Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Historically, there’s a reasonably strong relationship between presidential approval nationwide and midterm outcomes. It’s not a perfect correlation — in 2022, for instance, Joe Biden’s approval ratings were worse than Barack Obama’s had been in 2010 (and as bad as Mr. Trump’s today), but Democrats held their own and nearly retained full control of Congress. But the relationship is good enough to say that Republicans are in trouble.
How much trouble? If the only thing you knew was Mr. Trump’s 40 percent approval rating (and the number of Republican-held seats), you might guess that Republicans would lose 30 seats in the House. And while there have been exceptions, this year’s midterms don’t look like one of them.
Take the 2022 midterms, when Republicans failed to capitalize on Mr. Biden’s unpopularity. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the persistent Republican effort to overturn the 2020 election kept voters atypically focused on the actions of the party out of power. “Democracy” and “abortion” rose as top issues; Mr. Biden, while unpopular, didn’t attract the spotlight. It was enough to give Democrats an advantage among highly engaged voters, which in many key states mitigated the usual midterm turnout disadvantage for the party in power. Democrats demonstrated their advantage with a string of impressive showings in special congressional elections before the November election.
There are still many months to go, but for now it’s hard to see a similar set of factors aiding Republicans. And it’s easy to imagine how this election could be a referendum on the president. He’s center stage, and that’s the way he likes it. The Democratic Party’s weaknesses, while real, are quite ordinary. There’s nothing that seems likely to fundamentally shift the most important issues at stake to the advantage of Republicans, as the court’s decision in Dobbs did for Democrats. And this time, the same Democratic turnout edge that hurt Republicans in 2022 will probably supercharge Democratic strength.
In the run-up to the 2024 election, this newsletter devoted a lot of energy to downplaying strong Democratic showings in special elections. I can’t offer similar reassurance to Republicans this time. For one, midterm electorates tend to have a bigger share of highly engaged voters than presidential electorates, making them much more like special electorates. If you have a clear advantage among the “special” electorate, you probably also do among the “midterm” electorate, albeit to a lesser extent. And this time, it’s clear that the Democratic strength isn’t merely a matter of turnout: There are many Republican-leaning voters backing Democrats.
