As he has crisscrossed the US to appear at rallies in battleground states where the candidates from his Republican party look vulnerable, the US president, Donald Trump, has been telling voters to imagine he is on the ballot paper. But it’s not clear that this is what the vulnerable GOP candidates want to hear.
The US president appears to be treating the 2026 midterms as a rerun of the 2024 presidential election. From listening to him, you would hardly know that Joe Biden left the White House 21 months ago.
A Reuters review in late September found that the president had named his predecessor almost 900 times in nine months – roughly three times a day – across nearly 200 events and interviews and 190 Truth Social posts. The economy came up more than any other subject.
But, if prices are too high it must be Biden that is to blame. Trump’s strategy for claiming credit for positive achievements and blaming his predecessor for anything negative became evident early in the president’s second term. But 18 months on, Trump still insists that affordability concerns are either a “con job by the Democrats” or they were “caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden aministration”.
The question is whether anyone beyond the Republican base believes him.
It is easy to see why Trump reaches for this script. In 2024, voters consistently trusted him over Biden on the economy. An ABC News/Ipsos poll that May found 46% trusted Trump to handle the economy against 32% for Biden, and 44% to 30% on inflation. YouGov polling from mid-2024 found that on 23 of 25 national problems tested, more people approved of Trump’s record in office than of Biden’s. Voters believed prices had risen on Biden’s watch, and they blamed him.
The blame has changed hands
But two years on the blame has transferred to the current occupant of the Oval Office. This is hardly surprising and something Trump and his advisers ought to have recognised from the 2022 midterms. Then Biden’s approval on the economy had sunk to a dismal 28%. Similarly, a majority of Americans now blame Trump.
This matters. A Reuters/Ipsos poll at the end of August found that 47% of registered voters said the economy was the single most important factor in their midterm vote – and 71% of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of it. By late September, Reuters/Ipsos put his approval on the issue at just 17%, with more Republicans disapproving than approving for the first time.
That poll was something of an outlier, but others polls consistently show Trump’s approval on the economy in the low 30s.
The problem for the administration, and for Republican candidates whose fortunes are tied to it, is that much of the public does not think it needs a profound understanding of economics to trace inflation back to Trump’s second-term policies. As we argue in our book, Trump v Biden, in his second term, Trump’s administration has doubled down on key themes from the first, notably restricting immigration and imposing tariffs.
According to Silver Bulletin, Trump now has a net approval rating of -12 points on immigration, traditionally one of his stronger issues. On trade, more directly tied to prices, his net approval rating is -29 points.
Trump’s first term imposed a range of new tariffs, particularly on China, many of which Biden retained. Trump 2.0 has set about a significant, if haphazard, expansion of this trade protectionism. In April 2025, an executive order announced a new tariff regime on what Trump declared “Liberation Day”.
It’s hard to judge the exact impact of Trump’s second-term tariff regime, as levels have fluctuated and some tariffs have been imposed, only to be lifted again. But Republican candidates have shied away from talking about tariffs and polls throughout the year have found most Americans believe they have hurt rather than helped the economy.
Still, on tariffs Trump was at least delivering on a campaign promise. More confounding to his supporters was the war with Iran after Trump promised not to. As he famously said on the campaign trail: “They said: ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Seven months of conflict with Iran sit uneasily with that pledge. And, what is worse for Republicans, many voters have drawn a direct line from the conflict to rising gasoline and diesel prices at home. In early October, the Pew Research Center found just 33% approved of Trump’s handling of the conflict, while 77% expected it to last at least six more months. The chief objection was cost. 73% of Americans were extremely or very concerned about higher fuel prices.
A referendum on Trump, not Biden
The Trump era has broken many norms of politics, but political gravity still exists. Midterms are usually a verdict on the sitting president, and this one looks no different. Pew puts Trump’s approval at 30%, the lowest of his second term and eight points below Biden’s 38% at the same stage in 2022.
Nearly two-thirds of voters (63%) say Trump is a factor in their vote, and 44% see their vote as a vote against him, well above the 36% who said the same of Biden four years ago. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll gives Democrats a 47% to 35% lead on the generic congressional ballot.
The irony is worth noting. Trump returned to power by persuading voters that Biden was out of touch with their economic reality. Twenty-one months in, he faces the same charge. Blaming a predecessor has a shelf-life – and for most voters it appears to have expired. Whatever happens on November 3, the result will be read as a judgement on Trump’s presidency.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.