By now, it is common knowledge that President Donald Trump is an unpopular man. In fact, his net approval rating — the percentage of Americans who approve of his presidency minus the percentage who disapprove — is the lowest ever for a president heading into a midterm, according to the average of polls my colleagues and I calculate at FiftyPlusOne.news.
But it’s not just Trump. The Republican Party has a broader candidate favorability problem that threatens its majority in the U.S. House ahead of November’s midterms.
Take Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton as the chief example. Paxton has an infamous political biography, including allegations of marital infidelity and corruption during his time as the Lone Star State’s attorney general. The Texas House of Representatives impeached Paxton in May 2023 on charges of bribery, abuse of office and obstruction, but he was subsequently acquitted by the Texas Senate in September 2023.
None of the Republican Party’s nominees for U.S. Senate in competitive races have positive favorability ratings on average.
If you want to run for higher office, black marks such as these can add up. In fact, according to a new database of polls compiled by FiftyPlusOne exclusively for this column, Paxton has the worst favorability rating of any Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. In an average of 12 different polls, 51.7% of Texans said they viewed Paxton unfavorably, compared to 37.5% who viewed him favorably. That makes for a net rating of -14%.
Among the GOP’s other comparable negative favorability ratings are North Carolina GOP Senate nominee Michael Whatley, the current chair of the Republican National Committee, who is trailing in the polls by 10 percentage points to Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor of the state; and Roger Marshall, the incumbent Republican senator from Kansas, who has been dogged by controversies in a much closer-than-expected race in that state against first-time candidate — and former Republican turned Democrat — Adam Hamilton.
In fact, none of the Republican Party’s nominees for U.S. Senate in competitive races have positive favorability ratings on average. Paxton has the worst ratings, at -14, while the GOP nominee in Iowa, Ashley Hinson, has an average rating of -2.
But Paxton also has the lowest rating compared to his Democratic opponent of any of the GOP candidates across the country. The Texas Democratic challenger, state Rep. James Talarico, currently boasts a +6.5-point favorability advantage, with 46.6% of Texans giving him a positive rating and 40.0% viewing him negatively. That roughly ~21-point gap is the largest between any pair of candidates across the country.
It is true that Trump’s (un)popularity is like an albatross around his party’s neck. But that alone would likely not have been enough to flip a state like Texas from red to blue. The president won that state by 14 percentage points in 2024, but our forecasting model at FiftyPlusOne now puts up the race as “leaning Democratic.”
And in this respect, Paxton is not an outlier. In states that Trump won by double digits in 2024, Republican nominees trail their rivals on favorability by 13 points on average. In Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa and Alaska, the Democratic nominee averages a favorability rating of +6, and the Republican −7. In the four closer states, that gap shrinks to about 6 points.
Some of this edge for the Democrats is the result of solid recruiting of quality candidates. But Republicans are underwater of their own volition in most of these competitive races, as Democrats aren’t exactly sailing on popularity, either. The Democratic nominees in Michigan, Maine and New Hampshire are all underwater, too, with a net favorability rating, respectively, of -1.8, -4.6 and -11.3. But in those three states, the Republican nominee is still less popular, on a net basis, than the Democrats.
Paxton seems to know he’s in trouble. “I don’t have the ability to change anything,” he told donors at a private fundraiser last month, according to Politico. He said his campaign was effectively being run by the national party and the president in Washington.
An unpopular president is always a drag on its party’s nominees up and down the ballot. But this year, the Republican Party has also nominated candidates that voters don’t like in states it can’t afford to lose. That may cost the GOP control of Congress in November.
Mary Radcliffe contributed research for this article.
CORRECTION (Oct. 8, 2026, 10:14 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated Ken Paxton’s unfavorability averages. According to averages from 12 polls, 51.7% of Texans said they viewed Paxton unfavorably and 37.5% said they viewed him favorably.
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