A month and a half before the 2018 midterms, a series of new polls finds Republican Senate candidates trailing their Democratic counterparts across five “Frost Belt” states—Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that President Trump carried in 2016.
The most closely watched race represented in the series of polls, which pollster Ipsos conducted in conjunction with Reuters and the University of Virginia Center for Politics between September 12 and September 19, is Indiana’s Senate race, where Republican Mike Braun is trying to unseat incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly. The new poll found Braun trailing among likely voters by 3 percentage points, 46 percent to 43 percent.
Donnelly is seen as one of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats this cycle: In 2016, Trump carried Indiana by nearly 20 percentage points. But the president’s reputation has suffered in Indiana since then: The new poll finds his approval rating underwater, with 48 percent of likely voters approving and 51 percent disapproving. When Trump took office in January 2017, he was faring far better in Indiana, with Morning Consult polling his approval-disapproval split at 55 percent to 33 percent.
In fact, drag from an unpopular president is a constant across the states represented in the new Ipsos polls, with Trump suffering from wide disapproval margins in Michigan (20 points), Ohio (nine points), Pennsylvania (12 points), and Wisconsin (16 points). Republicans are unlikely to wrest away Senate seats in any of these states this year.
Beyond the Senate races, the Ipsos poll also found Wisconsin’s incumbent Republican governor Scott Walker trailing challenger Tony Evers 50 percent to 43 percent, with Democrats projected to win gubernatorial races in Michigan and Pennsylvania as well.
