Exit Polls: 57% of Midterm Voters Say Trump Lacks the Mental Capacity to Serve

Most U.S. voters feel that Donald Trump does not have the mental capability to serve effectively as president, according to a national exit poll of midterm election voters conducted by the research firm SSRS on behalf of multiple news organizations, including NBC News.

Among the unexpected findings from the election, most young white, Latino and Asian men voted for Democratic House candidates. Only one group – white people without college degrees – expressed the belief that Trump has the mental ability to serve effectively.

But the majorities of every demographic that the poll broke out – whites, Blacks, Hispanics, men and women – and of every age group said that Trump lacked the mental capability to do the job.

And since election day, Trump has given voters still more reasons to feel that way.

On Saturday, he announced on Truth Social that he’d asked Dana White, CEO of United Fighting Championship (UFC), to be his new press secretary and to bring his key fighters with him. He then posted an AI “cartoon” of White ordering his cage fighters to beat, punch, and choke reporters and politicians who questioned Trump at a press conference, leaving the briefing room littered with bodies and in flames.

In response, Republicans Against Trump and others called for the 25th amendment, which allows a president to be removed from office if he or she is unable to carry out their duties.

Removing Trump from office on the grounds of mental unfitness is long overdue, according to psychiatrist and former Yale professor Bandy X. Lee, editor of the bestselling 2017 book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump and subsequent editions.

In an interview with MindSite News in 2025, Lee said Trump had greatly declined since 2020 and appeared to be suffering from dementia, impaired memory, confabulation, a deterioration in language skills, “antisocial personality traits, inappropriate statements that lack a connection to reality…and a disinhibition in speech, such as the frequent use of vulgar, profane language or hate speech.” She is among the many leading psychologists and psychiatrists who have called for Trump’s removal from office on the grounds of mental unfitness.

The exit polls were conducted by SSRS, a survey and market research firm, on behalf of multiple news outlets, including NBC News. The poll blended in-person precinct interviews on Election Day with mailed survey invitations, phone/text interviews, and probability-based online panels to account for early and mail-in voters, producing a national sample of over 80,000 and state-level samples for all 50 states. All participating news outlets received the same data, and NBC News then independently analyzed and reported on the results.