Republicans may be unpopular, but Democrats have it worse, and the gap is wide enough to put their Senate ambitions in serious jeopardy heading into November's midterm election.
A CNN analysis by Harry Enten found that Democrats hold a net favorability edge of just five points, a number that looks anemic compared to the party's standing before the last two midterm waves under Republican presidents. In 2018, during Trump's first term, that figure stood at eight points. In 2006, when Democrats rode a blue wave to take both chambers and install Nancy Pelosi as the first female House speaker, it was eleven. Five points, in other words, isn't wave territory. It's treading water.
The math gets harder from there. As the New York Post reported, Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats to take control of the chamber, where Republicans currently hold a 53, 47 majority. But Enten's analysis showed that even if Republicans only hold the states Trump won by more than ten points in 2024, the GOP would still keep the Senate 51, 49.
The numbers beneath the top line are even more punishing. A CNN poll from earlier this month found that just 28 percent of Americans view the Democratic Party positively, while 56 percent see it unfavorably. Republicans weren't exactly beloved, their approval sat at 32 percent, but they didn't need to be. They already hold the majority.
That 28 percent figure is close to historic lows. Just the News reported that a CNN survey found Democratic favorability at 29 percent, the lowest level recorded in CNN polling going back to 1992, with the party's standing having dropped 20 points since January 2021.
The RealClearPolitics polling average tells a similar story. The Democratic Party's net rating sits at negative 20 points. President Trump's job approval, meanwhile, registers at negative 15 points, bad, but still five points better than the party trying to run against him.
That asymmetry matters. Midterm elections are usually referendums on the president in power. Democrats are banking on that dynamic. But if the opposition party is even less popular than the president it's trying to defeat, the traditional playbook breaks down.
Enten's forecast laid out the Senate battlefield in blunt terms. He found Democrats could flip seats in North Carolina and Maine. But Republicans would hold Ohio, Texas, and Alaska. And three Democratic-held seats, in Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire, are vulnerable.
That means Democrats aren't just playing offense. They're playing defense on their own turf at the same time, in states that should be safe for a party expecting a wave. Republicans are already preparing to capitalize, rolling out hundreds of millions in ad spending across competitive Senate battlegrounds.
Enten didn't mince words about the disconnect between Democratic ambitions and the data in front of him.
"Democrats are, just simply put, running behind their previous benchmarks, and they'd need to be running well ahead of them if they want to take back the United States Senate."
He walked through the scenario plainly. If Republicans hold only the states where Trump won by double digits, the Senate stays red.
"Let's say Republicans only hold on to the states that Trump won by greater than 10 points. That would, in fact, give them the Senate 51 to 49."
That's the floor for Republicans, not the ceiling.
Despite the polling, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have projected confidence, arguing that their party's message on economic affordability and public unhappiness about the war with Iran will carry them to power. Jeffries recently told New York Magazine that Trump is the one who should be worried.
"Donald Trump is trying to nationalize the election because he knows that if there's a free and fair election, he's going to lose. Republicans are going to get crushed, as we've been seeing all across the country."
But the data doesn't show Republicans getting crushed anywhere. It shows a Democratic Party that can't clear the favorability bar its own predecessors set before winning far less than what the current leadership needs. In 2018, with stronger numbers, Democrats only managed to take the House, not the Senate. Pelosi got the speaker's gavel back. Schumer did not become majority leader.
Now Pelosi is retiring from Congress this year. And Schumer's own standing is eroding in his home state, where polls show New York Democrats souring on his leadership.
The favorability collapse isn't just about how independents and Republicans view the Democratic Party. The rot runs inward. Fox News reported that an NBC News survey found just 27 percent of registered voters viewed Democrats positively, the party's lowest mark in that poll since 1990. Among Democrats themselves, 57 percent said party leaders should mostly work to stop the GOP agenda rather than find common ground with Republicans.
That tension, a base demanding confrontation while leaders like Schumer occasionally reach across the aisle, has created visible fractures. CNN's Enten described the internal mood in stark terms.
The Washington Examiner reported that Enten flagged what he called a "revolt within the Democratic Party," driven by collapsing trust on the economy. A Gallup poll cited in his analysis showed that Democratic trust in party leaders to do the right thing on the economy fell from 80 percent in April 2024 to 39 percent in April 2025. That's not a dip. That's a halving of confidence in barely a year.
A Siena College poll showed Schumer's favorability among New York Democrats dropped from 73 percent in April 2024 to 52 percent in 2025. A Marist poll found a majority of New York Democrats no longer believe he should remain in the Senate. Enten's reaction was pointed.
"This screams, siren should be going off: 'primary challenge, primary challenge, primary challenge!'"
He added: "Democrats hate, hate, hate, hate what their congressional leaders are doing in Washington right now on the key issue of the day right now, the economy."
That's not a Republican talking. That's a CNN analyst reading his own network's polling.
Democrats have won big in midterms before. In 2006, under George W. Bush, they swept both chambers. In 2018, they took the House. Both times, the party's favorability numbers were significantly stronger than they are today. Both times, the political environment was more favorable for the opposition.
Today, Democrats face criticism from within their own ranks that the party has lost touch on cultural and economic issues alike. The internal divisions aren't abstract. They show up in the polling, in the favorability collapse, and in the growing distance between Democratic voters and their leadership in Washington.
The House remains competitive. Democrats need only three or four seats to win control there, and that margin is narrow enough that a modest shift could deliver it. But the Senate is a different story entirely. The seats Democrats need to flip are in states Trump carried convincingly. The seats they need to defend are in states that should be safe but aren't.
Trump, for his part, is engaged. His top advisers told The Post earlier this year that the president is going "all in" on the midterms. Schumer's own political vulnerabilities, on foreign policy, on economic messaging, on his standing with his own base, give Republicans additional openings to press.
Jeffries says Republicans will get crushed. The polls say Democrats are less popular than the party they're trying to beat. Schumer says affordability and Iran will carry the day. His own voters say they've lost faith in his economic leadership.
There is a name for a party that trails its own historical benchmarks, faces record-low favorability, defends vulnerable seats it shouldn't have to worry about, and needs to flip states the opposing president won by double digits.
It's not a party on the verge of a wave. It's a party hoping the other side stumbles badly enough to make up the difference.
Hope is not a strategy, and the numbers don't lie, even when the leaders won't read them.
