Democrats have a lot to be excited about when they look at President Donald Trump’s polls. Scores of voters have soured on his job performance since he took office. And that group of unhappy voters includes some of Trump’s new 2024 converts — the young voters, disaffected voters, and voters of color who left the Democratic coalition to join Trump’s.

But Trump’s losses aren’t translating to Democratic gains. The polling so far suggests that the voters disillusioned by Trump similarly dislike the Democrats — and are more likely to leave politics altogether than align themselves with the Democratic Party.

Congressional Democrats — and their party’s national brand — remain dismal: Some 37 percent of voters view the party favorably, while about 60 percent view them unfavorably, according to YouGov’s tracking surveys.

Compare that to the GOP’s slightly better standing among voters in the same polls: 40 percent approve while 55 percent disapprove. Despite the early chaos and deluge of news during the first months of the Trump presidency, Republicans are either viewed more favorably than Democrats or running even with them in head-to-head polling.

That dynamic is very different from how the parties were viewed during Trump’s first term. At this point in 2017, when Trump’s job approval was similarly spiraling downward, Democrats enjoyed a modest, but constant, edge of support over Republicans as a majority of the country turned even more negatively against Trump’s first-term agenda and performance. They sustained that advantage — generally a 3–6 point margin — through the 2018 “blue wave” midterms and beyond.

In 2025, the picture is more evenly divided: a broadly unpopular president and two unpopular parties.

A few interconnected reasons explain why Democrats are stuck in this conundrum — and offer some insight into what they have to do to get out of it.

Democrats aren’t seen as a credible alternative — yet

So why aren’t newly anti-Trump voters flocking to Democrats? Perhaps the most important reason is that they don’t see Democrats as a better alternative.

Consider April’s ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, which was taken at what is, so far, the nadir of Trump’s public support.

Despite broad discontent over Trump’s tariffs and inflation, Americans still said they trusted him “to do a better job handling the country’s main problems” over Democrats by a 7-point margin — 37 percent to 30 percent. Another 30 percent said neither could do a better job, while 4 percent........

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