Poll: 6 in 10 voters say country headed in wrong direction

By Brett Rowland
The Center Square

Six in 10 American voters say the country is heading in the wrong direction before this year’s midterm elections, an increase from three months ago, according to a new national poll.

The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll found 60% of registered voters say the country is going in the wrong direction, up from 53% in March. Just 28% say things are going in the right direction, down from 36% in March. Eleven percent were not sure.

Among true independents, those who decline to lean toward either major party, nearly seven in 10 say the country is on the wrong track.

The generic congressional ballot has shifted from a one-point Democratic advantage in March to a six-point Democratic advantage in June. A Democratic House majority would control the chamber’s floor agenda, all committee and subcommittee chairmanships and the origination of revenue legislation, giving Democrats influence over trillions of dollars in federal spending.

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta who specializes in elections and voting behavior, said the generic ballot margin is significant.

“Where you have Democrats leading by six, seven, eight points on the generic ballot, the House of Representatives is almost certainly going to flip,” he told The Center Square. “Democrats only need to pick up three seats.”

Republicans currently hold a 218-215 majority in the House, with one vacant seat, according to the House Press Gallery.

Abramowitz said the bigger question is whether the wave will be large enough to give Democrats control of the Senate, which would require picking up at least four seats while holding all of their current 47, according to the U.S. Senate Press Gallery.

The shift comes as inflation and energy costs continue to weigh on American households. Gas prices have dropped to $3.97 per gallon nationally over the past week, but that’s still up more than a dollar a gallon from $2.94 when Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. military conflict with Iran, began in February, according to AAA and U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Overall consumer prices rose 4.2% over the past year, with energy costs up 23.5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Real wages have fallen back to where they stood when President Donald Trump took office.

Mike Noble, founder of Noble Predictive Insights, which conducted the poll, said voters are feeling the economic pain acutely. Inflation is getting worse, he said. Among true independents, Noble said the economic anxiety is especially pronounced, and Republicans face a growing problem if the pain points continue or worsen before November.

Benjamin Schneer, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, said the political environment is not favorable for Republicans. It is a long-standing pattern that the party in power struggles in midterm years, he said, and 2026 appears it will not be an exception. The majority in the House is so narrow that even a modest swing toward Democrats puts it at risk of shifting hands.

Schneer said the wrong track numbers reflect voter worries about inflation and the conflict in Iran.

“I do think the direction of the change is informative,” he told The Center Square. “It suggests the same forces that were already dragging on the chances for Republicans to hold onto their majority have continued. The question will be if anything meaningful changes before November.”

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a nonprofit public policy research organization, and an expert in election law and redistricting, said wrong track numbers historically reflect voter sentiment toward the party in power.

“Numbers as lopsided as those in the new poll are not unprecedented, but they are a big warning signal for the party in power,” he told The Center Square. “High wrong-track numbers in 2024 prefigured voters’ turn against Joe Biden and his Democrats.”

Olson said the numbers suggest a bad year for Republicans under the traditional rules of politics, but questioned whether those rules still apply. Olson said Republicans benefit on the House side from what he described as aggressive mid-cycle gerrymandering. More than a quarter of all congressional seats have been redrawn mid-decade, according to a May analysis by Schneer. Republicans also benefit on the Senate side from a lack of relatively easy Democratic pickups among seats up for a vote.

Olson said one long-term trend is that races for the House and Senate keep getting more nationalized, meaning state and local issues take a back seat to national politics. The Republican Party is identified with Trump personally as never before, he said, and Trump’s declining personal numbers could make things more difficult for Republican candidates across the country.

The NRCC, the congressional Republican campaign committee, said Republicans are focused on fixing problems left by the previous administration.

“Joe Biden and Democrats left behind a massive mess, and Republicans have been laser-focused on fixing the problems they created,” spokesman Mike Marinella told The Center Square. “From lowering costs to securing the border, Republicans are working every day to get the country back on the right track for American families.”

Several congressional offices from both parties did not respond to requests for comment.

The DCCC, the congressional Democratic campaign committee, said Republican economic failures are driving voter dissatisfaction.

“Hardworking families are getting squeezed from the gas station to the grocery store because House Republicans broke their promise to lower costs,” spokesman Aidan Johnson told The Center Square. “It’s no wonder Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction, and why they’re ready to elect Democrats to get it back on track.”

Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump repeatedly promised to bring prices down after taking office. Consumer prices have risen 4.2% over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The White House said it expects prices to fall once the Iran conflict is resolved, and credited the administration’s deregulation, tax cuts, and energy policies for economic progress prior to the conflict.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows real wages had fallen back to where they stood when Trump took office by May 2026.

Noble Predictive Insights conducted the poll from June 1-4, 2026. It surveyed registered voters nationally via opt-in online panel and text-to-web cell phone messages. The sample included 2,585 respondents, including 915 Republicans, 1,013 Democrats, and 297 True Independents. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.93%. It is one of the most comprehensive tracking polls in the U.S.