Can Republicans Avoid Own-Goals in ‘26?

As in 2022, the story of the midterms could hinge on candidate quality.

In one the most over-hyped annual events on the political calendar, President Trump Tuesday night will address a joint session of Congress. He will speak to a country that is no more or less divided than it was on Nov. 5, when he won a second term as president. Virtually every poll since he was sworn in 42 days ago has shown his approval rating within a few points of the 49.8 percent of the vote he received on Election Day. This past weekend, a CNN poll put Trump’s job-approval rating at 48 percent, and another by CBS/YouGov put it at 49 percent, both a bit higher than the 45 percent approvals in the February Gallup Poll and in an NPR/PBS poll conducted by Marist University released Monday morning.

Trump’s approval rating among Democrats was 10 percent in the CNN survey and 13 percent in both CBS and Marist. Among Republicans, Trump’s approval ratings were 90 percent in both CBS and CNN and 88 percent in Marist. There was some disparity among independents—34 percent approval inMarist, 41 percent in CNN, and 47 percent in CBS, but much of that probably comes from how independents are defined.

Care should be taken in not paying much attention to the instant polls that will be released Tuesday night and Wednesday following the speech. As tempting as it is to take a peek, we have yet to see a representative cross-section of Americans watching these kinds of events. Voters of the same party as the president generally watch at higher rates than those in the opposition, and normal, well-adjusted people tend not to tune in to such events at all.

This column argued last week that most voters’ minds are settled one way or the other on Trump. Those few in the middle will remain there for a while. Inflation and interest rates, which combine to constitute the cumulative rise in the cost of living, is likely to be much more decisive in their minds, asit was when Democrats lost the White House last year.

Voters certainly aren’t yet settled on whether Trump will have a Republican majority in the House in the second half of his term. For congressional and other key races, it may come down to what kind of candidates the GOP nominates in swing districts. Just as Democrats need to understand that blue and purple don’t mix well, the GOP has had ample opportunities to figure out that red and purple don’t, either.

The conventional wisdom about the 2022 midterm elections wrongly assumes that Republicans underperformed because of a backlash to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on abortion. Infact, the number of votes cast for Democrats in House races nationwide dropped compared with the previous midterm in 2018 by almost 10 million votes, while the GOP vote increased by over 3 million(the Democratic share dropped from 53 percent to 48 percent, the GOP share going from 44 to almost 51 percent). On a “macro” national level, the GOP did reasonably well.

The Republican underperformance was a function of the “micro” in about two dozen critical contests,specifically U.S. Senate races in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, and gubernatorial contests in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In the House, where Republicans gained only nine seats—far less than one might expect given President Biden’s 40 percent job-approval ratings—the GOP ran subpar candidates in Alaska, Michigan-03, NewHampshire-01, North Carolina-03, Ohio-09, Ohio-13, Virginia-07, and Washington-03. In each case, Republicans choose nominees who might have been fine in reliably red, conservative states or districts, but not in purple swing states or districts with plenty of truly independent voters.

It was a repeat of what plagued Republicans in two elections during the Obama presidency, costingthem Senate races in Delaware and Nevada in 2010 and two years later in Indiana and Missouri, delaying a GOP takeover of the Senate until 2014, when they fielded a more prudent batch of nominees.

So do GOP state and local leaders, as well as their primary voters, choose to run and nominate candidates who can win competitive general elections, or do they want to choose on the basis of ideological purity? As my old friend, the late, great columnist Mark Shields, used to say, “I would rather be a member of a church seeking converts than one trying to drive out heretics.” Talk that some of those convicted but then pardoned for their activities on Jan. 6, 2021, may run for office issurely sending a shudder down the spines of GOP leaders and strategists.

On a less dramatic level, keep an eye on whether Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenges Sen.John Cornyn in that state’s Republican primary. One wonders whether a Democrat might have a chance if Paxton were the GOP standard bearer, whereas a Democrat would have no chance against Cornyn.

Former Rep. Collin Allred might have been better off forgoing his 2024 Senate race in Texas until next year if it looks like Paxton might take out Cornyn. Then again, Texas could prove to be another heartbreaker for Democrats who have fantasized about being competitive in a state that last elected a Democrat statewide 30 years ago, in 1994. Six years earlier in 1988, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen was the last Democrat to win a Senate race in the Lone Star State.

This article was originally published for the National Journal on March 3, 2025.