It’s Trump’s Economy, and Voters Are Unhappy With It, WSJ Poll Finds
Poll offers warning signs for the president and Republicans as they prepare for a pivotal midterm election
Jan. 16, 2026 The Wall Street Journal
WSJ’s Aaron Zitner breaks down three warning signs from the latest WSJ poll for President Trump and the Republican party ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Photo: Umit Gulsen; Evan Vucci/Associated Press
It’s President Trump’s economy now, and voters are increasingly unhappy with how he’s handling it.
By 15 percentage points, more voters rate the economy as weak rather than strong, a deterioration from July, when negative views predominated by 4 points. About half of voters say the economy has gotten worse in the past year, compared with 35% who see improvement. That finding continues a yearslong disconnect between traditional measures of inflation and economic growth, which are relatively positive, and a negative public outlook.
Those are among the warning signs for the president and the Republican Party in a new Wall Street Journal poll, which finds that voters think Trump is focusing on foreign affairs and other matters at the expense of their most pressing concerns—rising prices and the overall economy.
Still, support for Trump among his most loyal supporters remains remarkably resilient, limiting damage to his political standing from the sour views of his economic management. Some 92% of people who voted for him in 2024 give him a positive job rating today, including 70% who “strongly approve,” the Journal poll finds.
Overall, the poll offers cautions for Trump and the GOP as the nation heads toward House and Senate elections late in the year. While 45% of voters approve of the president’s job performance, 54% disapprove—a 9-point gap, compared with 6 points in the last Journal survey, in July.
60
%
54%
55
Disapprove
50
45%
45
Approve
40
Jan.
2025
April
July
Jan.
2026
Despite a recent flurry of affordability proposals from the president, more voters disapprove than approve of his handling of inflation—by 17 percentage points, a worse showing than the 11-point gap in July. By 10 percentage points, more voters disapprove than approve of his handling of the economy.
As a candidate in 2024, Trump set high expectations among voters that he would improve their economic lives, said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who conducted the survey with Republican Adam Geller.
Now, Anzalone said, “he’s basically turning his biggest strength—‘I’m the guy who can fix the economy, because I was a business guy’—into his biggest weakness…People don’t think he’s making the economy a priority, which is a huge problem.”
Trump says he “inherited a mess” from his predecessor, but 58% of voters in the survey said that Trump’s policies were most responsible for the current economy, while 31% said former President Joe Biden’s policies were most responsible.
And many voters in the survey think Trump has distracted himself from what is most important.
Majorities say they disapprove when asked whether Trump has the right priorities, is looking out for middle-class families or cares about “people like you.” Asked about the president’s attention to Venezuela, Iran and other countries, a 53% majority says he is focusing on unnecessary foreign matters at the expense of the economy, while 42% say he’s working on urgent national security threats.
Geller, the Republican pollster, said that Trump had accomplished the important political goal of holding support from his base, noting his 59% job approval rating among blue collar voters, who are important in many House and Senate battlegrounds. Now, Geller said, Trump is trying to win over independent and swing voters with the affordability proposals, such as capping credit-card interest rates and limiting large investor purchases of homes, an attempt to ease housing costs.
“That’s not showing up in polls yet, but this is a president who is clearly engaged in tackling issues that are important not only to his base,” Geller said. It’s unclear whether Trump would need, or could obtain, congressional approval for many of his plans.
Gone
too far
About
right
Not gone
far enough
Don’t
know/N/A
Deporting illegal immigrants
51%
18%
28%
3%
56
27
5
13
Expanding pardon power
1
Deploying ICE
54
21
24
Threatening action against
foreign governments
6
53
27
13
The survey found a modest, 4-point lead for Democrats when voters were asked which party they expected to back for Congress next year, with 47% saying they’d support a Democratic candidate and 43% a Republican.
Democrats often need a larger lead on that question to produce big gains in House races, due in part to the way voters are distributed across House districts. The last time Trump faced a midterm election, in 2018, Democrats held leads of between 6 and 10 points at about this time in the cycle, Journal polling found.
The party gained some 40 House seats that year. Republicans now hold a 5-seat majority.
The Democratic Party is contending with a badly tarnished image, making it hard for it to capitalize on any GOP weakness. Some 58% of voters have an unfavorable view of the party, compared with 39% who hold a favorable view. That’s marginally better for the Democrats than in July, when the party recorded its weakest image rating ever in Journal polls dating back more than 30 years.
Negative views of the party now outweigh positive ones by 19 points, compared with an 11-point gap for the Republican Party. “Our branding is still as bad as it’s ever been,” said Anzalone, the Democratic pollster. “We see it in focus groups: No one can say anything positive about the Democrats.”
By several measures, the poll shows that even while many voters disapprove of Trump’s economic management, they don’t see the Democrats as a better alternative. Republicans in Congress are favored over Democrats as better able to handle the economy and inflation.
But that cushion for the GOP is deteriorating on matters where voters disapprove of Trump. The Republicans’ 6-point lead as best able to handle the economy had been 12 points in July, and its 6-point lead on handling inflation had been 10 points in the prior survey.
Moreover, Democrats in Congress held a small lead when voters were asked which party looks out best for middle-class families and cares about “people like you.”
The poll was conducted from Jan. 8-13. The Wall Street Journal survey included 1,500 registered voters, who were interviewed by phone or reached by text and invited to take the survey online. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com
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Appeared in the January 17, 2026, print edition as 'It’s Trump’s Economy, and Voters Are Unhappy With It, WSJ Poll Finds'.