Why Democrats are suddenly winning back the left — and the "double-haters"
Plus, the share of Americans calling themselves Republicans just hit a decade low. Your weekly political data roundup for April 5, 2026.
This is my weekly Sunday roundup of new political data published over the last seven days. It is free to read, but if you want to support independent data-driven political journalism, become a paying subscriber.
Leading off: Very liberal Americans, who have rated the Democratic Party poorly relative to other partisans since 2024, have swung sharply back toward congressional Democrats over the last few months. A new poll also finds voters who dislike both parties now prefer Democrats by 31 points. These gains should reassure a party that has faced internal strife since Trump’s second term began, but look less due to renewed faith in the Democrats and more like anti-Trump consolidation. That might not matter for the midterms — a vote won is a vote won — but it will matter for 2028 and beyond.
On deck this week: Tuesday’s Deep Dive will cover some new research on the level of ideological thinking in the electorate and the value (or not) of ideological moderation by the Democrats, and Friday’s Chart of the Week will respond to whatever’s in the news. I’m also finalizing questions for our April Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll this week — so subscribers, send in your question recommendations if you haven’t already! (Email or comments are fine.)
On with the data.
1. Anti-Trump sentiment, not pro-Democratic enthusiasm, is uniting Democrats again
A new YouGov/The Economist poll, fielded from March 27 - 30, finds that Democratic voters have grown significantly warmer toward their members of Congress over the last few months. Earlier in 2026, Democrats said their party’s MOCs were favorable at a rate just 30 points higher than the rate they said their party was unfavorable. That gap has now grown to +55 — rivaling the favorability of Republican MOCs among Republican voters.
Aggregate Democratic views have increased because very liberal Americans have become sharply more favorable toward congressional Democrats since January. This group evaluated the party’s members of Congress favorably by a net +28 points margin — up from a -13 deficit in January. That’s a 41-point shift in two months:
Among Americans who are liberal but not very liberal, moderate, or conservative (basically everyone else), views of congressional Democrats barely budged.
Overall, U.S. adults give the Democrats a favorability rating of -21, 5 points higher than the rating they currently give Republicans.
That is a meaningful change. Last summer, Strength In Numbers documented that Democratic party favorability was unusually weak even as the party remained competitive on the generic ballot. We dug into the survey microdata and found out that this was because many left-leaning Americans were frustrated with their own side after the 2024 loss. Charles Franklin, who conducts the Marquette University Law School Poll, has been tracking the same dynamic in both national and Wisconsin polling. Among Democratic identifiers in Wisconsin, his data shows a net +56 favorability rating for their party, compared to +74 among Republican identifiers for the GOP.
Franklin finds that while Democrats still disagree about what they’re for, they are virtually unanimous in what they’re against: Donald Trump.
The simplest explanation for Democrats’ gains is that politically active party members on the left — who have had a lot of complaints about how the party is handling Trump 2.0 — are now responding to the same thing many other Americans are right now. That is, the president has moved public policy on many issue domains far to the right and up on the authoritarian axis (certainly far past the policy temperature “set point,” to use the language of the thermostatic model), and progressives are setting their differences with the Democrats aside for the moment as they focus on defeating an increasingly unpopular Republican president. This looks more like anti-Trump unity than pro-Democratic enthusiasm.
But it’s not just the base
The Democrats’ consolidation of left-wing liberalism is one piece of a broader backlash to Trumpism that shows up in the polling data right now. Another notable finding this week is from a new CNN/SSRS survey that found that about one-quarter of the public holds an unfavorable view of both parties. These are the so-called “double haters.” This group prefers Democrats on the 2025 generic ballot by 31 points.
This is a big deal for two reasons. First, that’s a massive shift; Double haters broke for Trump in 2016 and again in 2024. Now they’re swinging hard the other way.
Like Franklin’s polling, the CNN report also finds that Democrats’ gains are driven largely by opposition to the GOP, not enthusiasm for Democrats themselves. When asked what they dislike about Democrats, 22% of double haters called the party “do-nothing” and 11% said they aren’t standing up enough to Trump and the GOP, while 10% said they’re too liberal.
Will 2026 be a Democratic fake out?
So we’ve got two layers of anti-Trump consolidation happening at once. YouGov’s data shows the Democratic left is coming home, and the CNN poll shows voters who dislike both parties — a swing group that has been decisive in recent elections — are breaking heavily toward Democrats for the first time in years. Neither group is necessarily enthusiastic about Democrats. But both are currently heavily voting against Republicans. According to the CNN poll, 79% of voters who plan to support Democrats say their vote is a message of opposition to Trump. (Only 46% of Republican voters say they’ll vote to show support for the president.)
This could make for a big electoral win for Democrats in November, despite the division in the party and its overall nominally unpopular rating. According to CNN, Democratic-aligned voters are 17 points more likely than Republicans to call themselves “extremely motivated” to vote in 2026 — even though they’re 14 points less likely to view their own party favorably. Meanwhile, the Democrats have opened up a large lead in the U.S. House generic congressional ballot for 2026. They are up +6 in both the CNN and YouGov surveys, and closer to +5 on average.
This is the pattern I’d expect in a midterm environment that favors the out-party. But with many Americans (including the vaunted “double-haters”) still viewing the Democrats as weak and ineffectual, a big electoral victory will not completely solve their deeper problems of identity and division.
The trend in this data is good for the Democrats, in other words — but don’t misread a positive trend for a positive level.
2. What Strength In Numbers published last week
Readers of Strength In Numbers got three articles last week — a lighter load, since I was out sick Monday and Tuesday.
This week’s Deep Dive asked a question I’ve been getting a lot lately: if Trump is 20+ points underwater, why aren’t Democrats leading the generic ballot by 20?
On Thursday, David and I recorded our weekly podcast about Trump’s record-low polling numbers on Iran and the economy:
And Friday’s Chart of the Week broke down the six big events that have dragged down Trump’s approval rating since he took office:
If you’re a frequent reader of Strength In Numbers, I’m confident you will get a lot of value out of a paid subscription. Paid subscribers get access to Tuesday’s Deep Dives — the long-form data analysis that really digs into the numbers — plus everything else I publish.
3. Even more numbers!
The party ID gap is at its widest in over a decade, per Gallup — Democrats and leaners at 49%, Republicans at 39%, the lowest Republican share since 2015. Fewer Americans calling themselves Republicans or Republican-leaning independents since 2015: Gallup data
The CNN double haters poll: A new CNN poll reveals how people mad at both parties see the midterms
The YouGov newsletter I drew from above has a lot more, including a great experiment on how the labels “hawk” and “dove” change how people describe their foreign policy views. Democrats are starting to like congressional Democrats again
About six in ten Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Iran conflict, and a similar share say striking Iran was the wrong decision, per a March Pew survey. Republican-leaning independents are genuinely divided on both questions. Americans Broadly Disapprove of U.S. Military Action in Iran
A late-March CNN/SSRS poll found that just one-third of Americans think Trump has a clear plan for Iran — and only 29% say the war has been worth the toll, far below the 59% who said the same about Iraq in 2003. Donald Trump faces deep public skepticism about Iran war ahead of White House speech, CNN poll finds
Kyle Saunders writes on the twin crises facing survey research — declining trust in institutions and declining confidence in measurement, both hitting at the same time. The Pincer: Bots, Trust, and a Quiet Crisis in Public Opinion Research
The Guardian reports on how fraudulent church attendance data is a warning sign for the entire polling industry. ʼOur assumptions are brokenʼ: how fraudulent church data revealed AI’s threat to polling
A lot of this seems overhyped to me, and it’s worth noting that the leading authors of some new papers here do not provide estimates of the potential error or amount of fraud that may be impacting popular opt-in online panels right now. But “bogus respondents,” as Pew calls them, have been a problem for a long time; that’s why it’s important that if you’re doing polling online right now, you verify that you’re interviewing a real human person. (The Strength In Numbers poll partners with a mixed-mode online survey provider that does this.)
A few people sent me this very booster-ish WaPo op-ed arguing that prediction markets are better than polls. Your mileage may vary, but the guy writing seems to be involved with some markets, and in the lead picture compares market odds with raw poll vote shares in calculating prediction error (big red flag).
I did a webinar for the global party foundation associated with Germany’s SPD this week, discussing the outlook for the 2026 midterms. You can watch the replay for free here: Webseminar: Outlook on the 2026 US Midterm Elections
And that’s it for this week! Thanks for reading. Strength In Numbers will be back in your inbox on Tuesday!
Got more for next week? Email your links or add to the comments below!
We really need to get a much better handle on what behaviors all the people who believe the Dems are weak/ineffectual would want to see. On one hand, this could be folks who don’t understand how few levers a party that’s completely out of power actually has at the federal level. On the other hand, it could be voters who recognize the existential threat of Trump and the whole Project 2025 crowd. This might a group asking for the Democratic leadership to go well beyond traditional politics and start behaving as a true opposition movement. Parsing some of this out might be very helpful as the Dems select candidates and start to move into the more serious portion of the election cycle.
As you, I think, often point out, the voting public doesn't divide up into just members of the Democratic and Republican parties, with Independents now forming the largest percentage of the electorate. It would be very helpful if 1) they were included, and /or 2) the breakdown included what percentage of the voting public (last election or likely) the various categories include.