Trump approval near record low ahead of elections

President Donald Trump’s approval rating held near a record low as a broad swath of the US electorate saw their vote in Tuesday’s congressional elections as a way to oppose the Republican president, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday. The results of the five-day nationwide poll also showed signs the race between Democrats and Republicans could be tightening ahead of Election Day. Some 46% of registered voters in the poll said they would pick Democrats in congressional elections, compared to 38% who picked Republicans, in what is known as a “generic ballot” question. That 8 percentage point advantage for Democrats was narrower than in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted a week earlier, when Democrats led by 11 points. Generic ballot polls are national polls that ​provide an overall view of which party voters would like to see in charge in Congress. While these polls provide a ​view of national public sentiment, they do not capture the nuances of the state-by-state and district-by-district contests that determine control of the US Senate and US ‌House, contests ⁠in which Republicans hold some structural advantages. Some 32% of respondents said they approved of the job Trump was doing in the White House, unchanged from a week earlier and just above his record-low reading of 31% two weeks ago. Among registered voters, some 50% of independents said they saw their vote in congressional elections as a vote against Trump, compared with 13% who said it was a vote for Trump and 33% who said the president wasn’t a factor in their vote. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,765 US adults online and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.