President Donald Trump’s approval ratings dipped below 40 percent in a slew of Midwest states he won by wide margins in 2016, according to a trio of polls published Wednesday.
Trump won Michigan by more than 10,000 votes and Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes. But a set of NBC News/Marist polls show his disapproval numbers have risen above 50 percent. Trump’s approval ratings in Minnesota, which the president barely lost, have also dipped.
The polls also show Democrats enjoying a lead in congressional preference from eight points to 12 points in these three states as the November midterm elections near. More than 45 percent of voters in Michigan prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, while 36 percent want the GOP to maintain control.
The results in Michigan and Wisconsin are similar. Nearly 48 percent voters in the Wolverine State prefer the Democrats, while those in Wisconsin are listing toward the Democratic Party by a 47 percent-to-39 percent margin. (RELATED: Poll Shows Voters Unimpressed With Democrats’ Handling Of Trump’s Immigration Issue)
The Michigan poll surveyed 886 registered voters and has a plus-minus 3.9 percentage margin of error, while the margin of error for the 876 registered voters in Minnesota is plus-minus 4.0 percentage points. The margin of error of the 906 registered voters in Wisconsin is plus-minus 3.8 percentage points.
“Donald Trump carried or came very close to carrying these three states in 2016. But it’s a very different picture for this fall’s elections,” Lee M. Miringoff, Director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which published one of the polls, told NBC reporters.
The polls were conducted between July 15 and July 19. Trump’s criticized July 16 press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin — voters from all three states who prefer Democrats say they’re hoping to send a message that more Democrats are needed to keep Trump in check.
Democrats’ advantage over Republicans in the generic ballot, however, has continued to slip. Their advantage dipped from a 10-point advantage they had heading into June to just four points toward the end of that month.
Gun control has also affected the Democratic advantage since January, The Washington Post noted in an April poll. The gap between support for the two parties in House races narrowed considerably since the gun control debate became a raging issue after the Florida school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February.
Illegal immigration has also become an issue. A Quinnipiac University poll published in June showed more than 60 percent of voters believe Democratic lawmakers are “exploiting the nation’s immigration issue for political gain,” while only 34 percent say they are trying to resolve border problems. The was conducted shortly after Trump signed an order June 20 ending the policy of separating families at the border.
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