President Trump will own this election—not in the sense that many of his MAGA supporters use the word “own,” expressing their desire to dominate and humiliate their liberal, “woke” adversaries, but rather in that he’ll have total responsibility for the outcome. Trump has repeatedly implored his supporters to pretend his name is on the ballot. Now, this seems to be happening in a way that he didn’t expect and shouldn’t want. Of course, scapegoats will be identified, tarred, and feathered, but the truth will be patently clear to anyone who cares to look and think.
There are plenty of signs that this is the most challenging political environment that Republicans have faced in well over a generation, maybe even since the Watergate election of 1974. All signs point to very high turnout among Democrats, particularly African American and Latino voters, with little indication that any progress the GOP made with younger male voters in 2024—likely the result of antipathy toward the Biden-Harris administration in the face of high inflation and interest rates—will stick now that the affordability shoe is on the other foot.
Sunday night’s release of the final round of New York Times/Siena University battleground-state polls reinforced a mountain of other evidence pointing to a disaster. Indeed, it is hard to point to any indicator that isn’t flashing extreme danger for the GOP.
The Times/Siena polling found Democrats well ahead in races for four Republican-held Senate seats: Kansas, Maine, Ohio, and Texas. They led more narrowly in Alaska and Iowa. The pollsters didn’t bother with North Carolina, where Republicans have thrown in the towel. The polling also showed Democrats were ahead in Michigan, although it was conducted before the trainwreck involving Abdul El-Sayed, the winner of the August Democratic primary, and Rep. Haley Stevens, the second-place finisher. It’s normally easier to be a gracious winner than loser, but there was little grace displayed by either in this case. Stevens’s career is effectively over. It is a bit doubtful that this episode will cost El-Sayed the election, but if Democratic primary voters go forward in 2028 and 2030 choosing extremely polarizing candidates, this could be a preview of coming attractions.
Putting a precise number on likely Democratic gains is very difficult. The difference between a net gain of just two or three seats, and one along the lines of six, seven, or eight could easily be a total of just 20,000 or 30,000 votes. Technically speaking, with the Senate now split between 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats, Democrats need a net gain of four seats to capture a majority. It might be wiser to say five seats, however, so as to ensure them a John Fetterman-proof majority in the upper chamber. The freshman senator, currently a Democrat, has a well-earned reputation for being the most erratic member in all of Congress.
The House flipping to Democrats has been a foregone conclusion for months; the only uncertainty is whether their net gain will be along the lines of 10-15 seats, or 25 seats. Could it go even higher than that?
Donald Trump is the elephant in the room for this election; indeed, he seems to be the elephant in every room. A consultant to a Republican gubernatorial nominee last week told me that each of the last two times Trump came to their swing state, they took a hit of a point or two, indicating that they really didn’t want him to come back. In fact, I got the impression that many GOP campaigns had to weigh the cost of a return Trump visit with a potential attack from him on Truth Social if they declined.
Two months ago, this column argued that the political environment for the GOP had deteriorated to the point that the three most likely scenarios for the party were “bad, really bad, or truly horrible.” It should never have gotten there. Republicans were protected by guardrails. Three decades of gerrymandering have left few congressional districts naturally competitive, and the House is less elastic than it was in previous bloodbath midterms. A party cannot lose a seat it doesn’t have; with Republicans holding 220 seats, there were fewer seats they could potentially lose.
In the Senate, rarely has any party gone into an election with a friendlier map than Republicans this year. The oft-cited statistic shows that 20 of the 22 GOP seats up this year are in states Trump won by double digits, plus North Carolina, which he carried three times by narrow margins. It goes even deeper than that: Six of the 22 GOP seats have not voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson; five more, not since Bill Clinton carried them in 1996.
Those guardrails now appear to have been dismantled. Eight months of surging energy prices, the result of Trump’s highly questionable and deeply unpopular decision not just to attack Iran on Feb. 28, but to do so without putting together a coalition of allies other than Israel, has resulted in incalculable political damage for Trump’s party. The initial closure and subsequent constriction of the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane, and the accompanying damage to energy infrastructure in the region, had the totally predictable impact: sky-high gasoline, diesel, fuel-oil, and fertilizer prices.
This was on top of Trump’s promiscuous use of tariffs, even against our neighbors and closest allies, with the equally predictable retaliation from our trading partners, creating a series of trade wars that jacked up prices on all manner of goods. Even voters who had never taken an economics class could figure out where this was headed.
What makes this situation so damaging to Republicans is that these policies seemed almost calculated to target one of the most loyal elements of the GOP base: those who lived in rural America, smaller cities, or exurbs. They drive the longest distances and are more likely to be driving pickup trucks, own farm equipment, use diesel and, oh yes, be hurt by tariffs and a liberalization on the importation of foreign beef. The fact that it came at the hands of a president that they had repeatedly voted for just made the pain even greater.
Exacerbating the situation is the growing perception that Trump’s real focus is not on the potential impact of his policies, but rather on demolition of the East Wing, construction of a $600 million White House ballroom, renovation of the Reflecting Pool, construction of an arch that would overshadow the entrance to Arlington Cemetery, a takeover of the Kennedy Center, and a goal of naming anything possible after himself.
Had Trump’s second term been patterned more like the first, the GOP would probably have a bad election, as is the norm for presidents at midterms, but not this bad. Republicans likely would have maintained a Senate majority, albeit one narrower than the current 53-47.
Now, however, there is every indication that Republican turnout will be extremely low, even by the lower standard of midterm elections. With Democrats having been monolithically and adamantly against Trump for some time, and three-quarters of independents having abandoned him and his party, low turnout among the Republican base looks likely to have devastating consequences. African Americans, particularly those in the Deep South, have taken personally the efforts to roll back Black congressional representation through the Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision and the extraordinary mid-decade redistricting. By all accounts, African American turnout is looking to be off-the-charts high, making long-shot Democratic Senate candidacies in South Carolina and Mississippi at least plausible.
It’s not just about policies. Trump’s “my way or the highway” approach to fellow Republicans who did not immediately do everything he wanted may well have cost the GOP as many as three Senate seats. If Joe or Jane Generic Republican were sitting behind the Resolute Desk, would Brian Kemp, the popular term-limited governor of Georgia who had refused to “find” Trump a 2020 victory in the Peach State, probably have run against freshman Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff? Probably so, and he’d have been more competitive. Ditto in North Carolina, where Sen. Thom Tillis would probably have run for a third term, perhaps even scaring Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper away from running. In Texas, Sen. John Cornyn would likely have won a runoff against Ken Paxton with support from the White House, and a Cornyn-James Talarico race would have focused on the Democrat’s liberal voting record in the state House rather than on questions about Paxton’s ethics and morality. A different Republican president would not have forced Darline Graham upon the South Carolina Republican Party, and they likely would have had a stronger nominee. Arguably, also, to the extent that Trump encouraged Vivek Ramaswamy to run for Ohio governor, another Republican might have bonded with voters more so than a tech multimillionaire.
The irony, of course, is that in our binary political system, when voters decide to severely punish one party, the result rewards the other party, whether they deserve it or not. Democrats have yet to understand why they lost the House in 2022, as well as the Senate and presidency in 2024, so what makes us think they will understand this year that they will be less victors than beneficiaries? They will owe this win to Trump, though they’re unlikely to see it that way. If they win in Michigan, Minnesota, and Maine, it will be despite themselves.