Trump Approval Holds at 32 Percent in the Final Reuters/Ipsos Poll, With Democrats Leading the Generic Ballot 46 to 38

President Donald Trump's approval rating held near a record low on the eve of Tuesday's congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday and read in full by the desk this cycle. Some 32 percent of respondents said they approved of the job Trump is doing in the White House, unchanged from a week earlier and just above his record-low reading of 31 percent two weeks ago.

On the generic ballot — the question asking which party voters would like to see in charge of Congress — 46 percent of registered voters picked Democrats and 38 percent picked Republicans, an 8-point Democratic advantage that was narrower than the 11-point lead in the Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted a week earlier, a sign the race could be tightening ahead of Election Day. Reuters notes that generic-ballot polls capture national sentiment but not the state-by-state and district-by-district contests that decide the Senate and the House, where Republicans hold some structural advantages.

The referendum shape of the vote was clearest among independents. Among registered voters, 50 percent of independents said they saw their vote in the congressional elections as a vote against Trump, compared with 13 percent who said it was a vote for Trump and 33 percent who said the president was not a factor in their vote. The poll surveyed 1,765 U.S. adults online and carried a margin of error of 2 percentage points. Texas voters render their own verdict Tuesday, when polls open at 7 a.m.