3rd of adults says there is no difference or neither party is good on the issue.

And what do people care the most about? Inflation, the economy, and immigration top the list, with significant concern for health care and Medicare and Social Security,

I’ll be back in the coming days with much more detail on these topics plus data centers, grocery and gasoline prices, the economy, and “who do you trust?”  Stay tuned.

The full results, including press releases, toplines, crosstabs, the full instrument, and methodology are found at our website here. Note that entries are in reverse chronological order. The toplines and crosstabs under the Supreme Court release, “Court issues”, are complete, i.e. they include the political items also. Those under the “National issues” section do not include the Court items, which were held for the Court release. There are separate press releases for the Court and for National issues.