Breaking News · October 18, 2026, 9:21 AM CDT
As reported by NBC News:
Weeks ahead of Election Day, 71% of U.S. adults think the country is on the “wrong track.”
It’s the highest share yet in President Donald Trump’s second term, illustrating the grim national mood his party faces in the midterm elections, according to a new NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey.
Poll respondents expressed deep unhappiness over economic conditions and widespread distrust toward both major political parties, but Trump and Republicans bore the brunt. For the first time in Trump’s second term, the poll has found the “right track” sinking into the 20s.
A majority of Americans view the president’s administration as uniquely corrupt, even as they look skeptically at corruption in both parties. And they say Trump is failing to improve their material financial conditions.[1]
The numbers in the reporting
How 5 outlets are reporting it
- Poll: Americans are anxious, pessimistic and deeply unhappy with Trump ahead of the midterms (NBC News)
- Trump approval hits record low, handing Democrats a clear midterm edge (The Washington Post)
- Trump's approval rating hits record low in poll as midterms near (USA Today)
- Transcript: Fox News Poll Shocker Is an Absolute Disaster for Trump (The New Republic)
- America's wits' end election approaches (Axios)
What The New Republic reports
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 16 episode of the Daily Blast podcast.
This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.[2]
What the official record says
We searched government, military, court and international-body sites for a statement or document on this story and found none published yet. The officials quoted in this report are quoted as the outlets reported them, so treat those statements as secondhand until the original is published.
How to Verify This Yourself
Each headline above links to that outlet’s own report. The quoted passages come from the first two of those reports that could be retrieved in full.
References
- NBC News. Poll: Americans are anxious, pessimistic and deeply unhappy with Trump ahead of the midterms. ↩
- The New Republic. Transcript: Fox News Poll Shocker Is an Absolute Disaster for Trump. ↩
Investigative methodology: this story was selected because 5 separate news organizations were reporting it at the same time. The quoted text is verbatim from the cited reports; nothing is paraphrased or added. Produced by scripts/breaking_news_monitor.py, not a language model.
Kemetic Minds Editorial Desk
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