Polls Show Voters Furious at Both Parties — But Will They Show Up Next Week?

With the midterm elections just under a week away, polling data suggests the central question is no longer which party Americans prefer, but whether enough of them will actually vote.

According to AP-NORC polling, only about two in 10 voters believe either political party is strongly focused on helping people like them or capable of solving important problems. Yet a CNBC survey found 74% of Democrats worry President Donald Trump will exceed his constitutional authority if Republicans keep control of Congress, while 54% of Republicans fear Democrats will enact democratic socialist policies if they win.

Pollster Lee Carter, writing in a Fox News opinion column, argues that those fears don’t automatically translate into votes. She points to research on the 2018 midterms showing that worry, not enthusiasm, predicted who actually turned out. That year saw nearly half of eligible Americans vote, the highest midterm turnout in more than a century.

A Motivation Gap That May Not Be What It Seems

Pew Research finds Democrats hold a 24-point advantage among voters who describe themselves as extremely motivated to vote. But among people who actually voted in both 2022 and 2024, that Democratic edge shrinks to just six points.

The latest Fox News poll gives Democrats a 54% to 45% lead on the generic congressional ballot, a margin that also narrows to six points among voters certain to participate. CBS News projects Democrats will win 229 House seats, enough to reclaim the majority, but notes that Democrats have more voters who say they’re definitely voting or have already cast ballots, while Republicans have more voters who say they merely might vote.

Pew’s analysis of the 2022 midterms found that Republican gains that year were driven largely by turnout differences rather than voters switching sides. Among Americans who voted in both 2020 and 2022, few changed parties — but 71% of Trump’s 2020 voters turned out again in 2022, compared with 67% of Biden’s 2020 voters.

Registration Shifts in Key States

Carter’s column highlights voter-registration trends in four battleground states. Since 2018, the party-registration balance has shifted toward Republicans by roughly eight points in North Carolina, seven points in Pennsylvania, five points in Nevada and four points in Arizona. Registering as a Republican does not guarantee someone votes Republican, or votes at all, but the shift suggests the composition of the potential electorate has changed in those states.

Those registration numbers, combined with Trump’s schedule of rallies in the campaign’s final days, point to a Republican strategy focused less on persuading undecided voters and more on turning out supporters who don’t always show up in midterm years.

An Unhappy Country, an Uncertain Response

The latest Fox News poll finds 74% of Americans rate the economy negatively, 66% are dissatisfied with the country’s direction, and just 18% say their families are better off than two years ago. An October AP-NORC survey found roughly eight in 10 registered voters want Congress to prioritize lowering the cost of living, yet CBS polling shows most voters don’t expect their financial situation to improve regardless of which party wins.

Campaign spending reflects the parties’ competing bets on how to move voters. Since Sept. 1, Democrats have spent more than $163 million on advertisements mentioning Trump, compared with roughly $11 million spent by Republicans on similar ads — nearly 15 times as much from Democrats.

Early voting is also running ahead of 2022’s pace. More than 13 million early and mail ballots had been cast nationally by Oct. 22, compared with roughly 9 million at the same point four years earlier. It’s not yet clear whether that reflects higher overall turnout or voters simply casting ballots earlier than they otherwise would have.

Carter concludes that the decisive voters in this election may not be those switching between the parties, but those deciding whether to vote at all — including occasional voters, dissatisfied independents, and partisans who are unhappy with the direction of the country but uncertain the other side would do any better.