Before the government shutdown hit Washington in October, the political landscape looked fairly stable – if such a word may actually be used to describe any moment during the rather tumultuous Trump administration.
Democrats were confident to be poised to have the upper hand in next year’s election, mostly because the opposition party has always gained House seats in midterms since 2002, but internal ideological disputes over the direction of the party and the lack of a proper national leader raised constant uncertainties about the path forward. President Trump, on the other hand, despite carrying the burden on the incumbency was holding quite steady in terms of approval ratings. Most importantly, the GOP only narrowly trailed Democrats in generic ballot polls, a far cry from the 9-point lead Democrats enjoyed in 2018 before a blue wave that gave former Speaker Nancy Pelosi a 36-seat majority in the House.
The perceived stability that reigned in the face of the Trump’s administration scandals, coupled with red states’ redistricting efforts aimed at unseating a hefty number of Democrats in the House and the narrowing number of swing, persuadable voters raised the GOP’s hopes of pulling off something unheard of in the last two decades and keep unified control of Congress even for the second half of Trump’s second term. As of the last week of September, even traders on Kalshi gave Speaker Johnson a more than 40% chance of holding the gavel through 2028.
The Fall
Republicans lost the shutdown PR battle, as Democrats hammered home the message that the GOP was willing to worsen American’s healthcare and they got trounced in gubernatorial elections in states where Trump had made inroads into as liberals focused on voters’ concerns over inflation and the cost of living while the President, who structured his 2024 campaign on those same issues is seen by more and more American as out of touch and ineffective when it comes to their economic concerns.
What’s more, instead of working towards a solution to prevent the Obamacare subsidies or more effectively touting the effects of the fiscal legislation they passed early in the year, Trump and Congressional Republicans got bogged down in the ever-lasting Epstein scandal, voting for a full release of the related files only after a massive pressure campaign from the public and a few rank-breakers.
This initially made GOP leadership look more interested in optics than in protecting his victims and exposed momentous cracks inside the MAGA coalition, as hard-right firebrand and one of the president’s more fervent supporters in his reelection bid, now former Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, sparred with Trump over his reluctance to release the files and ultimately announced her resignation from the House over the internal feud with the President and Congressional leadership. But her criticism of Trump went further than his handling of the scandal concerning Epstein and may anticipate big headaches for the President. Greene accused Trump of failing to live up to his motto “America First”, focusing too much on foreign affairs and disregarding Americans’ struggles with the economy and healthcare.
A Declining Narrative
In fact, as Trump maintains that the economy is doing great and refuses to recognizes Americans’ struggles to get by, it looks as if the President has suddenly lost control over his own narrative. As his words clash with the reality voters feel first hand every day, Trump seems to have lost inexplicable power in public communication and his ability to set the narrative over the issues that favor him most. While voters’ opinion of the second Trump administration remained fairly steady in light of its immigration crackdown, gutting of the federal workforce or the deployment of militia in American cities, its ineffectiveness in addressing widespread concerns over the cost of healthcare and affordability may be causing a remarkable backlash against the administration from which Presidents rarely recover before the midterms.
In spite of a growing political polarization, President Trump lost major ground in public polls since the beginning of the fall. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans approve of his performance as President. This is even worse that Biden’s numbers at this point, and notably represents a 11-point shift compared to October, when the President sat “just” 13 points underwater.
Maybe even more worryingly for the GOP, it increasingly looks like Americans’ dissatisfaction of Trump is turning into active support for the Democratic Party. Lackluster reception of the first month of the Trump didn’t significantly affect their perspective 2026 congressional vote; by the end of September, voters said they would vote for Democrats over the GOP for Congress by just 2 points, according to the DDHQ polling average. That slim margin, which would all but guarantee a Democratic victory in the House, more than doubled to a 5% GOP deficit at the beginning of December.
Even assuming Republicans are able to squeeze out any additional seats through redistricting, it seems highly unlikely that any party could win a majority despite losing the national popular vote by 5 points. In 2024, Republicans won the 218th seat (PA-07) by just 1%, despite winning the popular vote by 2.6 points. It’s highly likely that Hakeem Jeffries could win the gavel should Republicans lose nationally by 5 points.
But What About the Senate?
On top of that, while Republicans have been bullish about keeping control of the Senate, where they enjoy a 53-seat majority and an 4-seat breathing room considering Vice President Vance’s role as a possible tie-breaker, a D+5 environment may well end up opening important opportunities for Democrats in the upper chamber.
The road for Chuck Schumer’s party is particularly bumpy: first of all, they need to hold onto a handful of states (like Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire) where Trump either won in 2024 or came close. Then, the road to 51 seats passes through flipping the two most vulnerable GOP-held seats: Maine, the only state won by Harris represented by a Republican senator, and North Carolina, where popular former Governor Roy Cooper has a real shot at becoming the Democrat to win a federal statewide race since 2008.
This is the “easy” part. The hard feat Democrats need to pull of in order to gain control of the upper chamber is flipping at least two ruby red states that went for Trump three out of three times. Those states are Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Florida, and Alaska. While the task is indeed arduous, a nationwide D+5 environment coupled with a few local factors may actually bring Democrats back into the mix. In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown is running to reclaim a seat he lost by just 5% in 2024 as Trump won the state by 12%.
The same reasoning may be applied to Alaska, where former Rep. Mary Peltola seems set to run for Senate, Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton may become a serious liability for the GOP should he win the nomination, or even Iowa, where unpopular incumbent Senator Joni Erst is reportedly considering retirement.
In short: if Trump is not able to pull a trick and reverse the negative unpopularity spiral he got stuck into, the GOP may be poised for a sound defeat in the midterm elections.
