'We gave this a very strong shot': Trump acknowledges Republicans could suffer losses in midterms

Trump described the Democrats’ candidates as “the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history. These are the most dangerous candidates ever put up.”

US President Donald Trump appeared to admit that his party is poised to lose seats in the US midterm elections on Tuesday.

In a Monday speech at the reflecting pool in Washington, Trump said the sitting president’s party “doesn’t win the midterms.”

“This is the last day before the midterm elections, the most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime,” Trump said.

“If the people that voted for me and voted in the last election ... just a good portion of them, we will win in a landslide. Now, that doesn’t happen, because usually, whoever the sitting president is, Republican or Democrat, good or bad, good president, great president, bad,  for some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot.”

He went on to describe the Democrats’ candidates as “the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history. These are the most dangerous candidates ever put up.”

Trump also claimed that some members of the Democratic Party on the ballot are jihadists or members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Trump said that the candidates are “committed to the same radical agenda: open borders, raising your taxes by trillions of dollars, taking away your guns, transgender mutilation of your children, abolishing oil and natural gas, sending energy costs skyrocketing and opening the floodgates to millions of migrants from all over the world, hoping to get them to be able to vote.”

The president also touted what he cited as achievements halfway through his second term, noting that “personal incomes are the highest in history” and that “the poverty rate is at an all-time record low.”

However, according to Trump, that was all for naught if “we’re going to be foolish and let people that hate our country win an election.”

Trump approval rating hits 32% ahead of midterms

This comes as Trump’s approval rating hit a near-career low ahead of the midterm elections.

Some 32% of poll respondents said they approved of the job Trump was doing in the White House, unchanged from a week earlier and just above his record-low reading of 31% two weeks ago.

Notably, voters said they believe their vote in the midterms is a vote of no confidence in Republicans and the Trump administration’s agenda.

Among registered voters, some 50% of independents said they saw their vote in congressional elections as a vote against Trump, compared with 13% who said it was a vote for Trump and 33% who said the president wasn't a factor in their vote.

Voters in the nationwide poll said they preferred Democrats over Republicans, 46% to 38%, in what is known as a "generic ballot" question.

Still, that eight-percentage-point Democratic advantage was narrower than in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted a week earlier, when Democrats led by 11 points.

The generic ballot question gives an overall view of which party voters nationwide want in charge in Congress, though it does not capture the nuances of the state-by-state and district-by-district contests that determine control of the US Senate and US House of Representatives.

Democrats appear more enthusiastic about voting, which the party hopes will translate into an advantage in turnout. Some 49% of Democratic voters said they are "very enthusiastic" about voting this year, compared with 33% of Republicans.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,765 US adults online and had a margin of error of two percentage points.