Harry Enten: The Only Two Presidents Who Had a -15 Point Approval Rating Before the Midterms Lost the House and Senate Were Truman and Bush 43

EXCERPT:

ENTEN: “You know, this of me is part of a larger picture, historically speaking, where you go back in time, you look at any of the presidents who are anywhere close to how unpopular Donald Trump is at this point, going into a midterm election, the only two I could find who had a sub-minus-15 point net approval rating besides Trump are Harry S. Truman in 1946. How about George W. Bush going into the 2006 election? You know what happened in both those elections? Their parties lost not just the House, but the Senate as well. And of course, that's what we're talking about right here. And you mentioned that CNN poll. You know, to me, I'm always asking, 'Hey, is this poll an outlier? Does this look like the other data points that we have out there?' And you know what? There are a lot of data points that look a whole heck of a lot like the CNN poll. You know, we're talking about sub-minus-30 net approval -- that's approval minus disapproval. It's not just the CNN poll, right? What are we talking about? We're talking about the ABC poll. We're talking about the Ipsos poll. We're talking about the Pew poll, it was 38 points underwater. That is the all-time worst for any president in any poll in the October pre-midterm. You have to go all the way back to FDR. And while I may sound like an elderly man, I was certainly not alive back in 1938, Kaitlan. But here's the thing, right? Here's the thing. It's all about the midterm elections, right, coming up. It's all about the House. It's all about the Senate. You know, that CNN poll that we had that came out today, right, there was a generic ballot question on there, right, 'You're going to vote for the Democrat or Republican for Congress?' You know what's so important? Democrats now have a 10-point advantage on the generic ballot, according to our CNN poll. Pretty much very close to The New York Times' plus 11 points. Again, non-outlier.”