Fox News published a poll on Wednesday, September 16 — a little over one and a half months before the 2026 midterms on November 3, when voters will determine the makeup of Congress — showing that "Democrats are considered the party that would better handle inflation at a time when the cost of living and the economy are voters' top concerns."

According to Greg Sargent's analysis for The New Republic — a progressive magazine — the findings amount to "absolutely awful news for Trump and Republicans" and are putting the right-wing network in an increasingly tough position. The poll is Fox's own survey — a detail at the center of the bind the critics describe.

Fox News' Dana Blanton reported the topline numbers in the poll write-up: "Overall, nearly two-thirds of voters (63 percent) say the Trump administration has made the economy worse, including a quarter of Republicans."

On "The Daily Blast," The New Republic's podcast, Sargent discussed the survey with his guest, Matt Gertz of Media Matters, a watchdog group that tracks conservative media, saying, "That's a big problem for a network that has the word 'news' in its title, yet also can't keep its audience if it tells the truth about Trump. So, Fox has taken to largely ignoring a lot of these very big bad stories. And this has us wondering what'll happen to the whole institutional superstructure that's arisen around our homegrown MAGA fascist movement if Trump soon passes from the scene."

Sargent described the Fox News polls as "just terrible for Trump," and Gertz offered no argument. Gertz agreed that the president's unpopularity is a major problem for Fox News, whose hosts have spent considerable time aggressively defending him.

"So, I've spent a lot of time over the years thinking and writing about the stories that Fox News talks about, their particular obsessions, their tendency to puff up Donald Trump, their attacks on all of his enemies," Gertz told Sargent. "But what I've been spending more time on lately is thinking about what I call the 'negative space' — the stories that do not exist on Fox News, but are of a great deal of interest to people not only who don't listen to Fox News, but who might be of interest if Fox were to level with their audience about what's happening in the world. There's been a series of these, in particular since the summer began, where there's been an obvious interest in providing coverage, if this were in fact a news network, but Fox has been unable."

Gertz also pointed to Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, who were "very enthusiastic" about Trump's decision to "go to war with Iran" — a decision he said is now coming back to haunt them.

"I've talked for years about this feedback loop between Fox and Trump, and I think this was its most consequential test," Gertz told Sargent. "But a funny thing happened. The quick and easy war that all of these Fox stars were telling Donald Trump was on the table just didn't materialize the way they expected it to. Somehow, they were the only ones in American public life who were unaware that the counterattack for Iran is to close the Strait of Hormuz and shut down global trade in energy. And so, when that happened, the network had a problem. And they just stopped talking about it altogether." The Strait of Hormuz Gertz referenced is the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, through which much of the world's oil is shipped.