Republicans Are Staring Down A Midterm Bloodbath
Three major polls show Democrats opening commanding leads as voters revolt over soaring prices
If you didn’t think Republicans were in for a bad year next year, after the Democrats had a wildly impressive night earlier this month, new polling suggests they may be in more trouble than they’re letting on.
Polling from three pollsters (Marist, Marquette, and Verasight) all have the Democrats well ahead of their Republican opponents. Verasight and The Arguement’s poll has the Democrats ahead by six points, while Marquette has the party ahead by a shocking nine points.
But the most eye watering result came from Marist, who found the Democrats a whopping fourteen points ahead of the Republicans.
Such a massive swing to the Democrats may not be the likely scenario, but Marist’s fourteen point lead may be more of an indication of the potential height the Democrats could soar to next year.
Trump’s approval among the American people is likely to blame, given both Marist and Marquette found the President deep underwater with the American people at net approvals of negative eighteen percent and negative fourteen percent, respectively.
What is driving Trump’s disapproval with the American people is much less likely to be his focus on social and security issues, but more about economics. Remember, this is a man who promised to lower prices for Americans barely one year ago, and now they are higher than they have ever been, with his own policies not helping the situation.
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Overall, Marquette found that Trump is only above water on two issues, border security where his approval sits at 54 percent, and the Israel Hamas peace deal, where his approval is at 67 percent.
Every other issue, including immigration, finds Trump below water, with some issues providing a real shock to the lameduck president.
His net approval on tariffs, the one issue he has been the most full throated about and always eager to take more of, finds his net approval at negative twenty-six percent. The economy is not much better, with his net approval at negative twenty-eight percent.
The single biggest economic killer for Trump and the Republicans is inflation, which Marquette found Trump’s approval at a hellishly deep negative forty-four percent. Only his handling of the Epstein Files, the government shutdown, and his spontaneous decision to send billions to the libertarian president of Argentina as a bailout package rank lower.
So what do voters want Trump to actually focus on?
Issues such as drug trafficking from Latin America, Israel and Gaza, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine all clock in below 10 percent in terms of what Americans want Trump to prioritize.
Even Trump’s best issues, crime and immigration, only come in at 9 percent and 16 percent, respectively.
Far outstripping them all is lowering prices, of which fifty-seven percent of Americans want the Trump administration to prioritize as their top issue. That right there is exactly why the Republicans have been frantically trying to redraw the maps.
Speaking of which, a federal judge in Texas recently said Texas has to use the 2021 maps instead of their pro GOP 2025 maps for the 2026 midterms. Oops.
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If 57 percent of Americans want you to prioritize lowering the cost of living, and you are a president who is focused on tariffs as your primary economic lever, how might you imagine that is playing out?
YouGov has the answer to that, and when Americans were asked whether prices have increased or decreased thanks to tariffs imposed by Trump, an overwhelming majority (73 percent) said prices have either increased slightly or a lot as a result, with only 3 percent saying they have decreased.
That 73 percent of Americans included 92 percent of Democrats, which you would imagine would naturally be opposed to any Trump induced policy. However, the biggest shocker is the fact that 72 percent of independents and even 56 percent of Republicans say prices have increased as a result of Trump’s tariffs, both of which threaten to rip apart the MAGA coalition next year.
To put it mildly, Trump and the Republicans are fucked ten ways to Sunday if the economy does not improve before next year, and by all accounts it is set to get worse before it is going to get better. Real Bush second term vibes right now.
How Republicans will react, and what kind of strategy they are going to roll out next year to combat the Democrats, such as another fictional migrant caravan invading the southern border, will have to be seen.