Olson on Newsmax: Polling on Minnesota and ICE Heading into 2026

Byline: Olson Strategies Staff

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Dustin Olson, Managing Partner at Olson Strategies, joined NEWSMAX’s Sunday Report with Jon Glasgow and guest host Marc Lotter to explain why President Trump’s approval is tracking where Bush and Obama were at the same point in their 2nd terms—around 43%—and the historic trend for midterms. But, on the Generic Ballot, Dems are still underperforming 2018.

The real story is how polling has changed since then, and you can clearly see noise in the numbers.

SECOND-TERM CONTEXT

Zooming out matters.

Every second-term president this century—Bush 43.5, Obama 43.2, now Trump 42.8—sits around ~43% approval at this stage. Trump is not an outlier historically. In fact, most of his 2nd term, he's outperformed Bush/Obama. What is different today is polling methodology.

THE “NOISE” IN THE NUMBERS

To start, Olson explained the reason that polling isn't painting a clear, unified picture of how people are actually reacting:

"Right now, you can see a big difference between most of the surveys in the averages, you have people who are doing surveys of just adults, and then you have most of the surveys are being done on registered voters, and very few are actually of likely voters. So I think we actually have some noise in the numbers as to where things are at."  

Those samples produce very different results—and they’re often mixed together in headlines, which creates confusion. A breakout analysis of those discrepancies follows in the next section.

The other BIG problem is that almost all Public Polls now use 100% Online Panel trash surveys, where 100% of the respondents sign up to be paid to take polls.

REALCLEARPOLITICS AVERAGE BREAKOUT (KEY DATA)

In the current RealClearPolitics averages:

• Likely Voter polls (2x): -6.5 net approval
• Registered Voter polls (9x): -11.9
• Adult polls (2x): -17.5

That’s an 11-point swing based purely on who you ask.

Every pollster knows that doing surveys of just adults (don't have to be voters or even citizens) is much cheaper and much worse for Republicans, and the same is true for registered voter polls, though to a lesser extent.

More importantly, people who are going to vote are the only ones who matter to the Midterm Elections. 

GENERIC BALLOT REALITY

Olson then went on to note that Democrats are currently around D+4.5 on the generic ballot. At this same point in 2018, they were closer to D+8—a year when they won the House but still lost ground in the Senate.

"Democrats on the generic ballot are only about half of where they were back in 2018 at this point, so they're underperforming. It's largely because of the unfavorability that their party has, which is twice as unpopular as Republicans."

While they've improved slightly over the year, they are clearly underperforming their past midterms for the out-of-power party. But there's more context to this story... 

HISTORIC NOTE

Traditionally, Democrats need to lead the generic ballot by 3–4 points just to be even with Republicans.

That math has shifted somewhat due to the gerrymandering advantage Democrats built over the past decade—but even accounting for that, today’s numbers aren’t wave-level.

OFTEN MISSED BUT IMPORTANT SIGNAL

One very much overlooked metric: Direction of the Country. The measure of whether folks think the country is going in the Right Direction or on the Wrong Track.

When (if ever) discussed in the media, the full context and remarkable shift in these numbers is NEVER provided.

Today, "Direction of the Country" is 17 points better than it was on Election Day 2024

It's 14 points better than Biden’s last day in office.

The contrast there does matter for the midterms.

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