Midterms do little to change public opinion of parties: Gallup

Americans’ views of the two major political parties did not significantly change after the midterm elections, according to a new Gallup poll.

The survey, released on Thursday, found that 42 percent of U.S. adults had a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, a slight decline from the 44 percent in September but well within the margin of error.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents in the new poll viewed the Democratic Party favorably, unchanged from September.

The findings come after voters elected a divided government for the next two years, with Republicans set to take control of the House while Democrats hung on to their razor-thin Senate majority.

Those results fell short of the hopes of many in the GOP, who expected to make more significant gains in the House and to perhaps flip Senate control.

Views toward the parties have changed after some other midterms, Gallup noted.

Democrats’ favorable rating dropped by 10 points after the 2002 midterm elections, a rare instance of the president’s sitting party not losing seats in the House as the public rallied around then-President George W. Bush and Republicans in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Favorable opinions about the Democratic Party also declined following the 2014 midterms, although it did not change after the 2010 midterms, when the party saw some of its worst losses in the House.

The current standings also reflect only one of a few instances in which the Republican Party has a higher favorability rating than the Democratic Party.

Democrats have typically had higher favorable ratings than Republicans for most of the past decade, except in Gallup polling from the fall and from November 2014, September 2018 and early 2020.

The latest poll was conducted from Nov. 9 to Dec. 2 with 1,020 U.S. adults with interviews conducted on landlines and cellphones. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.