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A couple of years ago, the polling company YouGov asked people about insects. The resulting survey found that butterflies are America’s favorite insect, with eight in 10 people having a “very or somewhat positive” reaction to them.
Many journalists will tell you to never trust the polling, and they’ve been proven right many times over. Still, aren’t you curious how a random group of 1,148 adults feels about bugs?
Well, the YouGov poll also asked Americans about their least favorite insects. It turns out 86% of people have a “very or somewhat negative” reaction to mosquitoes. Cockroaches have a disapproval rating of 84%, while 76% of people dislike wasps.
Donald Trump’s disapproval rating, this time according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, among all Americans is currently 61%, which means he is not as unpopular as wasps, but is disliked more than spiders (57% – I know, I know, spiders are not insects, but YouGov included them on the list ) and ants (52%).
It’s not looking promising for ants or spiders or Trump as the 2026 midterm elections loom into view. All House districts are up for grabs in November, along with 33 Senate seats and a bunch of governorships. A shake-up in the House, in particular, could thwart Trump’s aims.
In theory, presidential approval shouldn’t matter in a midterm year. Americans are voting for their members of Congress, not wasps or Trump. But Republicans have an advantage of just four seats in the House, and the sitting president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterms; the more unpopular a sitting president, the more seats he loses.
Trump should know. Republicans lost 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms, which gave Democrats control of the House and set in motion his two impeachments. And there are signs the president is feeling the heat – last month he reportedly told Republicans at a policy retreat: “You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be – I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me.”
If Democrats win control, they could stall Republican-led bills on things like healthcare, and launch investigations into some of the government’s alleged overreach.
One thing none of the insects included in YouGov’s poll have working for them, though, is the huge amount of money that Republicans have in their coffers.
The Republican National Committee had $95m cash on hand at the end of December, while the Democrats had only $14m on hand – and owed $17m in loans. Republicans are also doing better at House and Senate fundraising, and most importantly, Maga Inc, the giant pro-Trump Super Pac, has about $304m to spend: there is no Democratic equivalent. It all means that as of 1 January, the Republican party had more than $600m to spend on the midterms, while Democrats had less than $200m.
That’s not quite the full story. Outside groups and wealthy individuals are expected to spend $5bn on House and Senate races, according to AdImpact, following on from a 2024 election in which just 100 very rich families spent $2.6bn between them. In 2024 $6.7bn was spent to support Democrats and $7.6bn to support Republicans, showing that it’s not just the right that is capable of attraction big cash.
So it’s a bit too early to tell what’s going to happen. But what about Trump? How is the historically unpopular president holding up? Well, while he may have told Republicans in private that he is worried about losing the House, in public he is presenting a brave, if entirely disingenuous, face.
“The highest poll numbers I have ever received,” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this month. “Obviously, people like a strong and powerful Country, with the best economy, EVER!”
Trump cited no evidence for his claim, because there isn’t any. And in the next few months, he will be desperate to improve those poll numbers. Ants beware.
