On Tuesday morning, the White House posted a livestream of the “Grand Opening Ceremony” of his newest golf club, Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen, Scotland, on X — the latest in a long line of recent examples of Donald Trump using his public office for personal profit, with U.S. taxpayers covering the bill.
Yet, somehow, even in an era of presidential meme coins and library fund shakedowns, voters in the critical congressional districts see Democrats as the corrupt ones.
Impact Research — the exalted Democratic pollster used by the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Governors Association — is out with new research likely to turn the stomachs of the firm’s current and former clients.
The survey of frontline congressional districts, conducted on behalf of the liberal watchdog End Citizens United and shared exclusively with Rolling Stone, found that, across these districts, voters see Democrats as more corrupt than Republicans.
In a rage-blackout-inducing twist, the polling also found that, despite the staggering, previously unfathomable scale of corruption that Trump has brazenly engaged in since re-taking office, the president’s rating on corruption runs eight points ahead of his approval number in the districts surveyed.
The poll was conducted over a six-day period from late June to early July. Voters were asked questions about political corruption including how big of a priority it should be for Congress and which party they believed to be more corrupt.
Overwhelmingly, voters deemed it important, with 53 percent classifying it as “a very big priority” and an additional 36 percent regarding it as at least a “somewhat big priority.”
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On the question of which party was more corrupt, Democrats edged Republicans out, with 49 percent of voters surveyed regarding the Democratic Party as the more corrupt, 44 percent of respondents identifying the Republican Party that way, and just seven percent choosing both, neither or equally corrupt.
When asked questions like which party could be counted on when it came to “Standing up to special interests,” “Taking on government corruption,” “Bringing needed change to Washington,” or “Working to fix a broken system,” Republicans beat Democrats out on every single order. At least a quarter of voters polled, it’s worth noting, didn’t find either party trustworthy on those four issues.
That image could be a problem for Democrats as they seek to regain control of the House and Senate next year. “If you look all the way back to 2006, whoever ends up winning the messaging battle on ‘Who is most trusted to take on corruption and make the system work for the people?’ is who wins the election,” says Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United. “I think in 2026 that’s what we’re going to see again.”
Cracking down on self-enrichment — e.g. banning members of Congress from trading stocks, and barring anyone connected to the president, vice president, Supreme Court justices, or members of Congress from accepting gifts from foreign governments — was seen as a top priority by 49 percent of voters polled.
What does it say then that Donald Trump — who, to cite just one example of innumerable ones available, accepted a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar, is apparently having that jet retrofitted with money siphoned from a $934 million Pentagon slush fund, and who intends to utilize said jet when he leaves office — is still faring fairly well on the corruption question?
“What we heard from voters in [surveys and in] focus groups was that they give him credit for changing a system that they feel is really broken,” Muller says. “They might not like all of the changes, but they are willing to give him some leeway because he is not coming in and just doing things the same way. And he talks about taking on corruption a lot… His messaging around taking on government waste, draining the swamp, taking on corruption, has maintained some credibility for him on these issues — even while we see him lining his own pockets.”
Democrats, she says, could take a lesson from Trump — and they will need to if they want to win back the House in 2026: “We cannot afford to let Republicans be the only ones talking about corruption, because again, whoever wins the jump ball about who voters trust on corruption is going to be who wins the election. We have to talk about it.”
From Rolling Stone US
