If you’ve been online much lately, you may have seen some optimism about the midterms from Republican quarters. Some accounts are suggesting that Republican chances are rebounding after a summer slump, Even our old pal, Erick Erickson, is questioning polling and pontificating that it won’t be as bad as all that, even though he does expect the GOP to lose the House.
Personally, I think all this is whistling past the graveyard. I’ve said for a long time that I do think it will be that bad, as long as the Democrats don’t go uber crazy. Even that may only matter at the margins.
A lot of the calls for encouragement are based on isolated polls. For example, Benny Johnson cites a Harvard Harris poll showing Trump at 44 percent approval. That’s not a great number, but it’s a better number than most polling gives Trump these days. The Real Clear Polling average puts his job approval at 39.6 percent, with Johnson’s poll being highest on the list. Most recent polls are lower.
If you’ve been reading me very long, this raises some red flags. Partisans like to rally the troops with cherry-picked outlier polls, but as I’ve written in the past, two big rules of thumb for looking at polls are to a) look at polling averages to avoid being fooled by outliers, and b) look at trends rather than focusing on numbers.
With respect to Erickson’s theory, he looks at 2020 and cites a column by Patrick Ruffini, who wrote that polling errors favor Democrats by up to 5.9 points over the summer and diminish to 2.6 points in favor of Democrats on Election Day. I think the answer to this theory is that 2026 is not a typical year.
We do have some hard data from this year in the form of special elections. An analysis of this year’s special elections by Multistate Elections found that Democrats overperformed in 36 of 43 contested races. That doesn’t mean Democrats won all those races, but they closed the gap, even in deep red districts with a median swing of more than 10 points toward the Democrats. That includes some high-profile wins in red states, including the Florida district covering Mar-a-Lago. I can’t find any Democrat seats that have flipped to Republicans in contested elections.
That isn’t polling or predictions. Those are votes that have been cast and counted.
“A swing at the current level, sustained through November, would point to a substantial Democratic wave,” the Multistate Elections analysis says, adding, “whether 2026 holds through the summer or fades the same way [as 2018] is the open question these specials are answering in real time.”
As you look at the hopeful Republican posts, ask yourself what would entice voters to vote Republican. The GOP is leaning heavily into communism and socialism in its campaign messaging, and while these culture war issues will sway some voters, “It’s the economy, stupid,” remains as true now as it was in 1992.
The economy isn’t great, and Trump’s fingerprints are all over it. From the recent unnecessary trade war with Canada to the already-endless unnecessary war with Iran, most of Trump’s policy moves have been akin to throwing wrenches into the economy. Elected to lower prices, consumer costs such as groceries and gas have surged under Trump.
It’s going to get worse.
As I write this, 55 days before Election Day and at a time when gas prices are usually falling, the national average price for diesel is about to hit $6 for the first time ever. Gasoline isn’t far behind at $4 per gallon.
The core cause of the sky-high gas prices is the war with Iran, and there is no end to that in sight. Seven months into the two-week war, ship counts in the Strait of Hormuz are still far below pre-war levels. To make matters worse, Iran’s Houthi allies recently launched a series of attacks on Saudi oil facilities outside the Persian Gulf.
Up to this point, Trump has blunted the effects of the energy crisis by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but with the stockpile at its lowest point since 1982, about 40 percent capacity, our ability to smooth out price spikes is disappearing, especially if we want to maintain a supply for true emergencies. All this means that, after tamping down price increases through the spring and summer, the gas spike is primed to hit voters like a punch from George Foreman just as they go to the polls.
And it won’t be just gas. In our just-in-time economy, inventories are constantly being replenished by trucks and trains that are powered by - wait for it - diesel. If the diesel price spike continues, look for the cost of other consumer items to rise as well. Everything from food to clothes to toilet paper rides in diesel-powered transports.
What is the Republican answer to all this? Like a political Bruce Dickinson pressing for “more cowbell,” the Republican Party’s only coherent response is “more Trump!” This week the party is staging a rare midterm convention, aka the “Trumpapalooza,” in Dallas. They might also find other bodies of water to rename.
Wishful thinking aside, the situation is looking dire for Republicans. Poll after poll shows Democrats with strong generic ballot margins, and movement of swing voters away from Trump and MAGA. That’s especially true of the Hispanic voters who helped put Trump over the top in 2024. Who would have guessed that they’d dislike seeing their relatives and neighbors deported, along with being harassed themselves based on their appearance?
There is a caveat, however. Gerrymandering does favor Republicans. Democrats now need to win the national popular vote by an estimated four points to win the House.
That’s attainable. Democrats need to focus their messaging on the economy and affordability with a corruption and Epstein files as the icing on the cake. Those messages resonate.
Already, every time I see an update from the Cook Political Report, they are shifting race ratings towards the Democrats. I haven’t seen any race move towards Republicans.
The trend of the race is evident by where the battlegrounds are. Unlike 2024, where blue states were starting to turn purple, this time it’s red states that are starting to swing. Among the Senate tossups, five (Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, and Texas) are Republican, while Michigan is the only Democratic Senate battleground. What’s more, Republicans are trailing in all of those states except Iowa. (South Carolina might even be in play before it’s over.) The shift is akin to trumpeting a poll showing 44-percent approval.
This isn’t a typical year. Trump is atypically bad and destructive. The world is teetering on the brink of a financial calamity and expanded wars while Trump lines his pockets and builds his ballroom. If American voters can’t deliver a full-throated rejection of this Administration’s incompetence and corruption, we don’t deserve our Republic.
Get to the polls ASAP, and don’t trust your ballot to the Post Office this year.
MIAMI CRASH I didn’t write an analysis of the Miami Prime crash, but it appears to have been caused by a too-fast, unstable approach that led to a touchdown too far down the runway. To make matters worse, the crew apparently tried to start a late go-around and then reversed that decision. Here’s a good rundown:
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Good insight as always! I will vote Democrat for the first time in my life and I am 70. I just don’t know how we’ll make it through two more years!
You forgot renaming New Mexico. That promise of a $5,000. Check will get reluctant maga out to vote. I am still waiting on my DOGE and tariff checks. It’s just nuts out there.