Democrats take 9-point lead on economy as GOP edge erodes

Fox News polling shows Democrats leading Republicans by 9 points on economic stewardship in July, the first time since 2010 the GOP has trailed on the question.

"Voters know exactly, to the dollar, the amount of their power bill," said Mitchell Brown, a Republican pollster who runs focus groups in battleground states, describing a hardening negative impression that poses a clear danger for his party.

Consumer prices rose 3.5 percent year-over-year in June, matching average hourly earnings growth of 3.5 percent, while GDP expanded at a 1.9 percent annual rate over the six quarters ended June — below the 2.4 percent pace of former President Joe Biden's final year. Unemployment edged up to 4.1 percent in July from 4 percent in January 2025, with employers cutting 23,000 jobs in July.

With only about one-quarter of voters rating the economy as excellent or good, the GOP's economic edge has flipped to a deficit that could cost the party its House majority. Democrats hold an 87 percent probability of taking the chamber, according to the Fifty Plus One forecast, with the Senate a toss-up at 54 percent.

The reversal is stark. Republicans were viewed as the better economic manager by as much as 15 points in 2022 and 2023, according to Fox News polling. Democrats now lead by 4 points on the question in April and 9 points in July. A separate Reuters/Ipsos survey of 4,505 U.S. adults found Democrats holding a 37 percent to 36 percent edge on economic stewardship, with independents breaking for Democrats by 12 points on a generic congressional ballot.

Trump's approval rating has fallen to 35 percent, down from 37 percent last month and just a point above the lowest mark of his term, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. His net approval on the economy sits at roughly minus 25 points, a level comparable to Richard Nixon's final week in office and George W. Bush's mid-Iraq-War nadir, according to G. Elliott Morris, data editor at The Economist and co-founder of Fifty Plus One.

The sour mood traces to specific policy decisions. Gasoline prices have surged more than 25 percent since the Iran war began in March, and tariffs have added to price pressures. "The specific economic circumstances we're dealing with are not really necessarily an inheritance from a previous administration," said John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University. "They are due to very specific decisions that this administration has made."

The White House argues the effect will be transitory. "Oil prices — along with overall inflation — will plummet again when President Trump forces a successful resolution with Iran," said Kush Desai, a White House spokesman.

The October Test

The disconnect between market performance and consumer sentiment is striking. The S&P 500 has soared on artificial-intelligence enthusiasm, and consumer spending has remained solid, buoyed by this year's tax cuts. Yet only about one-quarter of respondents rate the economy as excellent or good, while roughly three-quarters say it is in fair or poor shape.

David Winston, a GOP strategist who advises congressional Republican leaders, said the decisive moment will come in October: "If people start walking into grocery stores and gas stations and say, 'I can now handle the cost of living,' that is the decisive moment."

The last time Democrats held a comparable economic advantage was 2010, when the party lost 63 House seats in a wave election. The current generic ballot lead of about 6 points for Democrats matches their standing at this point in 2018, when they flipped 40 House seats — though the GOP's gerrymandered maps in Texas, Florida, and other states could blunt a similar wave this year.

Americans for Prosperity Action, the limited-government super PAC, has found that about one in five Republican-leaning voters is at risk of staying home or defecting, largely because of economic worries. Drawing a contrast with Democratic policy brings 60 percent of those voters back to the GOP, the group said.

Democrats face their own vulnerabilities. Sixty-nine percent of voters disapprove of the job Democrats are doing in Congress, according to the Fox News poll, and Democratic Socialists are battling centrists over the party's economic agenda. "Yes, Trump is very, very unpopular," said Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat representing a rural Washington district Trump won three times. "That doesn't mean that Democrats are necessarily popular."

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