Democrats lead by 13 points on trust to handle voters' top problems
This poll question has predicted all but one election since 1948. It suggests Democrats could win by 8-12 points in November.
Every month in our Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, we ask our sample of U.S. adults two important questions back-to-back. First we ask which problem facing the country — such as inflation, immigration, health care, crime, the state of democracy itself, etc. — matters most to them today. Then, we ask each respondent which party would do a better job handling whatever issue they personally pick.
In our May poll, Democrats led Republicans by 13 points on trust to handle the problems Americans picked as their personal most important. And since we ask this question every month (at least we do now, starting 2026), we can compare how voters felt on this question over time:
A year ago, the party’s lead was “just” 4 points. But The Democratic edge has widened almost every month since last spring to D+7 by October, D+8 through the winter, then a jump to D+12 in April and D+13 in May. That’s a steady climb throughout Trump’s second term so far. While I wouldn’t make much of how a poll moves in one month (a survey of 1,500 adults has a margin of error around 5 percentage points for the difference in two percentages), the trend here across multiple surveys is undeniable. (Our new June poll comes out next week, so get signed up if you’re not already!)
Besides being great for trend analysis, the cool thing about this number is that we have historical data to compare it against. Where were the parties in previous election cycles, and did the numbers happen to be predictive of results in those cycles?
This post answers that question. But before we get there, a note on the trend itself. A party can make gains on the MIP-trust question for two reasons: Voters can drift toward issues where they already trust that party, or the party can gain trust to handle the issues themselves. In our data, both are happening for the Democrats today. On prices, the most-named problem in every wave of our poll, the Democratic margin has grown from D+1 last May to D+10 now, while prices have also risen in salience. But Democrats have also gained on traditionally GOP-coded issues such as immigration, where voters trusted Trump over Harris by 14 points in YouGov’s final 2024 poll (49% to 35%) but Republicans now lead by just one.
The graph of that data, and the historical data showing this question is predictive/explanatory of election results, beyond the paywall.
As far as I know, Strength In Numbers is the only public pollster that tracks this question (the combination party trust and MIP — ”most important problem” questions) on a regular basis. This is a good example of what we do differently from other pollsters/political journalism outlets.
Paying subscribers to Strength In Numbers make my original, independent data-driven journalism possible. Support my work and get access to articles like this one for $10/month or $90/year.
And here’s that plot of issue trust and MIP percentage for each individual issue:
