As we approach the 250th anniversary of our country’s independence from the British, our voting has come to resemble theirs more than it did for much of the previous two centuries. Voters increasingly vote for and against parties more than individual candidates; indeed, the caliber of those whose names are on the ballot seems to matter less than the color of their jersey or the party designation next to their name.

Even while polls show mounting reservations about President Trump, if not downright opposition, that has minimal bearing on Republican voters in the red states and districts that Democrats need in order to flip the Senate or approach a wave election in the House. In this new era for our politics, voters having doubts about a president of their own party is one thing, but voting for the opposition party is something else entirely.

Partisanship, particularly negative partisanship—the tendency among many on each side to despise the opposition party’s leaders, candidates, policies, priorities, and rhetoric even more than they may like their own side—is one reason why straight-party voting has become so pervasive on both sides, and it should be kept in mind when looking at all of these polls.

Just 4 percent of Democrats voted for Donald Trump in 2024, precisely the same share of Republicans who voted for Kamala Harris; in each case, 95 percent of each side toed the party line. Four years earlier, both Trump and Joe Biden pulled the exact same 95 percent of their fellow party members, with 4 percent of Democrats voting for Trump and 5 percent of Republicans voting for Biden. In 2016, the cohesion levels were only slightly lower, with 94 percent of Democrats voting for Hillary Clinton and 92 percent of Republicans for Trump. This behavior extends to independents who lean toward one party or the other as well. Just 6 percent of independents who lean Democrat cast a ballot for Trump in 2024, and only 8 percent of independents who lean more to the GOP voted for Harris.

There are even fewer defections in midterm elections. In 2018, 97 percent of voters identifying as Democrats backed their side’s candidates; in 2022, it was 98 percent. For the GOP, it was 95 percent in 2018 and 97 percent in 2022.

That negative partisanship was on clear display in the results of the New York Times/Siena University national poll of registered voters published Monday morning. Twenty-two percent of Republicans said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy. On the cost of living, 33 percent disapproved. On handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 25 percent of fellow Republicans disapproved. How about handling the war in Iran? Twenty-three percent of Republicans disapproved.

But when the same poll asked how they were likely to vote in this year’s elections for Congress, just 5 percent of Republicans said they would vote for a Democrat, 92 percent for a Republican, and 2 percent didn’t know or refused to say.

Of course, Democrats should be delighted that Trump’s job approval was down to 37 percent (59 percent disapproved) and overjoyed that their party has an 11-point lead among all registered voters in the generic ballot test, 50 to 39 percent. They certainly don’t mind seeing that there are more than a few Republicans who have misgivings about Trump’s policies. That does not mean, however, that those Republicans are going to vote Democratic in November.

Hence Democrats need to win in practically every blue state and district, and in purple states and districts too. Beyond that, if they have designs on picking up more than two seats in the Senate and a dozen in the House, they’re going to need to win in some states and districts where there are more Republican voters than Democrats and independents. When Democrats target seats and states that Trump has carried three times, in some cases with double-digit margins, winning every Democratic vote and the lion’s share of independents is not enough; they need defections. In an environment like this, the national generic ballot test is of limited utility. Nationally, the outcome will be determined in a relatively small number of districts. When the battlefield was bigger, the national generic ballot test was of more value than it is today.

There is no doubt that Democratic voters are more motivated this year than those on the Republican side, and that voter turnout will be asymmetric; Democratic turnout will be substantially higher than Republican turnout. That’s more than sufficient for Democrats to win in blue and purple states and districts, and maybe even in some very light-red Republican jurisdictions. But that won’t get it done in the ruby-red states and districts they are targeting. As this column has noted, exceptions do occur, but mostly in state-level races, like gubernatorial contests, where the cleavages are not quite as sharp as those for Washington offices.

The broad dynamics that have caused the party holding the White House to lose U.S. House seats in 18 of the 20 midterm elections since the end of World War II are very much in play again. The familiar pattern of the president’s voters displaying considerable lethargy and disappointment is reappearing on schedule, this time turbocharged by stratospheric gasoline and diesel prices that are particularly unwelcome for a party with an abundance of members who drive their cars and trucks long distances. Ironically, the economy had been the most buoyant aspect of President Trump’s first term, helping him greatly when other things went sour.

In this era of hyper-partisanship, disenchantment among a party base rarely translates into defections, but it can and usually does depress turnout among the party faithful. That is the fear of Republican strategists, and most historians would nod in agreement.

The other traditional contributing factor in midterm elections is buyer’s remorse among independents, particularly that very narrow but decisive slice of true independent voters who make up less than a tenth of all voters but the lion’s share of swing voters. They place their confidence in one party, putting that party into power, only to quickly become disappointed. Their grievances toward the party they voted out two years prior are often forgotten, if not forgiven.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s approval ratings among Democrats are in the radioactive single digits. And among all independents, Trump’s numbers are in the still-quite-toxic 30s. Only among his fellow Republicans are Trump’s numbers strong, in the 80s, down some from a year ago but not nearly as steeply as many of his critics and ill-wishers claim. Taken together, Trump’s standing likely translates into an apocalyptic situation for any GOP candidates in blue, Democrat-leaning states and districts, and an extremely harsh environment in the relatively few swing purple states and districts, but it is much less of a problem in red, GOP-tilting states and districts—the very places where Democrats must score strong gains if they are to win big in the Senate and House.

So where does the fight for Congress stand today?

If the number of hotly contested states and districts corresponded to typical midterm elections before 2000, the party of a president in this predicament could be expected to sustain losses of at least the average 26-seat net loss for all 20 midterms over the last 80 years. Thirty-five or 40 seats might have been quite plausible. But the number of competitive House districts (even before this mid-decade remapping) makes the map just a fraction of what it used to be. In other words, for a party playing offense, this is not a target-rich environment. The country is very evenly divided, and the House increasingly is as well.

The current House ratings by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter show just 18 House seats in the Toss Up column—four held by Democrats, 14 by Republicans. Adding in the 12 seats in the Lean Democrat column (10 held by Democrats, two by Republicans) and the five seats in the Lean Republican column (three Democratic, two Republican), that means that just 35 House seats are currently competitive (17 currently in the hands of Democrats, 18 for Republicans). Even adding in the not-currently-competitive categories of Likely Democrat (11) and Likely Republican (17), the universe of competitive and potentially competitive seats is just 63 seats. In other words, fewer than 70 seats are not buried in cement, with 30 already in Democratic hands. A party cannot lose a seat it doesn’t have.

The narrowness of the battlefield of competitive and potentially competitive seats, where they are, and who holds them means that things were never remotely as promising for Democrats as those proponents of the “blue wave” dreamt. Nor is the current situation as dark as they seem to believe. Democrats were favorites to win a House majority before the last two weeks and they still are, only their margin is likely to be somewhat smaller than it otherwise would have been. Too much reliance on the vibe can lead to grave disappointment.

While the average Senate outcome in the postwar era is a net loss of 3.5 seats—Democrats need four to capture a majority—the turnover there is considerably less predictable than in the House. The president’s party has lost seats in 65 percent of postwar midterms, broken even in two, and actually gained seats in five.

With only a third of the Senate up every two years, and generally only about a half dozen races hotly contested, the results are more idiosyncratic, very sensitive to the circumstances that exist in any particular midterm and the state of individual races. With only a handful of seats truly in play, the success and failures in getting just the right nominee become life-and-death matters. Look at Georgia, where Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is seeking reelection, and North Carolina, where Republican Sen. Thom Tillis decided not to seek reelection. Had outgoing Republican Gov. Brian Kemp decided to challenge Ossoff, the latter’s reelection prospects would be at best 50-50 and very likely less. But Kemp opted not to run and Ossoff is now a strong favorite. In North Carolina, had Democrats been unsuccessful in convincing former Gov. Roy Cooper to run, their chances of capturing that seat would be relatively low.

For Democrats, taking over the Senate was always a tough challenge, and they were never 50-50 on that proposition. Those who assume that the House and Senate behave in tandem should consider that they went opposite directions in each of the last four elections, with one party picking up seats in the lower chamber while the other party picked up seats in the upper chamber.

Avoid the vibe and don’t fall for the wave.

Of course, reality doesn’t always support such conclusions, but that’s OK; there will be other events coming along that will be portrayed as cataclysmic, or maybe an existential threat. Some never bother to seek out context or nuance; it’s more fun to jump to conclusions or go along with “the vibe.”

We are constantly hearing predictions that the soaring price of gasoline and diesel will cost President Trump and Republicans much more than it has already. But how much more can it hurt?

Now that the Gallup Organization is no longer including presidential approval ratings in its monthly surveys, I’ve lost my benchmark standard. To me it was akin to the Brent and West Texas Intermediate prices on crude oil as the benchmark for energy prices.

A useful alternative measure is the “PollTracker” feature compiled by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, which computes a moving average of Trump’s approval numbers from 21 national polls, using only the results of certain polls that meet high methodological standards. CPR subscribers are also allowed to access the moving averages of 11 subgroups.

As of Monday afternoon, the PollTracker showed Trump’s overall job-approval rating to be 40 percent, down a point from Jan. 1 and 7 points below its level of March of last year when it debuted. In analyzing approval ratings, it is useful to “look under the hood” to examine the numbers broken out by partisan affiliation. Among Democrats, Trump’s approval on Monday was at 6 percent, precisely where it was at the beginning of the year. Among Republicans, he pulled 83 percent approval, down 3 points from 86 percent at the beginning of January and 7 points below his 90 percent level of March 2025. Among independents, who make up a disproportionately large segment of the electorate in swing states and districts, Trump’s approval rating was 27 percent, down 3 points from 30 percent at the beginning of the year and 14 points below the 41 percent level in March 2025. It’s a decent bet that the vast majority of that 27 percent are independents who lean Republican and reliably vote that way. In other words, not many more independents are still likely to shift from approval to disapproval; most who still approve are closet Republicans.

A few weeks ago, this column suggested that Trump could pump free gas and few Democrats would approve of his overall performance. Meanwhile, the price could double and not many Republicans would abandon him. Identity, social and cultural issues, and negative partisanship come into play. For many Republicans, supporting any Democrat would be an act of treason. Not voting is a much more likely byproduct of disaffection.

So how is that translating into votes? In the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, Democrats had a lead on the generic ballot test of 5 points, 49 to 44 percent. Among only Democratic respondents, Democrats were ahead 98 to 1 percent. Among Republicans, GOP candidates were ahead 97 to 2 percent. Among independents, Democrats led 52 to 32 percent.

The Fox News poll last month showed very similar numbers, with Democrats ahead 52-46 percent. Among Democratic voters, they led 97 to 3 percent. Among Republicans, GOP candidates ran ahead of Democrats 92 to 7 percent. Among independents, Democrats led 57-41. Basically, the partisans on each side are locked in, unlikely to move, with Democrats having about as big a lead as they can get once independents are factored in.

The variable, of course, is turnout. At least this year, Democrats have an abundance of energy; it’s Republicans this time with a lethargy problem.

This past week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais is obviously important, although not likely to be the determinative factor in this year’s fight for control of the House. It’s more likely to be consequential in the 2028 and 2030 elections. Of the 54 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, 25 hold seats in states that voted Democratic in the last three presidential elections and have Democratic governors.

Of the 25 states that voted for Trump in each of the last three elections, 13 have no Black members of Congress at all; a 14th, Tennessee, has one majority-Black district, but it is represented by a white Democrat, Rep. Steve Cohen.

Realistically, any Black members in Louisiana, as well as Florida, Alabama, and Missouri, should be worried; others, much less so.

Few would seriously argue that this won’t be a bad year for Republicans. The question is, how bad will it be? My theory is that very few Republicans running in blue, Democratic-tilting states and districts are likely to win. In purple, swing states and districts, where Trump is extremely unpopular, the electoral mortality rate for GOP candidates will be extremely high, with few survivors. But in most red, Republican-tilting states and districts, the loss rate for GOP candidates might be pretty low. Sure, a very low Republican turnout, which I think is likely, will cost some Republican candidates elections in very light red states, but past a certain point, it will take Republicans actually defecting and voting Democratic, which as we’ve already determined, does not happen much anymore.

To the extent that any appreciable number of Republicans vote for a Democrat, it is likely to be in gubernatorial races rather than contests for the Senate. Keep an eye on Iowa and Ohio. The last time Democrats won either governorship was in 2006. Gubernatorial races are a bit less rigidly partisan than federal races, so if lightning strikes, it’s more likely to hit in state races, particularly where one party has been occupying the state Capitol for, say, 20 years, and voters are in the mood for change.

It doesn’t seem to matter to these casual students of electoral behavior that they are comparing what happened in 2020, a year in which both the Democratic share of the presidential vote (51.25 percent) and the victory margin (4.45 points) were the best since 2008, with 2024 and Donald Trump’s win that saw the highest presidential GOP vote share (49.70 percent) and victory margin (1.47 points) since 2004. In the former, the election’s focal point was Trump; a weariness had set in among swing voters who just wanted things to get back to normal. In 2024, soaring inflation and interest rates, a porous border, and a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan convinced those same swing voters that the Biden-Harris administration was not up to the job. The declines in Democratic vote share came disproportionately among young, mostly non-college men of all races. These were among the most economically vulnerable voters hurt worst by inflation. Those liabilities were not offset by the abortion issue or Trump’s persistent problems with many women voters.

Therein lies both good and bad news for Democrats. The bad news is that swing voters have not forgotten nor forgiven what happened in 2021-2025. The good news is that this election is not likely to be about that; it will be about Trump and the party holding both the House and the Senate majorities. It’s important to remember that hate is the strongest emotion in politics, a far stronger driving force than love, admiration, or appreciation.

A recurring theme in this column has long been just how evenly, narrowly, and deeply divided our country has become—evenly in that both parties are basically the same size, narrowly in that there are very few actual voters in between, and deeply in that two broad-based, ideologically and geographically diverse parties have now morphed into polar opposites, with virtually nothing in common in terms of policies or even values.

Democrats have approximately 47 or 48 percent of the vote locked up, just as Republicans have their own 47 or 48 percent that they can bank on. So these elections turn on two factors. First, will either party have a disproportionately high or low voter turnout, and second, how will that 4-6 percent of voters who truly are independents break? Hint: In recent years, they break almost invariably against the party in power. They punish when they’re disappointed or angered, and they’re rarely in an appreciative mood.

Even the small shifts they create have enormous policy consequences. Since Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, we have had five consecutive presidents who took office with majorities in both the House and the Senate. When each of the five left office, their party had given up control of all three branches.

It is interesting to look at the results of the 25 presidential elections over the last 100 years, starting with Herbert Hoover’s 1928 victory over Al Smith. Ten of the 25 elections (40 percent) produced landslide victories—margins of 10 points or more. The most recent of these, however, was Ronald Reagan’s 49-state, 18-point victory over Walter Mondale in 1984. To put it differently, landslides occurred in 10 of the first 15 elections in this 100-year span; we now have had 10 consecutive elections without one.

A landslide presidential election is a clear, unambiguous, indisputable statement by the American people about what and whom they want, and about what and whom they have rejected. This clarity is useful, albeit quite painful for the losing candidate and party. A lack of landslides means that voters are not giving clear guidance on the direction that the country should go or what kind of leaders they want.

When ideological sorting began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Democratic Party became more monolithically liberal or progressive and the Republican Party more populist and conservative. Each party lost its moderating influences, moving away from that narrow but critical sliver of true independents in the middle. Increasingly, each side has lost the ability to understand and court those pure independents, leading those voters to swing back and forth, punishing whichever party is in power, which they see as having “gone too far.” That is the real trend, with far more than two data points to support it.

President Trump is now an anchor for the GOP among certain segments of the electorate. Trump’s positions aren’t just alienating many Republicans of a more centrist, less populist stripe; a sense is also building that he is in over his head and just winging it from day to day, if not hour to hour.

Notwithstanding certain over-caffeinated polling analysts on cable television, it is easy to overstate what these national trends mean for individual states and districts, given the current state of American politics. As this column has repeatedly noted, Trump’s single-digit approval ratings among Democrats virtually ensure a terrible political outlook for most Republicans running in blue, Democratic-tilting states and districts. Poor approvals among independents indicate that he is an enormous liability in purple, swing states and districts as well. Yet his approval rating in the 80s among Republicans could translate into something less than catastrophic for GOP candidates in red states and districts.

People tend to forget not only how pervasive partisanship has become, particularly now that there are no longer many conservatives in the Democratic Party nor liberals in the Republican Party. Those groups used to be the first to defect if their party was having a bad year.

In fact, we are seeing very few defections on any level in any kind of year. In 2024, 95 percent of Democrats voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris and 95 percent of Republicans voted for Trump. Four years earlier, 95 percent of Democrats voted for Joe Biden and 95 percent of Republicans voted for Trump. In 2016, 94 percent of Democrats voted for Hillary Clinton and 92 percent of Republicans for Trump.

This is true not only in presidential elections; indeed, partisans vote even more cohesively in midterm elections for Congress. In 2022, the last midterm, 98 percent of Democrats voted for their own party’s nominee for Congress, just as 97 percent of Republicans voted for the GOP candidate. In 2018, 97 percent of Democrats voted for their side’s candidate, while 92 percent of Republicans did the same.

In the most competitive Senate races in 2022, the lowest support level for a Democratic nominee was John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, who pulled 94 percent support among his party’s voters. At the high end, Mark Kelly (Arizona), Raphael Warnock (Georgia), Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), Tim Ryan (Ohio), and Mandela Barnes (Wisconsin) all pulled 97 percent of Democratic voters in the Edison Research exit polls for ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC.

Among Republicans, the low performers in key Senate races were Blake Masters in Arizona and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, both at 89 percent. The best were Ted Budd (97 percent in North Carolina) and Ron Johnson (96 percent in Wisconsin), with all others in between. Gubernatorial races showed a similar range.

In 2018, the lowest party support a Democratic nominee in a key Senate race received was Bill Nelson’s 91 percent in Florida. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was tops at 97 percent. On the Republican side, at the low end was Martha McSally at 86 percent in Arizona, and the high was Adam Laxalt with 93 percent in Nevada, in a losing cause.

Democrats now targeting seats in extremely red states tend to ignore just how hard it is to actually win those. Look no further than the popular former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who took on Sen. Marsha Blackburn in 2018. Bredesen pulled 95 percent of Democrats, higher than Blackburn’s 92 percent among Republicans. But 44 percent of the electorate that year identified as Republican, compared to just 25 percent who identified as Democratic. Even Bredesen’s overperformance among independents—he won them 55 to 43 percent—couldn’t save him.

When Beto O’Rourke challenged Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, he pulled 92 percent of the Democratic vote, a point above Cruz’s 91 percent among Republicans. O’Rourke also carried independents by 3 points, 50 to 47 percent, but it was not enough given the disparity in the composition of the electorate—38 percent identifying as Republican, 34 percent as Democratic.

There is no question that Democrats are now and probably will continue to overperform the norm this year. But beating the point spread is worthless unless the result ends with a win and a swearing-in ceremony next January.

In terms of the Senate, what happens in some upcoming primaries is hugely relevant. Democrats will be thrilled if Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton wins the May 26 GOP runoff against Sen. John Cornyn. Democrats would have a decent shot at beating the scandal-plagued Paxton in this kind of year, but they would have no shot against Cornyn.

On Aug. 4, Michigan Democrats will select a nominee. Right now, three major contenders are effectively tied. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow would probably be the strongest Democratic candidate. Although she is a bit more liberal than optimal, she appears to be a much more talented candidate than the more centrist Rep. Haley Stevens. But if former Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed were to win the nomination, former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers would become a strong favorite to win the seat.

When a party is torqued up above a certain level, despising an incumbent president of the other party, there is a tendency to go too far in primaries, selecting suboptimal candidates. In Maine, Graham Platner has built up a huge polling lead in the Democratic primary over Gov. Janet Mills, with the winner taking on Sen. Susan Collins in November. But if you were to ask Republican strategists who they would most want to win the primary, it would be Platner by a long shot. The opposition-research file is bulging, and the race would become about him, rather than about Trump.

The bottom line is that things look pretty good for Democrats, and bad for Republicans, but it is easy to get carried away.

But anyone arguing “Trump and his party are done now” forget how many times we’ve heard this since his ride down the golden Trump Tower escalator in 2015, starting with the release of the Billy Bush tapes shortly before the 2016 election.

In my view, Democrats’ capturing a House majority is close to inevitable (the Senate is a different matter), but the extent of their gains in the House is far from clear. In President Obama’s first midterm election in 2010, his party lost 64 seats in the House, a dozen more than the 54-seat loss that Democrats suffered in Bill Clinton’s first midterm in 1994. Trump’s only midterm thus far, in 2018, resulted in a 42-seat loss. The post-World War II average midterm outcome was a net loss of 26 seats.

There are two big reasons why Democratic gains are not likely to be on that kind of a scale this time.

The first reason is exposure. The more seats a majority party has entering a midterm election cycle, the greater its exposure to losses, particularly if it holds many seats that were in the opposition party’s column in fairly recent years. Democrats entered the 1994 election cycle with 258 seats and the 2010 midterm with 257 seats. Republicans began the 2018 cycle with 241 seats. But Republicans this time are going in with one of the barest majorities ever, having actually lost two seats in 2024 to claim a majority of just 220 seats. The country is very evenly divided, and the current House split reflects that; they don’t have an inordinate amount of exposure.

The second reason is that there is a clear delineation of where Trump is a real drag on GOP candidates and where he probably isn’t. A national CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday explains what some are missing. Trump’s overall job-approval rating of 39 percent (61 percent disapprove) is consistent with most other national polls released over the last few weeks. His approval rating is just 4 percent among Democrats (96 percent disapprove) and 29 percent among independents (71 percent disapprove). Among Republicans, however, his approval rating is 87 percent (13 percent disapprove).

What about his performance so far on issues that are thought to be liabilities? On handling inflation, his overall approval is a lowly 31 percent (69 percent disapprove), just 5 percent among Democrats (95 percent disapprove), and 79 percent among independents. Among Republicans, 71 percent approve of his handling of inflation, while 29 percent disapprove.

On handling the economy, his overall approval was 35 percent (65 percent disapprove); among just Democrats, it was 5 percent (95 percent disapprove), and among independents, 24 percent (76 percent disapprove). But among Republicans, it’s 78 percent (22 percent disapprove).

What about handling Iran, the issue that some suggest is splintering the Republican Party and MAGA world? Just 36 percent of Americans approve (64 percent disapprove), including 4 percent of Democrats (96 percent disapprove) and 27 percent of independents (73 percent disapprove). Yet 81 percent of Republicans approve (19 percent disapprove).

Trump’s best issue of the four measured was immigration, with 44 percent of Americans approving and 56 percent disapproving. Among just Democrats, approval was 8 percent (disapproval 92 percent); among independents, it was 36 percent (disapproval 64 percent). But among just Republicans, 91 percent approved (9 percent disapproved).

While handling gasoline prices specifically was not tested, it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to suggest that the current price could double and most Republicans would still say they approve. On the other hand, Trump could personally dispense free gasoline and the overwhelming majority of Democrats would still disapprove.

So how does this translate into midterm-election results? In blue states and districts, where voters are disproportionately Democratic, a bloodbath could be an understatement. In the few purple states and districts that have a disproportionately large share of independents, and where Democrats and Republicans are roughly evenly split, it would still translate into a fairly ugly situation for the incumbent party. But Republicans have to defend very few House or Senate seats in such challenging environments.

At least under the lines in place in 2024, the GOP is defending only three seats in districts that Kamala Harris won; and only one Senate seat in a state that Harris carried. Even the number of Republican-held seats in states and districts that Trump won by narrow margins is tiny. This puts the odds of a blue wave, with Democrats scoring more seats than the post-war average of 26, quite low. This also makes it very difficult for Democrats to capture Senate seats in states that Trump won handily.

Consider two things. First, our elections are binary; one major party wins, the other loses. So if Democrats merely beat the point spread in a given state or district, it’s useless if they don’t actually win. Close doesn’t count. Second, for a deep-red seat to flip, how many Republicans would have to cast their ballots for a Democrat?

The Democratic Party’s base this year is energized to the point of near militancy; it is Republicans who must worry about complacency, a lack of enthusiasm, or a lack of intensity. In states that are close to the edge, that makes victory quite doable for Democrats. But a broader victory has to start near the edge, meaning purple states and districts, and the lightest of light-red states and districts.

For example, we frequently hear or read these days that President Trump’s standing with voters is “plummeting” or in a “free-fall,” and that his approval ratings are at “record lows” for this term. Yes, his approval rating has declined, and yes, it is at its lowest level yet, but we are not seeing the steep decline some suggest.

As of Monday afternoon, Trump’s approval rating is 39 percent in The New York Times average of public polls, just 2 points below his 41 percent number two months ago. In Nate Silver’s average published on the Silver Bulletin site, Trump is 3 points down from 43 percent two months ago. He stands at 41 percent in the RealClearPolitics average, one point below his 42 percent average two months ago.

As is often the case, it is helpful to look at the numbers broken down by party, which also suggests the potential for change in the foreseeable future. For that exercise, let’s look at the polls by CNN and Fox News, both of which conduct their surveys pretty regularly and publish their cross tabs.

Regular readers of this column should understand the importance of presidential approval ratings in midterm elections. Among Democrats, the CNN poll showed just 4 percent approved of Trump’s performance and 96 percent disapproving, while the Fox data showed 5 percent approving and 95 percent disapproving. These numbers would obviously translate into a radioactive situation for GOP candidates running in blue states and districts that have a disproportionate share of Democrats.

Among independents, the CNN survey showed Trump’s approval rating at 26 percent, with 73 percent disapproving, while Fox showed a very similar 25 percent approval, with 75 percent disapproving. One can conclude that, in swing states and districts with a disproportionate share of independent voters and partisans likely to offset each other, this translates into a very dangerous situation for Republican candidates in these most competitive constituencies.

Among Republicans, the CNN poll showed an approval rating of 80 percent, with 19 percent disapproving, while Fox showed 84 percent approval and 16 percent disapproval. This is certainly down from the 90 percent and 92 percent levels a month into this second term, but the low 80s is not bad at all among your own party members. It is also worth noting that in this era of hyper-partisanship, we have the phenomenon of “negative partisanship,” which describes a behavior among many partisans who hate the other party and its leaders and candidates even more than they like their own. Operationally, that often means that even if a partisan is less than thrilled with their own side at any given point, their contempt for the other party is enough to prevent them from crossing over.

I confess to scratching my head when I hear Democrats wringing their hands about the challenge of motivating their base to vote this fall. That same CNN poll showed that 96 percent of Democrats planned to vote in November, versus 90 percent of Republicans. More importantly, 67 percent of Democrats said they were extremely motivated, compared to just 50 percent of Republicans. Indeed, one could say that the chair of the Democratic get-out-the-vote operation is Donald Trump himself.

According to the Pew Research Center’s validated voter surveys—valuable because Pew checked with voting rolls to ensure that each respondent did in fact vote in these elections—in the 2022 midterm election, 98 percent of self-described Democrats voted for their party’s House candidates, versus 2 percent for the GOP candidate. In that election, Republicans voted 97 percent to 3 percent for their side’s candidates. Independents voted Democratic, 49 to 47 percent.

Four years earlier, in the 2018 midterm, Democrats voted 97 percent for their party’s House nominees; 2 percent voted for the Republicans. Among Republicans, the vote was 95 to 4 percent. In 2018, independents broke 55 to 40 percent for Democrats.

Even among those independents who concede that they lean toward one of the two major parties (and the vast majority do have those leanings), Democratic-inclined independents voted for that party’s candidate in 2022 by 91 to 6 percent. Independents who gravitate toward the GOP voted that way, 88 to 8 percent. In 2018, the numbers were quite similar; Democratic-leaning independents voted that way 91 to 6 percent, while GOP-leaning independents voted for their side 83 to 11 percent.

These numbers underscore that there are very few defections anymore in American politics as each party is more ideologically cohesive than it used to be; there are very few conservative Democrats, who might be first to defect on their side, just as there are no longer many liberal Republicans, who would be the first in the GOP to jump ship.

Keep in mind that a president with single-digit approval ratings among those in the opposite party and ratings in the 20s among independents does not have much more that he can lose outside of his own party. In short, Trump’s numbers dropping much further would depend on losing his own party members, something that is very rare these days. It also means that Republicans losing more than 25 or 30 House seats or more than a couple of Senate seats would require people voting for a Democrat who haven’t done so in a very long time.

Those who extrapolate a blue wave from generic congressional ballot polls showing big Democratic leads would do well to remember that in a sample of usually only a thousand voters, far fewer than a tenth of those polled will cast ballots in the three dozen or so House races and four or five Senate races that are most competitive and likely to be determinative. If 85 percent or so of those polled are essentially irrelevant to the outcome of an election, you haven’t learned much from that poll.

As for the generational change, it is already happening at about as fast a pace as American politics moves. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who turned 86 last week, and former Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who is almost a year older, are retiring at the end of this Congress. On the Senate Democratic side, Minority Whip Dick Durbin is also retiring, and few believe that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will stick around past 2028, when his current term expires.

This column noted last week that the 2028 presidential election will be the first since 1964 without a Nixon, Dole, Bush, Biden, Clinton, or Trump on a major-party ticket, and that 2024 was only the second since 1948 without a member of either the Silent or Greatest Generations on a major-party ticket. Nobody could stop this generational change if they wanted to, although if Democrats were really serious, they would adopt term limits for House Democrats as committee and subcommittee chairs and ranking members, as Republicans did in 1992, which explains the more regular flow of new blood into their ranks. Once GOP members lose their gavels, few choose to stick around.

That Democrats are angry should not be surprising, but is the focus of that wrath misdirected?

Democrats did not seem particularly concerned in the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency, when his job-approval rating plummeted 14 points, from 56 percent in June 2021 to 42 percent in October, never to exceed 46 percent again. And with that decline in public standing, as Biden’s age and limitations started becoming even more obvious, Democrats in both the grassroots and leadership didn’t seem that agitated in April 2023 when Biden announced he would seek a second presidential term.

Some prominent Democrats such as James Carville and David Axelrod told “truth to power,” saying that Biden should not be running again. But from the Democratic base, we heard crickets. Even after his disastrous June 27, 2024, debate, the response from the base was cautious. It took three weeks for Biden to step away—only after Pelosi all but hit Biden in the head with a baseball bat. After the party passed the baton to Kamala Harris, most in the party were relieved, many even elated.

No, the Democratic base didn’t seem to get angry until after the election, after they not only lost the presidency to Donald Trump for the second time, but also suffered a net loss of four seats and control of the Senate and came up short of retaking the House. The progressive world’s “hopium” dealers, pretending that everything was copacetic, had not prepared the Democratic base for such an outcome. No one seemed to acknowledge or even notice that the emperor was riding in his carriage through the town naked.

But then opinion swung to the opposite extreme—holding that the election had been a resounding defeat for Democrats, with Trump even calling it a landslide. In reality, the presidential race was close, with a 1.5-point margin nationally. Going into the election, the New York Times average of presidential race polls in six of seven swing states showed the leading candidate at 49 percent and the trailing candidate at 48 percent. When the votes were counted, Trump had 50.8 percent or less in six states, with Harris at 47.5 percent in the same six. In Arizona, the seventh state, Trump won by 52.1 percent to 46.5 percent. The undecided votes broke toward Trump. Game, set, match.

Democrats did lose four seats in the Senate, three of them in the ruby-red states of Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia. Two of the losing incumbents, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana, were the last remaining Democrats holding statewide offices in their respective states, as was West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who opted not to run for reelection. In the five swing states with Senate elections, Democrats won four (Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin), losing only in Pennsylvania, where Dave McCormick unseated Bob Casey in what turned out to be the closest Senate result in the country. In the House, Democrats gained two seats. It was a disappointment, but not a loss.

What Democrats should be mad about is that they had all of the power, then blew it. Five years ago today, Democrats held the White House and a 52-48 seat majority in the U.S. Senate, along with a four-seat majority in the House. Today they have nothing, standing outside the White House fence looking in, with just 47 seats in the Senate (counting independent Sens. Angus King and Bernie Sanders as Democrats) and three seats down in the House.

But instead of trying to figure out how they lost power, how they enabled Trump to get back into office, Democrats aren’t thinking about the underlying positions and policies that expedited their eviction from power. They didn’t seem to notice inflation soaring as soon as the American Rescue Plan Act checks began hitting mailboxes and bank accounts, followed by interest rates being hiked to try to subdue inflation that had been largely dormant for four decades.

The rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage had been 2.8 percent when Biden took office, but it climbed to more than 6 percent by the end of his second year in office, then to 7.4 percent by the time he left office, and it has not dropped below 6 percent since, making home-buying impossible for many, particularly younger Americans.

A 48-month auto-loan rate was 5.1 percent when Biden took office, it was 8 percent when he left office, and it is around 7.5 percent today. The interest rate for credit cards averaged 14.75 percent when he took office and 21.37 percent when he left office, and it remains around 21 percent. If Democrats want to get mad, maybe they should be mad at themselves for blowing it.

As for the working-class appeal, there is more to winning elections and attracting swing voters than having candidates wear L.L. Bean work boots and Carhartt apparel on the campaign trail. They ought to find authentic candidates who have successfully run for office before, and some who will make the campaign about something other than themselves.

Swing voters in 2024 were not voting to bulldoze the East Wing, decimate the vaccine regimen, take out the leader of Venezuela, bomb Iran, send immigration agents running amok in communities across the country, or take a chainsaw to federal programs. I doubt if many were thinking about renaming the Kennedy Center or minting coins with Trump’s picture or adding his signature to dollar bills. They just wanted things to go back to normal. Actions have consequences, but some elements of the Democratic Party want to point fingers rather than look in the mirror.

Two years from now will almost certainly be our first presidential election since 1964 without a Nixon, Dole, Bush, Biden, Clinton, or Trump on a major-party ticket, a span of 64 years. The generational change is just as stark; the presidential election two years ago was the first since 1948 without a member of either the Greatest or the Silent generations on either major party’s national ticket. That Greatest Generation, those born between 1901 and 1927, produced seven presidents; John Kennedy (born in 1917) became in 1960 the first Oval Office occupant to be born in the 20th century, followed by Lyndon Johnson (1908), Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (both born in 1913), Jimmy Carter (1924), Ronald Reagan (1911), and George H.W. Bush (1924). Joe Biden (1942) was the sole president representing the Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945.

The subsequent Baby Boom generation supplied three presidents; curiously, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump were all born in the same year, 1946, which also happened to be the first birth year of the Baby Boomers. The only all-Boomer election came in 2016, when Trump (1946) selected Mike Pence (1959) as his running mate on the GOP ticket; and Hillary Clinton (1947) chose Tim Kaine (1958) to join her on the Democratic ticket. The 2024 election was something of a cusp or transitional election, in which Boomer Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance, the first millennial to be on a major-party ticket. Both Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, were born in 1964, the last year of Boomer births.

How people see and approach things is framed in part by their shared experiences. A look over the two fields of potential 2028 contenders reveals mostly members of Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980, with a few millennials (1981-1996) and several residual Boomers mixed in for good measure.

All of this is occurring alongside enormous changes in congressional leadership in both parties and on both sides of the Capitol dome. A historic number of retirements in Congress will translate into scores of fresh faces who will soon occupy the Capitol and the House and Senate office buildings. When the 117th Congress convened just over five years ago, the congressional leadership included on the House side Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy; and in the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Now, McCarthy is no longer in Congress and Pelosi, Hoyer, and McConnell will leave at the end of next year. Only Schumer will remain, amid speculation that he will not seek a sixth term in 2028 or that he could be pushed out of leadership. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin is retiring at the end of this year, prompting still more change. If Republicans lose their House majority, as looks very likely today, it is doubtful that Speaker Mike Johnson would stick around as well.

The 2028 Democratic presidential field is as wide open as it could possibly be, raising the question of whether the Republican side is as locked in as it would on the surface appear to be. Just weeks ago, it looked like a fait accompli that Vice President Vance would be the Republican standard-bearer in two years, but then President Trump began talking up Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vance has faded a bit, thanks to his vocal opposition to the U.S. getting involved in more conflicts abroad. Now, the prospect of Trump playing Vance and Rubio off of each other, a political version of The Apprentice, looks increasingly possible. At the very least, that would allow Trump to keep the spotlight on himself as long as possible, with a Republican convention that would be more about him than about the nominee. A friend theorized to me this week that Trump would not tolerate any opposition to his anointed successor. Primaries could be mere pro forma exercises.

That led me to wonder whether there will be a non-MAGA alternative, and for that matter, if it’s possible for things to get so bad that neither Vance, Rubio, nor any major figure in the Trump administration is politically viable by the time 2028 rolls around. Just as it might be questionable whether Democrats should nominate someone closely identified with the Biden administration, a GOP constituency could develop for something parallel but separate. The demographic composition of the Republican Party has changed enough that there is little chance of the GOP producing a nominee in the lineage of Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, John McCain, or Mitt Romney. But is there a difference to split, and what would that person look like?

If you don’t like the status quo, stick around; everything on both sides and each end of Pennsylvania is likely to look a lot different five years from now.

Republicans’ chances of losing their House majority are about as high as they could possibly be. The GOP edge in that chamber is wafer-thin, currently 218-214 with three vacancies. If you push the vacant seats in the direction they obviously will go, the advantage expands only slightly to 220-215. Almost any loss would be sufficient to change control. President Trump’s poor job-approval numbers, averaging just 41 percent (with 55 percent disapproval), ensure that he will be a serious liability in swing districts. Voters who simply wanted the Biden-Harris administration out of office in 2024 are getting far more than they bargained for, and not in a positive way.

So it’s inevitable that some Democrats, and journalists who are sympathetic to their cause, are quick to declare that a “blue wave” is coming. Yet these declarations ignore a number of factors that make it unlikely GOP losses will match the legitimate Democratic waves of 2006 and 2018.

True enough, Trump’s approval ratings among Democrats (well down into the single digits) present a nightmare situation for any Republican seeking reelection in a blue district. But hold on: Only three Republicans were elected in 2024 in districts that Kamala Harris won. Among independents nationally, Trump’s approval ratings typically are down in the high 20s and low 30s, but gerrymandering and political self-sorting by the population has shrunk the number of purple districts, thus diluting independents’ power. There are very few Republican-held seats anywhere in that much peril.

Among Republicans, Trump’s approval ratings remain in the 80s. Stories of a split in the MAGA base are not based on real data. MAGA voters are so in love with him and trust him so thoroughly that nothing—not the Epstein files nor the attacks on Venezuela and Iran—are peeling them off. So Democrats have their work cut out for them to flip many red districts.

According to the latest House ratings published by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, only 17 GOP seats are rated as Toss Up or worse. Adding in the next level of competitive seats (“Lean Republican”) brings only three more GOP seats to the competitive pile—still well below the post-World War II average midterm outcome of a 26-seat loss for the president’s party. Even adding in the 15 GOP-held seats in the “Likely Republican” category only brings us to a total of 35 vulnerable seats. Democrats could run the table, hold on to all their own vulnerable seats, and still fall short of their pickups in 2006 or 2018.

Other highly respected forecasters, such as Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, come to similar conclusions.

When parties have suffered heavy midterm House losses, they’ve often had a higher degree of exposure. Just as someone who is heavier can lose more weight than someone relatively slight to begin with, a party holding a large number of seats can lose them more easily than one that had few vulnerable seats to begin with. With just 220 seats to begin with, and having suffered a net loss of two seats in the last election, Republicans’ exposure is well below the 241 seats they held going into their 41-seat loss in 2018, or the 256 seats that Democrats had going into Obama’s 2010 midterm, when they lost 64 seats, or the 258 that Democrats had in 1994 ahead of their 54-seat loss in Bill Clinton’s first midterm.

It’s also worth remembering that the dynamics in the House and Senate are very different. In each of the last four cycles, the party that lost seats in the House actually gained in the Senate. With just a third of the Senate up every two years and only a handful of seats competitive in most years, the upper chamber’s results tend to be more idiosyncratic, not necessarily indicative of what is happening in the country overall.

A party can have a bad election, even lose a majority, without sustaining a devastating loss. In other words, if Republican losses are confined to blue and purple states and districts, they will limit the damage. Only if they start losing in places that are ruby-red will their losses really mount. That looks really unlikely.

Democrats need a net four-seat gain for a majority. If they win the 2028 presidential election, they would need to net three over the next two cycles, with a vice president breaking a tie. It’s difficult to see how they get there in either 2026 or 2028 without winning the North Carolina seat opened up by the retirement of Republican Sen. Thom Tillis and also beating Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the only Republican in the Senate representing a state that voted Democrat in each of the last three elections. Maine and North Carolina really are must-win states for Democrats.

Maine Democrats face a fateful decision in their June 9 Senate primary to select a nominee to take on Collins, who is seeking a sixth term. The primary pits Graham Platner, a 41-year-old Iraq War veteran-turned-oyster farmer and the harbormaster in Sullivan, Maine, against 78-year-old Gov. Janet Mills, who is term-limited.

The public polling is over the lot in this primary, most showing the race quite competitive. Unfortunately, Maine has a record of notoriously bad polling, as demonstrated in the 2020 Senate race between Collins and then-state House Speaker Sara Gideon. Public polls showed Gideon ahead for 10 months. At the same time, private polling by major national Democratic and Republican firms showed the race far closer, with Gideon struggling more than the public perceived even while outspending Collins by a wide margin. In a year when Joe Biden won the state over Donald Trump by almost 9 points, Collins defeated Gideon by a similar margin.

Basically, the combination of the Collins Senate campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund dismembered Gideon with attack ads that she never effectively answered. The Gideon campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC tried to return fire, to no avail. The advertising against Gideon was brutal, much of it not particularly fair, but in politics at this level, if you are denying, defending, and explaining, you are losing. Gideon never knew what hit her; witness the leftover money in her campaign account after the election.

Technically speaking, Gideon was not exactly a political novice; she had been elected to the state House four times before her Senate bid. But in her four state House general elections, the most votes she ever received was 4,002 in 2018. The largest total turnout in her races was a not-exactly whopping 6,044 in 2016, when both Trump and Hillary Clinton were on the ballot as well, boosting turnout. These were small-potato races, and Gideon in the Senate race was like a single-A baseball team heading into the World Series. To say it was a mismatch is an understatement.

While Mills has won two gubernatorial races by 7.7 points and 13 points, respectively, Platner has never sought so much as a seat on his town’s Selectboard. In the 2020 race, Collins and Gideon faced off in five general-election debates. Mills had three in her 2018 gubernatorial race and four in 2022. Platner has never been in one. This is the big leagues—no place for beginners.

Platner has already had to deal with news accounts of regrettable comments he has made on Reddit and other social media venues, and an infamous (but since removed) tattoo with a symbol commonly associated with Nazi Germany. Yet none of these attacks have been delivered in paid advertising yet. He can expect incoming fire on these and other issues from every direction. How will he handle it? Who knows?

The two sides spent a reported $200 million in that 2020 campaign, an astonishing amount in a state with fewer than 1.4 million people and just two congressional districts. This time it is likely to be far more, probably in the $300-400 million range.

Can Democrats afford to take a risk on a first-time candidate with a very problematic background and questionable judgment? Sure, he is an interesting person and the profiles of him are good reads, but if the Senate is on the line, either this year or in 2028, is this the horse they want to bet on?

Yes, Mills is 78 years old, though you wouldn’t know that from seeing or talking to her. Anyone who thinks her record as governor isn’t reasonably strong is not likely to be someone considering voting for any Democrat for the Senate.

Based on what happened in the 2020 race, Collins would likely run multi-track messaging against Platner. First would come a positive message like, “I have delivered for Maine and now, chairing the Senate Appropriations Committee, I can deliver even more,” suggesting that the state can’t afford to lose her. In a small and relatively poor state, that is not insignificant. But the second message, with the most money pushing it, would ask whether Platner is the guy Mainers want representing them in the U.S. Senate, then hammer his questionable statements and actions.

A Collins-Mills race would feature Mills talking about what she has done for the state before making the pitch, “Somebody has to stand up to President Trump and for Maine. Senator Collins hasn’t, and I will.” For Democrats still upset about having lost both the presidency and the Senate in 2024, that message will probably resonate well.

In 2020, during the COVID lockdown, I watched the Maine Senate race on Portland television and in the papers. I don’t know and have never met Sara Gideon, but I felt sorry for her and her family getting pummeled the way she was, just as I would feel sorry for a Republican under such circumstances. It wasn’t a fair fight, but as President Kennedy once said, “Life is unfair.” That is where our politics are today: Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, if you are in a competitive state or district, you have to be ready for everything up to and including the kitchen sink being thrown at you, from every direction and 24-7. Democrats, do you feel lucky?

The election season formally begins Tuesday as Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina hold their primaries; if necessary, runoffs will be held on May 26, March 31, and May 12, respectively. After a month or so, we will have a better idea of just how self-indulgent each party’s primary voters are this year, and importantly, whether one party’s base is more myopic than the other—nominating candidates who reflect the anger, energy, and intensity in their respective bases but who are not necessarily focused on the same issues and priorities that independent voters care about.

In blue states, it usually doesn’t matter that much who Democrats nominate; they will still win general elections with only the votes of fellow Democrats. The same goes for Republicans in many red states: A nominee can win a general election just on the backs of fellow Republicans, and support among independents or Democrats isn’t necessary. But, by definition, in swing states and districts a nominee must also capture a disproportionate share of independent voters to win; those independents don’t often agree with those in the base.

At the time of the 2010 midterm election, President Obama’s job-approval rating in the Gallup Poll was just 45 percent. Yet while Republicans scored a net gain of 64 seats in the House, they nominated a pair of exotic and problematic candidates in Senate races in both Delaware and Nevada, energized by the tea-party movement, who went on to lose winnable races to Chris Coons and Harry Reid, respectively. What could have been a seven- or eight-seat gain ended up at six, and a Senate of 51 Democrats to 49 Republicans, two seats short of a GOP majority.

Two years later, Obama’s approval ratings had improved by about 7 points to 52 percent. But the GOP made the same mistakes again. In Missouri, their tea-party-aligned candidate squandered a winnable race against vulnerable Sen. Claire McCaskill. In Indiana, another problematic candidate defeated longtime GOP Sen. Richard Lugar, only to lose the general election to Joe Donnelly. Only in 2014, when GOP primary voters demonstrated more pragmatism, did Republicans finally win a majority in the Senate to match the House majority they secured in the 2010 midterm.

The tea-party wing of the GOP has morphed into the MAGA movement, but the self-destructive behavior continues. This was certainly the case in the 2022 midterms, when, despite President Biden’s anemic 40 percent job-approval rating, GOP primary voters managed to blow about two dozen races for Senate, House, governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. In the Senate races that year, Republican primary voters squandered their party’s chances in Arizona (Blake Masters), Georgia (Herschel Walker), New Hampshire (Don Bolduc), and Pennsylvania (Mehmet Oz). Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, Maggie Hassan, and John Fetterman should all be quite appreciative. As a result, instead of losing two or three seats, Democrats actually gained one seat.

In the pre-Trump era Republicans certainly held their own in the most competitive states, but since he first became president, not so much. In the 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections, Democrats have won 17 of the 21 Senate races in purple states to Republicans’ four. A similar dynamic exists in purple-state gubernatorial races, with Democrats winning 10 of 14. My guess is that the kind of Republicans who do best in purple states have either not been running or did and were not able to get past increasingly MAGA-dominated primary electorates. Secondly, in higher-visibility contests, Trump has been a huge drag on GOP candidates in hotly contested areas.

What must concern Democratic strategists is that, particularly since their 2024 presidential loss, the central organizing principle of the party base is opposition to Trump—in other words, anger and hate rather than policy and strategy. While that has helped them win key statewide races, it has not carried down to state Senate and state House races. Stoking anger at Trump may feel good among base voters, but lower on the ballot, there is not much for Democrats to run on.

The seven purple states have 14 legislative chambers. Republicans hold majorities in 10, and only in Nevada do Democrats hold comfortable majorities in both the state Senate and state House chambers. In the other two purple states where Democrats hold a chamber, it is by only a one-seat edge. They control the Michigan state Senate 19-18 and the Pennsylvania House 100-98. In New Hampshire, which is widely seen as a blue state, the GOP has not only controlled both the state Senate and House after each of the last three elections but has won the governorship in five consecutive elections (two-year terms), leading me to wonder whether it should be considered a blue state at all.

Over the last 20 years, Republicans have invested significantly greater sums of money in party-building on the state and local level. It has paid off. Not only has Democrats’ lack of investment hurt them in policy fights, but it has deprived them of a strong bench. These lower-level offices are the farm teams, the seed corn for the future; political careers can be accelerated or prematurely ended at these levels, impacting U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and gubernatorial elections in the future.

In short, the feeling that “if it feels good, do it” isn’t the best strategy to winning elections.

Off the top of my head, the only truly memorable one was that of President Clinton’s in 1998, just six days after The Washington Post broke the story of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Like drivers rubbernecking while passing a car wreck, an estimated 53 million Americans tuned in that year, almost 12 million more viewers than the year before.

Historically, few Americans tune in to watch or listen to SOTU addresses, not surprising for a tedious wish list of policy priorities, boastful claims of what great things the president has done, and perhaps an aspirational flourish thrown in at some point along the way. My guess is that the percentage of people still tuned in after 10 minutes is far lower than at the beginning, and even fewer stick with it to the end. A share of sets still tuned in at the end surely belongs to those who fell asleep or left the room while it was underway.

Viewership skews toward members of the president’s party, tuning in to cheer their leader on; next would be followers of the opposition party, jeering just as vociferously. Few are pure independents, who don’t often read, watch, or listen to news or follow current events, anyway.

Ask yourself this question: Do you know anyone who does not hold firm opinions of President Trump, positive or negative? When President Biden was preparing to deliver his 2024 address, did you know anyone even slightly ambivalent about him? For nine or 10 registered voters out of 20, the question isn’t how they will vote, it is whether they will vote. The Pew Research Center’s Validated Voters Surveys show this very clearly. The 2022 midterm-election survey showed that those voters who identified as Democrats voted for their party’s House candidates over Republicans by 98 to 2 percent, while Republicans cast their ballots for the GOP House candidates over Democrats by 97 to 3 percent. When Democrats and those independents who lean more toward the Democratic Party were combined, the vote for Democrats was 96 to 3 percent. Similarly, when GOP identifiers and independents who leaned more Republican were combined, they voted 94 to 5 percent for Republicans.

In terms of motivation, voters for the party out of power are more motivated than those for the party in power. In 2018, during Trump’s first-term midterm, Republican identifiers made up 31 percent of the electorate, 4 points fewer than the out-of-power Democratic identifiers, who made up 35 percent (32 percent were independents). When partisans and leaners were thrown in together, Republicans made up 45 percent of the electorate, while Democrats and their leaners made up 51 percent.

This was also the case in 2022 when the shoe was on the other foot. The in-power Democrats constituted 32 percent of the electorate, the out-of-power Republicans 37 percent. When leaners were tossed in for each side, Democrats were at 47 percent, Republicans at 52 percent. This is one of the things that prove that the 2022 election wasn’t about a backlash against the Dobbs decision. If it were, it would have shown up in Democrats’ enthusiasm and turnout. Rather, the underwhelming showing for Republicans was more about their primary voters picking MAGA-oriented, exotic, and/or problematic nominees in about two dozen critical races, rather than picking nominees who had some potential to reach beyond their party’s base in purple states and districts.

As much as campaign operatives like to pat themselves on the back or stress their own importance, the truth is that ticked-off people vote at higher rates than people who are satisfied, complacent, or disappointed.

The biggest remaining variable in this election is the primaries. In the two or three dozen House races plus a half-dozen Senate races that really matter, if a party is self-indulgent and picks nominees who know only how to massage the erogenous zones of the party’s base rather than reach the 5 percent or so of voters who are pure independents, that will cost them critical races.

The CNN national survey released Monday morning tells the story of where voters’ heads are right now. Republicans approve of Trump’s performance so far by 82 to 18 percent. Democrats disapprove by 95 to 5 percent (mind the gap!). Critically, independents disapprove by 73 to 26 percent.

As of the deadline for this column Monday afternoon, the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll had not released Trump’s approval ratings, but from data already released, the same conclusion can be reached. When respondents were asked whether the direction in which Trump is moving the country is a change for the better, a change for the worse, or no real change at all, 37 percent of registered voters said it was a change for the better, 56 percent said it was a change for the worse, and 6 percent said it was no change at all.

Among just Republican respondents, 82 percent said Trump had brought about change for the better (13 percent said it was a change for the worse); among Democrats, 89 percent said it was a change for the worse (7 percent said it was a change for the better), and among independents, 64 percent said things were worse, while just 27 percent said they were better. Keeping in mind that independents are the voters who will drive outcomes in most purple states and districts, those independent numbers are key. Any Republican in a blue state or district should focus on the number among Democrats. But conversely, because Republicans are hanging in with Trump to the extent they are, Democrats should expect no tailwind in red states, no matter the results in low-turnout, state legislative special elections.

Watch the State of the Union if you must, but if you have anything better to do, you might get an extra hour and a half or so of your life back.

Interestingly, the zeitgeist in each party is somewhat at variance with what happened in the presidential election 15 months ago. With just over 25 percent of his second term behind him, President Trump has embarked on a muscular, in-your-face agenda that one might expect from someone who won by a 15-point margin rather than his actual 1.5-point victory. But for 200,369 combined votes in three states—29,397 votes in Wisconsin (.86 percent), 80,103 in Michigan (1.4 percent), and 120,266 in Pennsylvania (1.7 percent)—it would be Kamala Harris preparing for a State of the Union Address on Feb. 24, not Donald Trump.

Conversely, the prevailing mentality in the Democratic Party seems to vacillate between defeatism and belligerence. Interestingly, Trump’s vote margin in those three Frost Belt states was substantially wider than the 42,918 total votes that put Joe Biden over the top in the three closest states of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin in 2020; he and his team somehow seemed to think they had a mandate as well. This is what happens in a country that is so evenly divided. If you win, it’s by a mile; if you lose, it’s by a millimeter.

Looking back at the closing days of that 2024 campaign, it’s easy to forget how close things were. In The New York Times’ polling averages on the morning of the election, in six of the seven swing states the leading candidate averaged 49 percent of the vote, the trailing candidate 48 percent. Trump had that tiny edge in Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia; Harris was up by a single point in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In Arizona, Trump was at 50 percent, Harris at 47 percent. In each of the seven polls, the undecided vote was 3 percent. Obviously, those voters broke in Trump’s direction in the end. Tiny shifts in votes with huge consequences make up the political world we now live in.

When such a narrow, wafer-thin sliver of the electorate in seven states determines the president, and an even-smaller shaving in a couple dozen House districts tips the balance in that chamber, one might expect political parties, their leaders and strategists, to be carefully calibrating what might give them that final boost to get them over the top in the next election. But instead of scalpels, we get meat cleavers.

We have elections with infinitesimal margins, yet the two parties are as far apart as the North and South Poles, as different as night and day. The binary nature of our political system grossly exaggerates controversies, with equally distorted consequences.

Think about immigration and the border as a case in point. When Biden took office in January 2021, a clearly porous border was a concern for a not-insubstantial share of voters, yet they were told that the administration lacked the authority to address it. Nothing happened for three years. Then in Biden’s final year, the administration started to do what it said couldn’t be done at the border, and the rate of border crossings plummeted. The political damage was already done. Had the administration simply done it in 2021, much could have been different. Along with the cost of living, this issue expedited Democrats’ eviction from the White House more than anything else.

Then Donald Trump comes back into office, promising to go after “the worst of the worst,” violent criminals who are in the country illegally. The next thing we know, he implements draconian policies, targeting blue cities seemingly at random, with nannies taken away from children in parks and on sidewalks, farm workers pulled from fields, and longtime residents snatched off the streets or out of their homes. Internal documents reviewed by CBS News show that fewer than 14 percent of those apprehended have any violent criminal records at all.

This was not the cruise that swing voters signed up for. But then again, swing voters don’t nominate party candidates; most aren’t even affiliated with either party. They are constrained by whatever or whoever the parties choose to present. These are not the choices they want, but it’s what they have.

What choices will primary voters in five mostly Southern states present to them beginning next month?

Not all state legislative seats nationally merit the same level of attention, but Texas has only 31 state Senate districts, each with an average of 950,000 people. The Lone Star State has 38 congressional seats, with an average population of 767,000.

Democrats are justifiably excited by their showing. When a party has been deeply disappointed by one election, overperforming in special and odd-year elections can be a sign that its luck may be turning. Having said that, many of the same bullish voices in the party right now were pointing to similar special-election results in the run-up to November 2024, which, at least on the presidential level, was less than optimal for them.

The first primary elections of the 2026 campaign are a month from Tuesday, on March 3 in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas, with Mississippi a week later and Illinois a week after that. For Republicans in red states and districts as well as Democrats in blue constituencies, primary winners rarely matter in the general-election outcome; their nominees are going to win in November no matter what. But the primaries matter a lot in purple states and districts, and occasionally even in light-blue and light-red states. Nominees who may be insanely popular among zealots in the party base can have real problems in a general election if their candidate skills are inadequate or if they are philosophically or stylistically incompatible with their electorates.

On that front, there are some interesting signs developing in primary races around the country. Last week on National Journal’s “Hotline Live” webinar, states reporter Abby Turner made an interesting observation: Two sitting governors, Democrat Dan McKee in Rhode Island and Republican Larry Rhoden in South Dakota, are at grave risk of losing their primary elections.

McKee faces an unusually stiff fight from Helena Foulkes, a former top executive with Rhode Island-based CVS and former CEO of Hudson’s Bay Company (which owns Saks Fifth Avenue). McKee, who became governor after Gina Raimondo stepped down to become Commerce secretary in the Biden administration, edged out Foulkes by 4 points in the 2022 primary.

Rhoden faces four-term Rep. Dusty Johnson, state House Speaker Jon Hansen, and conservative activist Toby Doeden in a spirited primary.

Turner made the case that both incumbents could realistically lose their renomination bids. By my count, only six sitting governors have lost renomination since 2000, two of whom had initially become governor after their predecessors stepped down.

What made this interesting to me is that there are two senators who appear to be underdogs for renomination as well. Sen. John Cornyn trails Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in polling of the GOP primary. Next door in Louisiana, Sen. Bill Cassidy faces Rep. Julia Letlow heading to their May 16 primary. Quite a few House incumbents look like they may be heading for stiff contests as well. Many of these primaries seem age-driven, with older, longtime incumbents challenged by much younger challengers. The two Senate races are more about the ascendant Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP taking on incumbents of the old-fashioned Republican variety. In addition, in some one-party states, taking out the incumbent in a primary is the way to move up the ladder.

In that same 25-year period starting in 2000, seven incumbent senators lost their primaries, or in the case of then-Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, at the state GOP convention. Two were subsequently elected anyway. Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman lost his Democratic primary to now-Gov. Ned Lamont in 2006, but then ran a successful independent bid. In 2010, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska lost her primary but won in the general election with an extraordinary write-in campaign. In another odd case, Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania changed parties, becoming a Democrat, only to lose his primary in 2010 to Rep. Joe Sestak, who then lost the general election to Rep. Pat Toomey. The most recent senator to lose a primary, Luther Strange, had been appointed to the Alabama seat previously held by Jeff Sessions, who stepped down to become attorney general in the first Trump administration. Strange lost his 2017 special election to former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who then lost to Democrat Doug Jones.

All of this may or may not portend anything in November, but if at least three of these incumbents lose, it will be one of two elections this century—the other being 2010—when four sitting senators or governors lost renomination.

After all, the last five presidents have taken office with their party holding both the Senate and the House majorities and have left either four or eight years later without holding the White House or either chamber of Congress. Parties generally take a beating in midterms when they occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and those losses extend well down the ballot, derailing some careers and providing opportunities for those in the opposite party.

A president with terrible approval ratings provides a golden opportunity for the opposition. Trump’s low approvals among independents create an enormous handicap for Republican candidates running in purple states and districts, constituencies where carrying the GOP mantle is insufficient for victory. Their task is a tall one: winning a disproportionately large share of independent voters while the head of their party is favored by just 34 percent of independents in the most recent New York Times/Siena University poll (62 percent disapprove).

The new Wall Street Journal poll pegged Trump’s approval among independents slightly better, at 41 percent (57 percent disapprove).

Several other things jump out from the crosstabs. More Republicans disapprove of Trump’s performance (14 percent in NYT/Siena and 8 percent in WSJ) than Democrats approve (4 percent in NYT/Siena and 5 percent in WSJ). That suggests both a greater Democratic enthusiasm and the potential for Republicans voting in lower numbers, which is a chronic problem for a president’s party in midterm elections. At the same time, the impressive approval numbers that Trump does have among Republicans (86 percent in NYT/Siena and 91 percent in WSJ) mean that those few Democrats running in red states and districts can expect fewer defections from the ranks of Republicans than they would hope.

The way things are going, it would be very hard for Democrats not to capture a House majority in November, yet given how few competitive districts remain, it will also be tough to build up much of a majority beyond the minimum 218 seats needed for control.

Democrats fantasize about winning a majority in the Senate as well, though a study of the seats up for grabs and the voting patterns in some of these “reach” states suggests that this is something of a fool’s errand. Just as it is very rare for Republicans to capture a seat in a blue, Democratic-tilting state, it’s just as hard for Democrats to seize a seat with strong Republican-tilting tendencies. There just might be a reason why there are zero Democrats holding statewide offices in any of the three red states that Democrats are talking up as potential Senate pickups—Alaska, Nebraska, and Texas.

Democrats celebrating former Rep. Mary Peltola’s entrance into the Alaska race overlook that her big win in the September 2022 special election was a ranked-choice election with the Republican vote largely split between former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich. Peltola received 37 percent of the first-choice votes, Palin 30 percent, and Begich 26 percent, with the rest of the vote split over a couple dozen others running. The second choices for the voters who cast a ballot for Begich or any of the other candidates were then counted, with Peltola getting 51.48 percent to Palin’s 48.52 percent. In other words, this was less a show of force by Peltola than a matter of besting a very weak Palin. In the regular 2022 election, less than two months later, Peltola prevailed again over Palin and Begich. There is little reason to believe that GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan will be nearly as weak an opponent as Palin was.

Iowa is the one red state Democrats are eyeing as a long-shot opportunity that actually does have one Democrat holding statewide office—the very impressive state Auditor Rob Sand, who is running for governor. He’s got a chance. Yet as tough as it is for gubernatorial and other constitutional-office candidates to capture a statewide race in a state of the opposite hue, U.S. Senate races are even tougher to crack.

So what should Democrats focus on? Obviously, winning that House majority, with any kind of cushion they can build, would be at the top of the list; the second would be reelecting freshman Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia, holding onto their open Senate seats in Michigan and New Hampshire, unseating Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, and winning the open Republican Senate seat in North Carolina. After that, Senate seats grow exponentially more difficult.

But as hard as it is for some to recall that there are offices outside of the ZIP codes of 20500, 20510, and 20515, there are plenty of important races on the ballot, and Democrats ought to be drooling over recapturing some of the influence in state capitols lost over the last 20 years.

With Washington and Congress growing increasingly dysfunctional, the power vacuum is partially shifting to the states. In November there will be 36 governorships on the ballot, each party defending 18. That also happens to be the number of open gubernatorial races this year. Keep in mind that the party holding the White House has suffered a net loss of governorships in 18 of the 20 midterm elections since the end of World War II, the exceptions being in 1986 and 2022. The average outcome of the 20 was a net loss of four governorships; the worst was a loss of 11 in 1970.

This year, five of the seven swing states are holding gubernatorial elections: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Democrats are defending open governorships in California, Colorado, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, and New Mexico, as well as nine incumbents in other blue states. Republicans have 10 open gubernatorial posts up, although the Georgia race is the only one in a swing state (Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming are open as well).

Other statewide constitutional offices up for election this year include 30 popularly elected attorneys general and 26 secretaries of state. Finally, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, regularly scheduled elections in 46 states will determine control of 88 of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers. There are a total of 1,162 state Senate and 4,960 state House seats up this year.

A recent analysis by Louis Jacobson in Sabato’s Crystal Ball found that both the state Senate and House chambers in swingy Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin are “toss ups,” as well as both the upper and lower bodies in Minnesota and the New Hampshire House. According to Jacobson, Democrats seem to have an edge in the Maine House and the Pennsylvania House, while the GOP seems to have a similar advantage in the New Hampshire and Pennsylvania Senates. Jacobson sees both the upper and lower chambers of the Alaska legislature remaining ruled by a two-party coalition.

Another factor to consider is that these statewide constitutional and state legislative offices serve as the farm teams for the two parties, the seed corn for the future, and dictate the options that the parties have for good candidates five or 10 years later.

With apologies to O’Neill, there is little reason to believe that the November election will be anything but a referendum on President Trump. With the first anniversary of Trump’s second inauguration arriving Tuesday, we’ve seen a flurry of new polls in recent days. Trump’s job-approval averages sit at 42 percent in both The New York Times and the Silver Bulletin averages. The RealClearPolitics average has him 1 point higher, at 43 percent.

While things in politics can certainly change, rarely are there major directional shifts during the year of a midterm election; it’s more about degree than direction.

In the Pew Research Center’s validated-voters survey from the 2024 election, 95 percent of self-identified Democrats voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, precisely the same as the 95 percent of self-identified Republicans who voted for Donald Trump.The numbers among independents who, when pressed, said they leaned more to one of the two major parties were almost as high: 91 percent of Democratic-leaners voted for Harris, and 87 percent of Republican-leaners cast their ballots for Trump.

Pew’s validated-voters survey of 2022 midterm voters showed even higher levels of partisan voting: 98 percent of Democrats and 97 percent of Republicans cast their ballots for their own party’s nominees for Congress. In the midterm four years earlier, 91 percent of Democratic-leaners voted for their side for Congress, and 88 percent of GOP-leaners voted Republican for the House. Never have voters been as locked in with their respective parties as they are today.

In six national polls released over the last week, Trump’s approval rating among Democrats averaged 4 percent (94 percent disapprove); among independents, 30 percent (64 percent disapprove); and among Republicans, 88 percent (11 percent disapprove).

That translates to hurricane-force headwinds facing the few Republicans in competitive races in blue states and districts, like the Senate races in Maine, Minnesota, and to a lesser extent, New Hampshire. The winds remain plenty stiff in the faces of GOP candidates in purple states and districts, such as Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina. But those winds reverse in red states and districts; GOP candidates benefit from at least a modest breeze at their backs in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas.

When parties are trying to take seats away from the opposite party, the difficulty of that challenge obviously depends upon the partisan tilt, if there is one, of that state.

Every Senate and House election can be put into one of three categories. The first is a consolidation attempt, to purge the opposition in one of your own states or districts—a Democrat trying to beat a Republican in a blue area, or a Republican trying to beat a Democrat in a red state or district. The second is a fair-fight race, taking place in a purple state or district. The third is a pickoff—a Republican attempting to upset a Democrat in a blue state or district, or a Democrat trying to win a seat in a red state or district. Obviously, a consolidation is the least difficult, pulling off an upset in the other party’s territory is the most difficult, and a fair-fight race in a purple state or district is somewhere in between.

In the House, Trump’s radioactivity in swing districts makes a Democratic takeover a very high probability. I’d put it at 75 percent. But the solidarity among Republican voters likely contains the losses the party might otherwise suffer. It is unlikely that GOP losses will exceed the 26 seats that is the post-World War II average for the party in the White House.

The Senate is more interesting. Recent turnovers in that chamber have been either consolidation wins—a seat that was basically in enemy territory—or fair-fight races. Too many voters are locked in for Republicans to capture a blue seat or Democrats a red seat; thus turnovers are consolidation or fair-fight situations.

Over the last five election cycles, Republicans have unseated eight Democratic senators. Three of those wins came in 2024: against Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana, both red states; and against one in a purple state, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey. In 2020, they unseated Doug Jones in Alabama, a very red state. In 2018, four Democrats lost reelection, all in red states: Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, and Bill Nelson in Florida. Notice that Republicans did not beat any Democratic incumbents in blue states.

Conversely, during the same five elections, Democrats defeated seven Republican senators. In 2016 Democrats defeated Mark Kirk in the blue state of Illinois and Kelly Ayotte in (relatively) blue New Hampshire; in 2018 they beat Dean Heller in Nevada; and in 2020 they unseated David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in purple Georgia, Martha McSally in purple Arizona, and Cory Gardner in blue Colorado. Democrats did not beat any Republicans in red states.

That argues for the battlefield being much narrower than Democrats wish, as they defend Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia and the open seat in Michigan, while Republicans try to lift Sen. Susan Collins to a sixth term in blue Maine and defend the open seat in purple North Carolina.

The one state that keeps bugging me is New Hampshire, whether it is the least blue of the blue states or actually the eighth purple state. The Granite State is almost certainly a contest between Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas and former Republican Sen. John Sununu. I don’t give former Sen. Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts, any real shot at the GOP nomination against Sununu.

This all works against Republicans having much of a shot in Minnesota, even though it is an open seat. But it also works against Democrats trying to knock off Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska or Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, or making a real play for the open seat in Iowa.

As for Texas, there is a reason why the national GOP is trying to move heaven and earth for Sen. John Cornyn; they see him as a lock, and they see his GOP primary challengers, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt, as risks. If Paxton wins the nomination, my theory will be put to the test, but I certainly see why the Republican Senate leadership does not want to take the risk.

When a party is trying to capture a Senate seat, it is prudent to ask three questions. First, how have they fared in that state in the last three presidential races? Second, when was the last time that party won a U.S. Senate race in that state? Third, does that party have any statewide elected officials in that state?

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Given how parliamentary things have gotten, the answers to those questions are key. Keep in mind, our elections are binary: One party wins, the other loses. Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and European-style coalition governments.

July will mark the 250th anniversary of our country’s break from Great Britain. But over the last 50 years, our politics have become virtually parliamentary, just like in the old country. Adages like “all politics is local” and “I vote the person, not the party” may have once been true, but no longer. The number of voters who either split their tickets or swing between parties from one election to the next is few and far between. That largely confines competitive Senate races to the seven purple states and, at most, a very few immediately adjacent blue or red states.

Even with Peltola and Brown running, it is unlikely that Democrats will capture either Alaska or Ohio. Donald Trump won Alaska by 13 points in 2024, 10 points in 2020, and 15 points in 2016. The only Republican senator from Alaska ever to lose reelection was Sen. Ted Stevens in 2008, when he was under indictment; the charges were later dismissed. The last Democrat to win before that was Mike Gravel in 1974, when Peltola was a year old. Peltola’s two victories both came in 2022—an August special election for Congress held under ranked-choice voting, and the regular election in November that year. In both cases, former governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was her chief rival.

In the Buckeye State, Trump won by 11 points in 2024, and by 8 points in both 2016 and 2020. Brown was reelected in 2018 but lost his bid for a fourth term in 2024. Neither Alaska nor Ohio has any Democrats holding statewide elective office, and neither Sullivan nor Husted has any obvious weaknesses.

It’s also unlikely that Democrats will be able to defeat Sen. Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, or capture the open seat in Iowa. Democrats have fallen on hard times in states with a substantial share of voters in small-town and rural areas.

The party hasn’t won a Senate race in Nebraska since then-Sen. Ben Nelson was reelected in 2006. Trump won there by 21 points in 2024, and by 25 and 19 points in 2016 and 2020, respectively. The primary reason that the 2024 Senate race was as close as 6 points was that the GOP incumbent, Sen. Deb Fischer, had pledged to serve only two terms. Her decision to run for a third term gave independent Dan Osborn a bit of a chance to get some traction, but not nearly enough to win. Ricketts looks stronger than Fischer did.

Iowa is also tough for Democrats. Since Sen. Tom Harkin was reelected in 2008, Democrats haven’t even come close. Trump won by 13 points there in 2024, and by 8 and 9 points in 2016 and 2020, respectively. The only Democrat holding statewide office is state Auditor Rob Sand, who is running a strong campaign for governor. If any Democrat is able to defy the partisan gravity in the Hawkeye State, it will be Sand.

Finally, any chance of Democrats winning the Senate seat in Texas depends on two outcomes. First, state Attorney General Ken Paxton must defeat Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary in March. Second, Democrats must nominate a candidate with the potential to appeal beyond their base. They had one, but former Rep. Colin Allred dropped out to run for a House seat, leaving Democrats to choose between either the very liberal state Rep. James Talarico or Trump-trolling Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who took the late Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson’s Dallas-Fort Worth district. That seat has a Cook Political Report partisan voting index score of D+25, meaning it is impossible for a Democrat not to win there. Neither shows any potential to win over independent or soft Republican voters.

Democrats would be better advised to make sure they win a House majority and regard capturing control of the Senate as, at best, a four-year project. It is extremely difficult to see them gaining more than two Senate seats this year, which would take them to 49 seats in the next Congress. Even that is contingent upon Sen. Jon Ossoff winning reelection in Georgia, a Democrat defeating Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, and the party holding onto open seats in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Minnesota.

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For both parties, the most important single variable in this election is not whether Trump’s job-approval ratings move much in either direction (they probably won’t). The greatest threat to Democrats is their own base, just as the biggest threat to Republicans is their party’s base. In the hyper-competitive states and districts, the keys could be called the “three C’s”—candidate-constituency-compatibility.

In most places, it doesn’t matter that much who a party nominates because that constituency is virtually destined to elect a candidate of a certain hue. It’s a done deal that a Democrat will win in a solidly blue state or district, just as it is that a comparably red state or district will elect a GOP candidate. In at least four out of five states or districts, general elections are little more than formalities; any doubt is settled in the primary. And nothing can kill a Republican’s chances of winning a hotly contested race in a purple state or district like nominating a very red-hued candidate; similarly, nothing can cost Democrats winning a hot race in a purple state or district like nominating a strong blue candidate.

Veteran election watchers know that midterms are almost always referenda on a sitting president. Partisans who identify with or lean toward the party of the sitting president may be satisfied, complacent, or even disappointed. They are rarely energized and highly motivated to vote. Conversely, those who align with or lean toward the opposition party are almost invariably unhappy with the outcome of the previous election and always anxious to ensure that the next election yields a different result.

The pure independents who comprise the remaining 5 percent more frequently vote against the incumbent party than for anything else.

Those factors almost always stack the deck against a president’s party in congressional elections (losers of 18 of 20 midterms since the end of World War II, an average setback of 26 seats). The two exceptions occurred when presidents had unusually high approval ratings—George W. Bush’s 63 percent in 2002 and Bill Clinton’s 66 percent in 1998.

The pattern in the Senate exists as well, only not as strongly, because only a third of Senate seats are up every two years and usually only about a half dozen of those are competitive. That’s why there are more exceptions—since World War II, the sitting president’s party has lost seats in 14 of 20 midterms.

Some talking heads suggest that the attack and capture of Maduro was the easy part; “running” Venezuela for the foreseeable future will be more challenging. In my mind, the first part of that sentence is too dismissive of the skill of the men and women who planned and executed this highly challenging mission, one that arguably no other military in the world could have accomplished as well. However, the argument implicit in that latter part is valid, particularly given the U.S.’s ignominious record of nation-building over the last 50 years. Iraq and Afghanistan were a long way from the Marshall Plan. A further complication is that there are clearly powers that might find it in their interest to make our experience in Venezuela as costly and painful as possible.

When pollsters ask the “ballot test” question in surveys, it invariably starts with, “If the election were held today, how would you vote?” But the election isn’t today; it is nine months from Tuesday and not likely to turn on the success or failure of the mission. In President Trump’s remarks on Saturday, he talked of the benefits of having access to Venezuela’s oil. Still, energy experts all say that it will take a decade or more to bring the Venezuelan energy infrastructure to the point where production at scale would be meaningful, and that this does not account for any reluctance the industry might have to invest billions in such an unstable situation.

It has been said that when Donald Trump is president, a decade’s worth of events occur in a single year. Nevertheless, over 59 months in office Trump’s approval ratings have fluctuated less than those of any other president over the three-quarters of a century of modern polling. In Gallup polling, Trump’s overall approval rating has remained within a narrow 15-point range, never below 34 percent nor above 49 percent. In December, it was 36 percent.

The hyper-partisanship of the country today constructs floors for presidents that they almost cannot fall below and ceilings that they cannot exceed. For President Biden, his range was just 21 points, always between 36 and 57 percent. The previous eight presidents had substantially wider ranges of between 31 and 65 points, reflecting periods of less partisanship and polarization. Attitudes about Trump, both positive and negative, are so baked-in that his approval ratings are unlikely to move out of that 15-point range and to a place where he will not be a liability for his party.

While nearly everyone has an opinion on whether the strike was a good or a bad idea, it is more likely that things that affect swing voters’ daily lives will have a greater political impact than something that happens nearly 1,400 miles southwest of Miami. It is pretty unlikely that events in Venezuela will be favorable enough to enable Republicans to hang onto their precarious, five-seat majority in the House. While the smaller number of competitive districts makes it unlikely that GOP losses will match or exceed the 26-seat average loss, it doesn’t make minor losses any more likely.

Conversely, it is unlikely that Venezuela will be sufficiently unfavorable to the GOP for them to lose four or more Senate seats and cede control to Democrats. Let’s assume for a moment that Senate Democrats have a great night, unseating Sen. Susan Collins in the blue state of Maine and holding onto their own open blue-state seats in Minnesota and New Hampshire. Next let’s say that Democrats sweep the three purple states hosting Senate races, reelecting Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia, retaining their own open seat in Michigan, and capturing the open GOP seat in North Carolina. That would be a fantastic night for Democrats—and yet it would give them only 49 seats.

Democrats would still need to capture two GOP-held seats in red states. They haven’t grabbed so much as one in the last eight regularly scheduled Senate elections—the last time in 2008, when Mark Begich upset Ted Stevens in Alaska. Stevens was indicted shortly before the election and lost his reelection bid before the conviction was eventually dismissed due to prosecutorial misconduct. In terms of capturing a Republican seat in a red state with an opponent not under indictment, you have to go back two years earlier, to 2006, when Democrats defeated three GOP incumbents in red Missouri, Montana, and Ohio.

My money would be on the outcome in November being the same as the one that appeared likely in November of 2025.

As much as Democrats would assume that these terms are most applicable to President Trump and his administration, in this case they’re intended for Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin. It was reported this past week that Martin had decided to bury the “autopsy” report the party had commissioned in March to examine why it lost the 2024 presidential election.

Before Martin decided to give the Epstein-file treatment to the autopsy report, those briefed on the study had described it as the product of over 300 interviews with Democrats in all 50 states. Martin’s lame explanation was to say, “Here’s our North Star: Does this help us win? If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.” A more convincing explanation was that he intended to protect the egos and reputations of those who had made decisions that contributed to the party’s loss last year. Deep-sixing the report will hardly ingratiate the party’s donors, many of whom were already skeptical of Martin and opposed his election to chair the party from the beginning.

The ironic thing is that if The New York Times’ reporting from July was correct, the autopsy report was unlikely to ruin reputations, even those that perhaps should have been. The Times’ Reid J. Epstein and Shane Goldmacher wrote five months ago that the DNC’s “examination of what went wrong in the 2024 election is expected mostly to steer clear of the decisions made by the Biden-turned-Harris campaign and will focus more heavily instead on actions taken by allied groups, according to interviews with six people briefed on the report’s progress.” Most relevant, the audit looked to avoid the question of whether President Biden should have run for reelection in the first place or exited the race earlier than he did, and whether Kamala Harris was the right choice to replace him.

Let’s not forget that when Trump left office in January 2021, both his poll numbers and his reputation were in the political toilet. He left office with just a 34 percent job-approval rating in the Gallup Poll (62 percent disapproved), and as the only president in polling history never to reach a 50 percent job-approval rating. A CNN poll taken at the same time found the same 34 percent approval rating, but also that 55 percent believed he deserved a great deal of blame for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building. The poll found that 55 percent of Americans deemed his presidency a failure, while only 41 percent deemed it a success.

How do you lose the presidency less than four years later to someone who was evicted from the White House with those kinds of numbers and circumstances?

Biden and his team committed a political cardinal sin: misreading their election and presuming a mandate when none existed. They seemed to focus on his 4.5-percentage-point margin in the national popular vote, which is a bit like deciding a football game by the total yards gained by each side. As Al Gore or Hillary Clinton could attest, the coin of the realm is in the state results, not the national vote margin.

Far more relevant was Biden’s margin in the tipping-point states—just 42,918 votes scattered across just three states: 11,779 in Georgia (.24 percent), 10,457 in Arizona (.31 percent), and 22,682 in Wisconsin (.63 percent), about three-hundredths of a percentage point of those cast nationwide.

What’s more, with the Senate 50-50, Democrats had a majority only by virtue of Vice President Harris’s ability to break ties; things were not much better in the House, where Democrats had lost seats but managed to cling to a 222-211 majority.

The political reality is that the country is so narrowly and evenly divided that the kind of big wins that create landslides are no longer possible.

During Biden’s first six months in office, his Gallup approval ratings ran between 54 and 57 percent, his disapproval ratings between 37 and 42 percent. In the evenly divided and deeply partisan country we have today, that is about as good as a president is going to get. His approval dropped 6 points to 50 percent in July, then to 49 percent in August, 43 percent in September, and to 42 percent in November, never to rise above 45 percent again.

A real autopsy would focus on those first nine months of 2021, and perhaps the weeks between the 2020 election and the beginning of 2021. Decisions were made that planted the seeds of this loss.

Politically, the Biden presidency was dead after the first 10 months of 2021, hopelessly lost in a political Bermuda Triangle of the border and soaring inflation, which eventually reached a 40-year high; Biden left office with the cost of living 25 percent higher than when he took office. The debacle that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan was just icing on the cake.

In her book 107 Days, Harris argues that if Biden had dropped out sooner, the extra time would have enabled her to run a winning campaign. I don’t think extra time would have made a difference. I doubt that if the 2024 Democratic nominee had been male rather than female, or white rather than Black, or gay rather than straight, any of it would have made much difference, nor would a different campaign team. The reality is that any vice president or member of the Biden Cabinet would have been found guilty by association.

The question is, the next time Democrats get into power (likely in just over a year’s time, at least in the House), will they be any wiser? Will the decisions they make be as politically tone-deaf as we saw in 2021? The agenda must align with the victory, and if the victory is meager, the agenda should be somewhat more restrained as well. While I am quite convinced that Democrats will win a House majority next year, I would be surprised if it matches the 26-seat average loss that presidents’ parties have averaged since the end of World War II. But governing decisions can be more politically fateful than decisions made during the height of a campaign.