Conservative talk-show host Steve Deace wrote earlier this week, “Iowa House Republicans were informed by their own pollsters that if you are in a +15 district you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a +10 district you’re underwater, and that this might end up being an even worse midterm environment than 2006.”
Similarly, Mark Halperin says he’s hearing that, “while public polls are horrendous for Republicans, the private ones are worse.”
I don’t know if Deace or the consultants talking to Halperin are correct. But I do know that when the president’s job approval is around 40 percent or below, and the national average price of gas is nearly $4.50 a gallon, and the national average price of diesel is $6.50 a gallon, the president’s party should expect to get crushed. The midterm gerrymandering of U.S. House district lines will mitigate it a bit, but . . . Republicans are angry about gas prices and the cost of living, too.
Why the sudden panicked tone among Republicans? I think up until about a week or two ago, Republicans may have been thinking, “Eh, maybe as the Persian Gulf calms down, gas prices will start to come down, people drive less in autumn, so demand will go down a bit.” Nope.
Republican candidates and their strategists may well have also believed that while President Trump spent much of this summer discussing the White House ballroom and his planned victory arch and the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool stuff all summer, after Labor Day he would show a renewed focus and vigor on helping Republicans. And since then it’s been a midterm convention up against NFL games that didn’t move the needle, a buddy-buddy appearance with Mamdani, and being all smiles with Xi Jinping. Trump’s head and heart just aren’t focused on reelecting Republicans in the midterms, and it shows.
Could the Republican base “come home” in the final weeks? Sure, and it probably will to some degree. Maybe even enough to save Ken Paxton in Texas. But this is a particularly bad midterm environment, probably comparable to past wave years like 2006, 2010, and 2014, and it’s hard to see how much can change in the final six weeks.