It's His Party. It's Not His Senate

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Trump endorsed Ken Paxton for the Senate in Texas and secured the defeat of Rep. Thomas Massie in a KY primary.  Adam Wren and Samuel Benson at POLITICO:

“Those so-called victories over the last couple weeks are just a mirage. They are self-owns,” said one senior Senate Republican operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly about frustration with the White House. “We’re not actually beating Democrats, and we’re not actually advancing legislation. Instead, gas is up 45% due to our actions and the President’s decision to go to war with Iran. He’s focused on the ballroom. He’s announced a $1.8 billion restitution fund with zero details or congressional authority to do so. It just is crazy.”

In just one day, a conquered — and, consequently, unbridled — Sen. Bill Cassidy joined Democrats to become the 50th yes vote on a war powers resolution, opposed Trump’s ballroom funding in reconciliation and called Trump’s freshly picked Paxton a “felon.” And that was just day three of Cassidy unchained.

Cassidy is not alone. Trump’s ballroom funding is stalled, the SAVE America Act is mired in the Senate and Majority Leader John Thune is pushing back on his desire to fire the parliamentarian. That’s not to mention the pushback even from the likes of the friendlier senator from Louisiana, John Kennedy, who expressed doubt about the Justice Department’s $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund.

“There are still many, many months to go before the election, and this president is going to have to continue to deal and work with, and partner with, or battle with this group of lawmakers,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters Tuesday. “Even though Bill Cassidy lost his primary, he is still a voting member of the Senate until January. … So the president may have just opened some opportunities for people.”

Now Cornyn could join their ranks. After Trump endorsed Paxton, the senior Texas senator faces increasingly slim chances of surviving next week’s runoff election. Should he lose, Cornyn will be liberated to vote his conscience — unmoved by threats of further political vengeance from Trump — for the final months of his term.

Paxon could still win, but only if Republicans divert millions of dollars from North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, and other competitive races.

Gerrymanders and Waves

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Bill Scher at The Washington Monthly:

While it’s likely that Democrats will maintain a healthy generic congressional ballot lead heading into Election Day, the math linking the national House popular vote to House seats is murkier than ever. In 2006, a Democratic 7.9-point popular vote advantage translated to 233 House seats, a net gain of 30. In 2010, the Republicans leveraged a 6.8-point vote edge into 257 seats, a net gain of 63. Eight years later, an 8.4-point margin gave Democrats 40 more seats, bringing their total to 241.

Today, thanks to increased political polarization, geographic sorting, and aerobic gerrymandering, political handicappers envision fewer competitive House districts, which means big popular vote swings may not translate into big numbers of seat flips. That’s why political handicappers such as The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter classify relatively few House districts, just 18, as toss-ups with another 17 as leaning towards one party (12 Democrat, five Republican). The other 400 are considered likely or solidly with a party.

Still, a strong political wind typically blows most toss-up districts towards the popular vote winner. In 2018, Democrats won 21 of the 30 toss-ups, or 70 percent, according to Cook. Moreover, Cook’s race ratings shifted in the Democrats’ favor over the course of the year, as often happens when political analysts receive more district-level poll data. Twelve districts considered toss-ups on May 18 were moved to the “Lean Democratic” or “Likely Democratic” columns by November, and Democrats swept those races. Plus, they picked up three seats from the “Lean Republican” and “Likely Republican” columns.

This November, based on today’s Cook ratings, if Democrats sweep their Lean and Likely races and pick up 70 percent of the toss-ups, they will win 219 seats, just one more seat sufficient for a majority. And that would only mean a net gain of four seats, well below the post-war 25-seat average. A big reason is the explosion of Republican gerrymandering greenlighted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s rollback of the Voting Rights Act, coupled with the Democrats’ loss at the Virginia Supreme Court, scotching their voter-approved gerrymander. As Amy Walter explained to the New York Times, before the judicial rulings, Cook classified 217 House seats as at least leaning Democratic; now that number is down to 207.

Polling Floors and Midterm Waves

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Nate Cohn at NYT:

In this morning’s latest New York Times/Siena poll, whether Mr. Trump really has a high floor is starting to be put to the test.

Just 37 percent of Americans approve of his performance as president, a drop of four percentage points from the last Times/Siena poll in January and his lowest approval rating in any Times/Siena survey in either term.

A four-point decline isn’t necessarily huge, but it puts Mr. Trump’s ratings in new political territory. While recent presidencies have often been unpopular and polarizing, no president’s approval rating has been under 38 percent for more than a few days in the last 17 years, according to our average. If there has been a floor during this partisan era of politics, Mr. Trump’s ratings today have fallen to it.

...

The most immediate political consequence is that Democrats appear increasingly well positioned for the midterm elections in November. The poll shows Democrats have a double-digit lead, 50 percent to 39 percent, when registered voters are asked which party’s candidate they’ll support for Congress. That’s a notable shift from Times/Siena polls earlier this cycle — which showed Democrats up two to five points.

Anything like it would easily overcome the Republicans’ redistricting advantage in the House and suggest that Democrats could be highly competitive in the Senate. And although there’s still a long time until the election, Democrats held an even larger 14-point lead among those who said they were “almost certain” or “very likely” to vote.

...

The case of George W. Bush is instructive. At almost the exact same stage of Mr. Bush’s second term, the combination of the war in Iraq and high gas prices dragged his approval rating to about where Mr. Trump’s ratings are today. His ratings ultimately fell into the 20s, but it didn’t happen overnight. On average, Mr. Bush’s approval rating fell by less than one point per month for the rest of his term — which so happens to be the rate that Mr. Trump has been losing support over the last few months. For his approval rating to keep falling, Mr. Bush had to lose the support of longtime fans and Republicans. It can take a while.

If the conflict lasts long enough for Mr. Trump to keep bleeding support, Republicans might face something a lot worse than a bad midterm. A midterm defeat was likely even before the war began — it’s the usual fate of parties in power, after all — but the president’s party usually rebounds relative to that for the next presidential election. If Mr. Trump’s approval rating stays in the 30s, it won’t be so easy to assume Republicans will rebound. In the polling era, there are no examples of the president’s party retaining the White House when the president’s approval rating is under 40 percent. More often, the election is a rout.

Cassidy Loses

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  Sen. Bill Cassidy voted to convict Trump in the second impeachment.  He tried to regain Trump's favor by casting the deciding vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as HHS secretary.  It did not work.

 Michael Gold at NYT:

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana on Saturday lost his Republican primary and the chance to seek a third term, after President Trump targeted him for defeat in retaliation for voting to convict him in his impeachment trial five years ago.

In a result that underscored the durability of Mr. Trump’s grip on his party, Representative Julia Letlow, the president’s chosen candidate, finished well ahead, drawing about 45 percent of the vote. John Fleming, the state treasurer and a former Trump administration official, edged out Mr. Cassidy to finish second, with about 28 percent of the vote.

Both Ms. Letlow and Mr. Fleming will advance to a runoff on June 27, according to The Associated Press.

Neither secured a majority of votes. But Mr. Cassidy, who voted to remove Mr. Trump in 2021 for inciting insurrection and has clashed with the Make America Healthy Again movement over vaccines, could not even secure enough support in his state to stay in the race, finishing with around 25 percent of the vote.

Farm Belt Woes in a Midterm Election Year

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Mike Allen at Axios:

 The big picture: Mark Mueller — a northeast Iowa farmer and president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association — tells Axios that the current landscape is tougher than at any time since the 1980s farm crisis, when interest rates soared and exports plunged, triggering agricultural bank failures.Bankruptcies are rising. Lenders are becoming more reluctant to loan to farmers. "There's going to be fewer farmers next year than this year," Mueller says.

Farmers are grappling with a confluence of forces:

• Skyrocketing energy prices triggered by the Iran war. Diesel is up 60% from last year.
• Spiking fertilizer prices and shortages after Iran blocked shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. 70% of farmers say they can't afford the fertilizer they need.
• Disrupted export markets tied to President Trump's tariffs and Chinese import restrictions.
• Global drought and other weather pressures.

Several states with a high concentration of agricultural jobs have competitive Senate elections.  There is precedent.  In 1986, Robert Shogan wrote at LAT:

The farms and small towns of this region have traditionally been the GOP’s electoral backbone and its ideological heart, giving life to the party’s ingrained conservative ethic of hard work and self-reliance. Yet the farm economy on which much of the Midwest depends is undergoing a dramatic, apparently continuing decline. And in many places, Republican candidates are in jeopardy in this fall’s elections--a development that poses new dangers to GOP hopes of achieving majority status.

And even if many individual Republican officeholders survive on Election Day, there are indications that the farm crisis has cost the GOP a historically important opportunity to expand on its Reagan-era gains by taking some of the shine off Republicanism. In Iowa, for example, Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley says that without the farm recession, “the Republicans would have a landslide victory in Iowa this fall. With it, there are major problems.”

Prat Videos in LA Mayor Race

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

pic.twitter.com/YPrZIS0Mp1

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) May 12, 2026

Angela Yang at NBC:

Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt isn’t a superhero.

But a slew of recent viral AI-generated videos portray him as Los Angeles’ lone savior — helping thrust his mayoral campaign against Mayor Karen Bass and City Council member Nithya Raman into the spotlight in recent weeks.

Many of the videos, created by filmmaker Charlie Curran, cast Pratt in cinematic, hero-style scenarios: battling Bass in a lightsaber duel while California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris scheme behind the scenes or appearing as a Batman-like figure opposite a Joker-esque Bass. The posts have been viewed millions of times on social media.

Pratt has denied involvement, calling the clips “fan-made” in a since-deleted Instagram video. He has reposted several of them on X while sharing his own “man-made” campaign videos that feature video of his wife, fellow “The Hills” alum Heidi Pratt, and their son navigating life after their house burned down in the Palisades Fire.

The Batman video is a ripoff of a 2025 anti-Trump video::

 

🇺🇸🍾 MAGA BALLROOM 2028 - You are invited to the grand opening of the Beautiful Ballroom. A new chapter. An AI experiment #maga #democracy pic.twitter.com/ShN1XoQ9C6

— Ari K (@arikuschnir) August 6, 2025

Buying Influencers

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Lia Russell at the Sacramento Bee:

 Isaiah “Zay Dante” Washington normally posts about pop culture and sports to his 1.8 million TikTok followers as @zayydante. His most viral videos include skits about dueling Drake and Kendrick Lamar tracks and parodies amplifying more serious lyrical messages in popular party music. 

In March, he briefly pivoted by interviewing governor candidate Tom Steyer, asking the billionaire climate change activist to square his populist platform with his wealth and how he intended to fight his fellow patricians knowing “how capitalism has scorned young people.” 

Steyer’s campaign paid Washington $10,000 to post to Instagram, YouTube and TikTok under his former handle @relatableisaiah, which now links to @zayydante, per campaign expenditures. According to a strategy memo obtained by The Sacramento Bee, Steyer’s campaign has approached other content creators to boost him online for $10 per video, with more promised if they reach a certain threshold of views. 

...

“Many voters are critical of Tom Steyer because of his billionaire status, lack of experience and previous investments. Rather than pretending that these things don’t exist, acknowledge and relate to voters’ concerns and explain why you still believe Steyer is the strongest candidate despite them,” the Steyer memo read. It asks creators to post three to four videos weekly without mentioning him or the governor’s race. “

This content should still be related to policies he supports, for instance, videos about abolishing ICE, taxing the rich, AI regulation, climate change, free universal education, ending corporate influence in politics, etc. This will help your content reach more audiences and build audience trust,” the memo said.

The memo instructs creators who sign on to make new social media accounts under usernames that reflect their names or a nickname, avoiding brands, random numbers or anything that looks like spam. They then upload them for approval to the app SideShift, which recruits creators to make content for companies like the Kalshi prediction market, Paramount and the Wasserman Group.

Coming to Democratic Attack Ads Near You...

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Despite gerrymandering wins, things look bad for the GOP in part because the Iran War has gone badly.  Because of the war, the economy is foundering.

Allen Smith at NBC:

President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he is not weighing the economic burden of the Iran war on everyday Americans when negotiating a deal with the country’s leadership.

Speaking on the White House South Lawn before departing for a diplomatic trip to China, Trump was asked to what extent “Americans’ financial situations” were motivating him to make a deal with Iran.

“Not even a little bit,” Trump replied. “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing — we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

Ariel Edwards-Levy at CNN:

A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds that 77% – including a majority of Republicans – say that Trump’s policies have increased the cost of living in their own community. Roughly two-thirds of Americans say that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country. And Trump’s approval rating stands at 30% on the economy, a career low.

 Zachary Basu at Axios:

The big picture: The affordability crisis that fueled Trump's return to power has become a five-alarm threat to his presidency — even as GDP growth, fueled largely by the AI boom, remains strong on paper.

1. Prices are surging: Inflation spiked to 3.8% in April as the Iran war pushed the national average price of gas above $4.50 a gallon.Economists fear the energy shock is beginning to ripple through the broader economy, pushing up the cost of groceries, airfare, electricity and other essentials Americans rely on every day.

2. Paychecks are shrinking: Tuesday's inflation report showed that prices are outpacing wages for the first time in three years, erasing gains in real purchasing power.American households have absorbed a rise of nearly 30% in consumer prices since the pandemic — a cumulative toll that has never fully healed, Axios' Courtenay Brown reports.

3. Debt is mounting: Americans are increasingly leaning on credit cards and loans to absorb rising costs, with consumer borrowing posting its biggest monthly jump in March since late 2022.The personal savings rate fell to 3.6% in March, its lowest level since 2022, as lower-income households burn through savings to cover essentials.

4. Confidence is collapsing: Consumer sentiment has cratered to record lows as Americans grow pessimistic about the economy and their own financial futures.A new YouGov/Economist poll found that 59% say the economy is getting worse, while just 15% say it's improving. More than two-thirds of Americans say the country feels "out of control."

5. Main Street is souring: The National Federation of Independent Business says optimism around future business conditions and expansion plans has fallen to its lowest level since before Trump's reelection.

The Akin Ploy in the LA Mayor Race

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy.  And it has happened in 2025 and 2026.

Ha! This ad is designed to actually HELP Spencer Pratt consolidate conservative votes and make the top two in the primary, pushing Raman (the lefty Bass fears) into third place. #Garvey https://t.co/JOffW61lnq

— Mike Murphy (@murphymike) May 10, 2026

 

Consumer Sentiment Darkens

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Despite gerrymandering wins, things look bad for the GOP in part because the Iran War has gone badly.

Jeff Cox at CNBC:

Surging gas prices due to the Iran war sent consumer sentiment to a new low in the early part of May, according to a University of Michigan survey Friday.

The school’s closely watched Survey of Consumers posted a 48.2 preliminary reading, down 3.2% from April’s prior record swoon and off 7.7% from a year ago. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 49.7.

Inflation fears were the primary driver of the continued trend lower in consumer attitudes.

The trend, which also saw the current conditions index tumble 9%, is “owing to a surge in concerns about high prices both for personal finances as well as buying conditions for major purchases,” the survey’s director, Joanne Hsu, said.

One-third of respondents mentioned gas prices as the biggest cause of concern. However, another one-third also cited tariffs — both connected to President Donald Trump, who launched an attack on Iran in late February and announced an aggressive slate of tariffs in April 2025.

“Taken together, consumers continue to feel buffeted by cost pressures, led by soaring prices at the pump,” Hsu said. “Middle East developments are unlikely to meaningfully boost sentiment until supply disruptions have been fully resolved and energy prices fall.

World War G: Republicans Score Wins in VA and TN

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Sabrina Moreno at Axios:

The Virginia Supreme Court overturned the results of the state's redistricting referendum, which voters narrowly approved last month.

Why it matters: The ruling upends one of the most closely watched redistricting fights in the country.It follows months of legal challenges over whether the referendum was unconstitutional.

The big picture: The decision effectively blocks Democrats from redrawing congressional maps mid-decade.That's after the state spent $5.2 million to pay for the special election, and outside groups raised nearly $100 million to sway voters.

The new map would have been in effect for the November midterms and was expected to shift the state's congressional split from 6-5 favoring Democrats to 10-1.

 Katherine Chui and Emily Cochrane at NYT:

When the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 last week, Republicans saw new political opportunities across the South. Congressional districts that were considered strongholds for Democrats, often with majority Black populations, could be redrawn for the first time in decades.

Among Southern states, Tennessee was the first to redo its map, which Gov. Bill Lee signed into law on Thursday. The new map breaks the Ninth Congressional District — a longtime Democratic base encompassing Memphis — into three Republican-leaning districts.

The new map divides areas of Memphis where most of the population is Black among three districts with overwhelmingly white populations, eliminating the state’s sole majority Black district in the process.

The Thumpin' Redux? 2006 and 2026 Parallels

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Theodoric Meyer at WP:

“A year ago, no one thought we had a chance to take back the Senate,” Schumer said. “I was one of the very few. And I laid out a plan which is now working.”

For months, Democrats have been far more bullish about retaking the House, which requires flipping only a few seats. But Trump’s unpopularity has made Republicans in both chambers appear more vulnerable.

Thirty-seven percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. Sixty-two percent disapprove, the highest level of either of Trump’s terms. Trump’s approval rating was even lower for his handling of the economy and inflation, which both parties view as crucial to the midterms.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found Trump faring even worse: 34 percent of Americans approved of his performance, and 64 percent disapproved.

Schumer said the political environment feels similar to 2006, when Democrats capitalized on discontent with the Iraq War in President George W. Bush’s second term to pick up six Senate seats and flipped the chamber against the odds.

“There’s a very unpopular president, there’s a war on, and it’s a really hard Senate map,” J.B. Poersch, who runs Senate Majority PAC, the flagship Democratic super PAC in Senate races, said in an interview. “Those are all similarities to ’06. We won in a scenario where we weren’t supposed to win [in 2006] because the map was so challenging — and this one’s challenging, too.”

Trump Clout in IN Primrary, Bad Sign for GOP in Michigan

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Susan Page at USA TODAY:

He's still the boss.

President Donald Trump is beset by rising gas prices, falling approval ratings and an unpopular war in Iran. But in the Indiana primary May 5 he demonstrated his continued grip on the Republican Party by delivering a thumping to a half-dozen state senators who defied his demands to redraw congressional lines.

Of seven GOP senators who earned his ire, five lost their party's nominations to challengers the president had endorsed, with one race still too close to call.

It was an unlikely test, and an expensive one, in contests that typically attract little attention.

"Trump is perhaps not as popular in my district as he once was," Spencer Deery, one of the incumbent senators, told CNN while the votes were being counted, "but he is still overwhelmingly popular."

Patrick Svitek at CNN:

Michigan Democrats on Tuesday won a special election for a state Senate seat in another party over-performance after the district was almost evenly divided in the last presidential election.

Democratic firefighter Chedrick Greene defeated GOP lawyer Jason Tunney for a seat to determine whether Democrats would retain control of the state Senate. With an estimated 93% of votes in, Greene led Tunney by 19 points.

 

Stealing the 2026 Election?

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.  Just as an authoritarian leader would, he is abusing the legal process to punish his opponents.  If Democrats win the midterms, he might bring the hammer down.

Thomas B Edsall at NYT:

Not one to keep a secret, Trump made what he would like to do very clear during a Feb. 3 bill signing ceremony at the White House:

Look at the facts that are coming out. Rigged, crooked elections. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta. Look at some of the places that … horrible corruption on elections, and the federal government should not allow that.

The federal government should get involved.

The states, Trump claimed, “are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

...

The threat posed by Trump has rattled experts at the Brennan Center and Keep Our Republic, along with scholars who study Trump’s real and claimed powers.

Two of the foremost students of these powers are Joel McCleary, a founder of Keep Our Republic, and Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center. Some, but not all, of their attention has been focused on the secretive creation of presidential emergency action documents, which have come to be known as “PEADs.”

McCleary described his findings and his concerns in a series of emails, many including reports he has written. In an April 23 report, “Continuity of Government, Presidential Emergency Action Documents and the Evolution of Executive Emergency Powers,” McCleary wrote that the president “possesses emergency powers that are virtually unknown to the public, to most members of Congress and to much of the federal judiciary. These powers — codified in classified presidential emergency action documents” — allow

a single individual to suspend fundamental constitutional rights, detain civilians, seize property, impose martial law and censor communications.

They require only a presidential signature. No prior congressional approval is needed. No court reviews them before activation. No statutory mechanism exists for Congress to restrict or terminate these powers once invoked.

Dems' Poor Standing -- and Why It Might Not Matter

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP quote Scott Clement, the Post’s  polling director, on the perception that Democrats are “too liberal.” 

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Sunday found Trump’s approval rating is 25 percentage-points underwater among Americans overall, including a 21-point disapproval margin among registered voters. The same poll found Democrats’ advantage in overall support for Congress grew from two points in February to five points in the latest poll.

While Trump’s popularity is clearly flagging, the large gap between Trump’s disapproval ratings and Democrats’ smaller advantage in support for Congress has raised questions about whether the Democratic Party’s unpopularity will hamper its chances in this fall’s midterm election. In the last week, Lakshya Jain at the Argument posited that Democrats’ trust deficit on crime is keeping them from winning voters who don’t like Trump, while G. Elliot Morris argued most of the gap is due to “closeted Republicans” who Democrats shouldn’t expect to persuade anyway.

The Post-ABC-Ipsos poll sheds some new light on these issues. It confirms the overall pattern: 93 percent of registered voters who approve of Trump support Republicans for Congress, compared with 79 percent of voters who disapprove of Trump supporting Democrats. But the poll also asked whether each party’s views are “too liberal,” “too conservative,” or “about right,” finding 53 percent of Americans said the Democratic Party is too liberal, up from 46 percent who said this in 2013 (A slightly smaller 49 percent said the Republican Party is too conservative, up from 43 percent in 2013)

Focusing on Trump disapprovers, 61 percent of voters who think the Democratic Party is “too liberal” support Democrats for Congress, compared with 90 percent among voters who don’t think the party is too liberal. When filtering out Republicans, 73 percent of Trump disapprovers who say Democrats are too liberal support Democrats for Congress, compared with 91 percent of those who don’t think the party is too liberal.

How much does that matter? Not much. A simple statistical model controlling for partisanship and 2024 vote finds that viewing the Democratic Party as too liberal is associated with a 5-to-7 point shift in which party voters support in the midterms. But that is on a 0-to-100 scale. If the share of voters saying Democrats are too liberal dropped by 10 points, Democrats would only expect to gain a half a percentage point in support.

The early stage of the campaign is likely a bigger reason for Democrats’ underperformance on the generic ballot. A 2010 political science paper describes a “balance” theory “where the midterm campaign motivates some to vote against the party of the president in order to achieve policy moderation.” As the campaign progresses, vote preferences almost always move toward the out party.”

California Redboxing

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Seema Mehta at LAT:

Intriguing updates emerged on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra’s campaign website on Tuesday.

Highlighted in bright red text, and boxed by a red outline, was a game plan for attacking one of Becerra’s top rivals in the California governor’s race, billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental activist Tom Steyer.

But was that message meant for California voters or, perhaps, a more specific audience — the operatives running the newly formed big-money independent committees that are backing his campaign?

Becerra’s website may be using a practice known as “red boxing,” a nod to how campaigns signal what they want outside groups supporting them to focus on in their ads and other tactics. That strategy is used to avoid running afoul of laws prohibiting campaigns from directly coordinating with “independent” expenditure committees.

“What we’re looking at with the Becerra web page is a textbook example” of efforts to circumvent rules that disallow such coordination, said Aaron McKean, senior legal counsel for campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on fair elections. “It’s specifically calling out particular messaging and particular ways of communicating with voters ... as a way to get Super PACs, nominally independent spenders, to do the bidding of the campaign.”

...

Such practices are growing increasingly common — and increasingly lucrative. According to a 2024 article titled “Coordination in Plain Sight: The Breadth and Uses of ‘Redboxing’ in Congressional Elections” published in the Election Law Journal, more than 200 candidates for federal office used the tactic during the 2022 midterm election, and often received greater financial support from independent expenditure committees than candidates who did not embrace the strategy.

 

Gasoline, Iranamok, and the Midterms

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Things look bad for the GOP in part because the Iran War has gone bad.

Adie Tomer and Ben Swedberg at Brookings:

• The Iran conflict has raised U.S. gas prices by $1 per gallon, meaning the country’s median-earning, two-driver households will spend $70 more per month on gasoline—equal to about 1% of their post-tax income.
• Over 18 million U.S. households in the lowest-earning income quintile will be even more impacted, spending an extra 5% of their post-tax income on gasoline.
• Elevated gasoline prices will likely impact the midterm elections: The average constituent of a current Republican House member drives 26% more miles than the average constituent of a Democratic member.

Michael Birnbaum and Scott Clement at WP:

President Donald Trump’s war in Iran is as unpopular among Americans as the Iraq War during the year of peak violence in 2006 and the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, amid growing economic pain and fears of terrorism as a result of the military campaign.

Sixty-one percent of Americans say that using military force against Iran was a mistake, with fewer than 2 in 10 Americans believing that the U.S. actions in Iran have been successful. About 4 in 10 say it has been unsuccessful, while another 4 in 10 say it is “too soon to tell.” The polling numbers indicate a broadly unpopular war effort and growing economic fallout at a time when the White House has been trying to convince Americans that they are better off under Trump than under Democrats.

...

The historical comparison to the wars in Iraq and Vietnam — conflicts that polarized Americans in the moment and ultimately came to be seen as failures — is especially notable. It took years for the Iraq War, which was launched in March 2003, to reach the level of disapproval that Trump’s war has in just two months. Fifty-nine percent of Americans in mid-2006 said the war in Iraq was a mistake, while similar numbers felt the same about the war in Vietnam in the early 1970s, according to Gallup polls.

Americans were dying and getting wounded in far higher numbers in those eras, making the current opinions all the more striking. More than 50,000 Americans had died in Vietnam by 1971, when Gallup found that 61 percent of Americans said sending troops to fight there was a mistake. And by April 2006, the month before a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 59 percent of Americans said the Iraq War was a mistake, 2,402 U.S. troops had died there, and the U.S. military was embroiled in some of the bloodiest fighting of the conflict. The Pentagon has announced the deaths of 13 American service members so far in the war against Iran.

Maine Senate Race and the Big Picture

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills withdrew from the D Senate primary, leaving Graham Platner as the presumptive nominee to face Susan Collins in the fall.

Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP:

Mills’s decision — and the trajectory of her campaign — tells us a lot about this moment in politics. On paper, Mills was the undisputed favorite for the Democratic nominee. All Mainers knew her, many had voted for her multiple times, and she had the kind of track record that someone like Schumer, who was desperate to get her to run against Collins, thought would make her successful.

The opposite is true for Platner. He is a first-time candidate whose baggage is so significant that it would need to be checked, not carried on, when flying out of Bangor International Airport, including deleted Reddit comments that were dismissive of sexual assault and the Nazi symbol he had tattooed on his chest and later altered. Even some of his backers were skeptical of his staying power when he launched his campaign.

...

This race has taught political watchers a few things: Voters, especially Democrats who watched their party lose the 2024 presidential race against Trump, are angry with the politics of this moment and the status quo that got the nation to this point. That anger is so deep that candidates who look good on paper but hark back to the politics of yore are easily expendable for someone who, warts and all, makes them feel something.

Platner’s entire image embodies a slice of Maine that most people outside the state don’t understand. With his baggy sweatshirts, his ties to the water as the owner of an oyster farming business and even his gravelly voice, Platner clearly connected with Democrats on a deeper level. In a state that is known for judging people who are “from away,” Platner is notably not.

 Adam Wren with Dasha Burns at POLITICO quote Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM):

“I think there’s just a mood right now in the country where there’s so much economic pressure on hard-working regular folks, and you can either connect with that or not, and that’s how I’ve made decisions in these races: based on whether I think that person is going to do the best job of connecting with that frustration that regular people have right now.”

The deep unsettledness Heinrich describes is upsetting traditional Washington norms around electability, he told Playbook. “I just think who is electable is evolving, and our analysis of these races, and who’s going to be the strongest in a general, which is really what’s most important here, from a majority standpoint, needs to evolve with where the electorate is today.”

After all, that electorate is one that sided with a trail of controversial online comments from Platner regarding political violence, the military, police and more that drew months of attention and headlines.

“We’ve gotten over-analytical as a party, and sanitized and thinking about resumes,” Heinrich said. “None of these candidates are perfect, but I think there’s an expectation by voters today that if you seem perfect, you’re probably hiding something.”

 

Voting Rights And World War G

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog::

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, in the case of Louisiana v. Callais, struck down a Louisiana congressional map that a group of voters who describe themselves as “non-African American” had challenged as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. By a vote of 6-3, the justices left in place a ruling by a federal court that barred the state from using the map, which had created a second majority-Black district, in future elections. Although Wednesday’s ruling did not strike down a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, as Louisiana and the challengers had asked the court to do, Justice Elena Kagan suggested in her dissent (which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson) that the majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito had rendered the provision “all but a dead letter.”

Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns at POLITICO:

Excitable Republicans hailing the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act as the start of a golden age of neverending House majorities may need to pause and take breath.
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How far can they go this year? With the ruling less than 24 hours old — and with the midterms just six months away — there’s uncertainty about what’s possible. But even in a maximalist scenario for Republicans, none of the experts Playbook spoke to believed this ruling will net the GOP more than a handful of House seats in November.

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ABOUT THAT UNCERTAINTY: Four big factors will ultimately decide the extent of further Republican redistricting this year.

1. TIME PRESSURE: This was an extraordinary moment for the Supreme Court to drop this ruling. (In Louisiana, absentee ballots for next month’s primaries have already been sent out.) Those Southern states keen to redistrict before November are in for an almighty scramble. What’s possible will vary state to state.

2. GOP APPETITE: Not every state-level Republican will want to redraw maps on short notice. Some may see 2028 as a more realistic target. Others may be reluctant to move mid-decade at all. Don’t forget that state legislatures in Republican-run Indiana and Democratic-run Maryland already resisted pressure to accept redrawn maps this cycle.

3. TRUMP: The president remains the decisive factor. How hard the White House pushes for new maps this cycle remains an unknown factor, but may prove critical in how many states move immediately. Trump sounded keen yesterday —- “I would think that they would want to do it,” he told reporters — but had only just learned about the ruling.

4. LEGALITY: This wasn’t the “clean kill” Republicans hoped for, watering down rather than completely gutting Section 2 of the VRA. Experts believe there are legal uncertainties still to be ironed out. Pro-VRA litigation — even if ultimately fruitless — could slow the process down.

Democrats will likely retaliate.  (And after the midterms, they might control more legislative chambers.)

Reid J. Epstein at NYT:

Some Democrats who backed new redistricting commissions in the 2010s now look back on those efforts as tying one hand behind their back for the future.

“It seemed like a pitchfork moment. It did seem good,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The lesson is that there are some states that are never going to be able to do this. If you’re not going to do it nationally, you’re going to have an unlevel playing field.”

The California and Virginia referendums to let Democrats seize redistricting power represented mea culpas about political idealism that could spread to other blue states.

One of the nation’s oldest redistricting commissions is in Washington State, where voters in 1983 adopted a provision to shift map-drawing power from elected officials. Now Shasti Conrad, the state’s Democratic Party chairwoman, said that it could be undone if Democrats were to flip a handful of seats in the State Legislature and seize supermajority control next year.

If they do, Ms. Conrad said, Washington voters are likely to be asked in 2027 to allow lawmakers to enact a new congressional map. Now, Democrats hold eight of 10 House seats in the state.

“People have been asking, ‘What can Washington do with redistricting?’” Ms. Conrad said. “They’re seeing other states like Virginia do it, so why can’t we?”

Democratic regrets over their redistricting hurdles tend to quickly morph into the party’s most reliable political stance over the last decade: blaming Mr. Trump.

Generic Ballot, April

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Things look bad for the GOP.

From Emerson College Polling:

The April 2026 Emerson College Polling national survey of likely voters finds Democrats have a 10-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot, leading Republicans 50% to 40%. Ten percent are undecided.

“Democrats’ strength is driven by an increase in support among Hispanic voters, women, and independents,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “Hispanics break for Democrats by a 35-point margin, 61% to 26%, women by 21 points, 55% to 34%, and independents by 19 points, 50% to 31%.”

President Trump holds a 40% job approval rating and 56% disapproval among likely voters. This is a two-point decrease in the president’s approval and a five-point increase in disapproval since March. Data was collected before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“Trump is underwater among Hispanic voters, 70% to 29%, compared to this time last year when they were split: 44% disapproved and 41% approved,” Kimball said.

Voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, 56% to 38%, foreign policy, 54% to 39%, and immigration policy, 53% to 43%.