Next Tuesday will be a unicorn election, certainly unlike any of the 11 midterm and 11 presidential elections I have covered. The dynamics are fundamentally different. The most critical segment is not “pure independents.” Nor is it “soft Democrats” or, for that matter, “soft Republicans.” Furthermore, unlike many elections, it doesn’t hinge on the behavior of swingy suburban voters.
Instead, the critical group in this election consists of normally reliable Republicans, many of whom would never normally consider voting for a Democrat. Many of them live in small towns and cities, mountain areas, wooded areas, deserts, and especially farmland. Many drive mid-sized or full-sized pickup trucks, and do so over longer distances than urban and suburban voters. They are also involved in or adjacent to the agricultural economy. They see high gas prices, tariffs, and trade wars, particularly with longtime allies and neighbors, as particularly irksome.
This group sees President Trump as having made some colossally bad decisions, particularly the attack on Iran and trade policies that have made it hard for them to keep their farms and businesses afloat. Draconian immigration enforcement has also hurt their livelihoods, robbing them of needed employees.
Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is about 80 percent, down 6 points from 86 percent at the beginning of the year, but it is an unenthusiastic 80 percent. Among independents, the normally key group, Trump’s approval rating is about 25 percent, down 5 points from the start of the year. The smallest change is among Democrats, where he has dropped from 6 percent approval to 5 percent.
These rural voters have grown to expect that Democratic presidents and politicians are not going to understand their lives and livelihoods, but they are in disbelief that a Republican president, particularly this one, would be so oblivious to how his decisions would impact his most loyal and normally unquestioning supporters. They are upset that their elected officials who were supposed to look out for them and try to head off hurtful policies didn’t try hard enough to thwart the president’s impulses.
One compounding problem for Republicans this year is that they have some underwhelming candidates. Some of them are even incumbents. While these candidates would likely do fine in a normal political climate, they’re struggling in a once-a-generation cycle for Democrats like this one.
Just looking at this election’s footprint underscores how unique it is. The only Democratic incumbent senator who was expected to have a tough race, Georgia’s Sen. Jon Ossoff, is coasting to an easy reelection. The only Republican-held Senate seat up for grabs in a purple swing state, North Carolina, is likewise now a slam dunk for Democrats. Among the nine or so Senate races within the margin of error are for seats held by five GOP incumbents: Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Jon Husted of Ohio, Darline Graham of South Carolina, and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi. Polling averages show Democrats narrowly ahead—but within the margin of error—in the open GOP seats in Iowa and Texas. About the only close race that was predicted to be so was for the seat in Maine held by Sen. Susan Collins, the last senator of either party to hold a seat more appropriately hued in the other party’s color.
I rarely have a conversation about politics with anyone—even an Uber driver Sunday night in San Diego—in which the issue of polling error doesn’t come up. Most observers forget that the most noticeable polling errors in recent years have been in presidential elections, specifically those with Donald Trump’s name literally on the ballot, not just metaphorically as it is in this one. Polling error can also go either way; it doesn’t inherently mean Republicans’ support is understated and Democrats’ exaggerated.
Yet one polling question does trouble me about this election. So many disaffected Republicans have not yet decided their course of action for this election. Will they go to the polls and vote Republican as they normally do, even if they have to hold their noses? Will they vote but skip casting a ballot for certain offices to demonstrate their displeasure with Trump and GOP elected officials who have enabled him? Will they boycott the vote entirely? Or is there any measurable number who will do something that rarely happens these days: defect and cast a vote for the other team?
If these disgruntled Republicans haven’t decided what course of action they will take, how can a pollster divine their intent?
The first big question in the wake of this election will be: What is the size of the Democratic House majority in the 120th Congress? Will it be 235 or more seats, or will they fall short of that threshold? If it’s much narrower, look for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the soon-to-be speaker, to have as miserable a life as current Speaker Mike Johnson. Tiny majorities mean leadership can be held hostage by their own members on any given day. Retirements, illnesses, and deaths in office can also easily turn such a majority into a minority.
The second big question will be: Can Democrats win a five-seat, John Fetterman-proof majority in the Senate, a majority that will not be subject to the whims of their least reliable member? Part of that equation is whether Democrats lose any of their own seats, specifically the open seats in purple Michigan or light-blue Minnesota and New Hampshire.
Democrats should stop looking at the national generic congressional ballot question. The footprint of competitive districts is less than half what it was in 1998, when I developed the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voting Index. The races that will decide the House majority are anything but representative of the country. These are redder than average; the big generic numbers do not reflect the much closer results in the races currently rated as toss-ups or as just leaning to one party or the other.
That is the real challenge for Democrats: The vast majority of these races do not offer the home-court or home-field advantages that a blue constituency would offer. Many aren’t even neutral; these are away games, in harder places to secure victories.
With so many races so close, polls are of little help in nailing down the level of gains for Democrats. The key is that many swing voters in this election will not be voting for Democrats as much as against Republicans, or abstaining from voting for GOP candidates, which is why this could be less of a blue wave than a red undertow.