Democrats go into Tuesday's midterm elections with a 7-point lead in the battle for Congress, according to the final national NBC News poll before Election Day — but the numbers underneath that lead describe an electorate voting on one thing above all: the cost of living. Registered voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by 52% to 45%, a lead that grew by 2 points from last month's NBC poll, with Democrats ahead by 21 points among independents and just 3% of voters still undecided.

Source: NBC News

The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from October 28 to 30, by telephone interviews and an online survey sent by text message, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. It was conducted for NBC News by Hart Research Associates, the Democratic polling firm, together with Public Opinion Strategies, the Republican firm — a bipartisan team that has run NBC's polling for years, which is why both parties take its findings seriously. Polls are a snapshot, not a result: they measure what voters said in the final week, not how they will actually vote on November 3.

The economy is the ballot question

President Donald Trump's disapproval rating has climbed to 60%, a new high across his two terms in the NBC News poll, against an approval rating of 40%. Roughly three in four voters say they are dissatisfied with the state of the economy, and for the first time in 30 years of NBC News polling, more voters say they are dissatisfied with their own financial situation (51%) than satisfied (49%). Nearly two-thirds want a change from the direction Trump is leading the country, with 50% calling for “a great deal” of change — another new high in the poll's data. Seventy percent say the country is on the wrong track, up 9 points in a year.

Voters rank inflation and the cost of living as the most important issue facing the country, followed by government corruption, threats to democracy, and immigration and border security. “The Trump presidency can be summarized as the promise of two years ago and the peril of two days from now,” said Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research, the Democratic pollster on the survey, noting that Trump returned to the White House promising economic prosperity and peace and that prices have risen during the war with Iran. Overall, 64% of voters — including a third of Trump's own voters — say the president has fallen short of their expectations, against 34% who say he has lived up to them. “Democrats are in total control of the 2026 issue agenda,” said Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, the Republican pollster, noting that only voters who put immigration at the top are breaking for his party.

Cracks inside the Republican coalition

The strain shows inside the president's own coalition. Republicans are now split on the country's direction — 48% say right direction, 43% wrong track — a year after they said right direction by 75% to 24%. A majority of Republicans, 53%, are dissatisfied with the economy, and 37% of Trump's own party say he has fallen short of his promises. Trump keeps near-unanimous approval, 93%, among Republicans who identify with his MAGA movement — but among Republicans who do not, his approval has fallen to 54%, with 46% disapproving, and 20% of those non-MAGA Republicans say they would prefer Democrats to control Congress.

His net approval rating has dropped 18 points among white voters without college degrees compared with the first NBC News poll of his second term, in 2025, and he has also lost significant ground among young voters and Latino voters — two groups he overperformed with when he won back the White House in 2024. Most strikingly for Tuesday's map, his approval is underwater even in the states he won in 2024: 53% of registered voters there disapprove of his performance and 47% approve, a rating that was 10 points higher in those states in March 2025.

Why Democrats are not simply celebrating

The same poll warns Democrats that the country is voting against Republicans more than it is voting for them. Just 29% of voters view the Democratic Party positively, against 38% for the Republican Party, and around half of voters view both parties negatively. On the issues, the parties are close to even: Democrats hold a 1-point advantage on controlling inflation — a sharp warning for Republicans, who led on the issue in 2024 — while Republicans hold a 2-point advantage on the economy overall, down from the double-digit leads of recent years, and a 5-point advantage on government corruption, the issue Democrats have made central to their message. Democrats lead by 5 points on handling transgender issues, one of the subjects Republicans have attacked them on most heavily in this campaign.

The party leaders are little loved either. House Speaker Mike Johnson has the highest positive rating of the four congressional leaders, at 24% positive to 34% negative; Senate Majority Leader John Thune stands at 10%–22%, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries at 18%–35%, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer at 13%–53%. Elon Musk, one of the Republicans' biggest donors, is viewed positively by 34% and negatively by 50%; among progressives, Bernie Sanders stands at 41%–42% and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 31%–42%. “It's not great for the Democrats … for 2028,” McInturff said of his own side's readings of the opposition. “But I don't see it as a barrier for how well they can do in 2026 when midterms are about Trump and these economic numbers.”

Enthusiasm, at least, is high: 70% of voters rate their interest in the election at 9 or 10 out of 10. Democrats lead by 12 points among those most-engaged voters, while Republicans lead by 2 among the less interested — and MAGA Republicans report far more interest than other Republicans, the turnout battle both parties are fighting in the final hours. The human version of the numbers came from the poll's own respondents. A Texas man who voted for Trump in 2024 and is backing Democrats for Congress this year said: “Republicans have proven that they are not to be trusted. So I would rather see the balance of power shift, than maintain one party's control.” An Ohio Democratic woman's message to her own party was blunter: “Get your s–t together, Democrats. I'm voting for you, but work it out.”

For Punjabi and diaspora readers — families watching grocery, rent and remittance costs, and truckers watching diesel prices and freight rates — the poll's central finding will sound familiar, because it is the household version of what they have been living: for the first time in three decades of this poll, a majority of American voters say their own money situation leaves them dissatisfied. What Congress they choose on Tuesday will set the budgets for everything from immigration enforcement to highway spending for the last two years of Trump's term — which is why a poll about kitchen-table costs is also, in the end, a poll about who governs.