Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
An Ipsos/WP poll shows Democrats with only a slight lead in the congressional generic ballot.
There is a lot of evidence to support the idea that both parties are unpopular, as that Ipsos/Washington Post poll affirms. And that’s what you’d expect in a nation in which voters increasingly see themselves as independents.
Still, the problem for the GOP is that Democrats and Democratic leaners who loathe their own party are still fired up to vote against Republicans.
Democrats in the Post poll enjoy a 10-point advantage over Republicans on voter enthusiasm, 8 points more than in 2018, when Democrats romped. “And more than 7 in 10 Democrats say it is ‘more important’ to vote in 2026 than in previous midterm elections,” says the Post, “compared with just over half of Republicans.”
Now think back to that tied generic ballot of July 2010. The same poll that boosted morale at the Obama White House showed Republicans with a double-digit lead on voter enthusiasm.
And it goes on from there. In July 2014, Democrats were actually ahead in generic congressional ballot polls, but the enthusiasm edge at the time belonged squarely to Republicans.
The polls in July 2018 turned out to be very predictive of the 8-point stomping Democrats delivered in House votes nationally on their way to the best midterm for their party since the Watergate washout of 1974. No surprise that they had the edge on enthusiasm, too.
Four years later, summertime polls in 2022 started cropping up in July showing Democrats actually in the lead on the generic ballot. And, yet again, the party in power started talking seriously about holding the House. And while the Republicans failed to deliver on their own overhyped promises of a red wave, the ripple was enough to take back the House.
The best evidence for the GOP’s fizzle wasn’t in the generic ballot but, again, in the measurement of enthusiasm. After the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Democrats rallied and closed the gap with Republicans. They might not have been willing to come out to boost a faltering Joe Biden, but Democrats were absolutely willing to come vote against Republicans.
Just more than 100 days before the elections, can Republicans replicate a similar enthusiasm booster for a base dispirited by high prices, the Iran war, very swampy behavior in Washington and a president who’s still trying to settle old scores?
Whenever incumbent parties are losing, they say they want a “choice not a referendum.” That’s what Republicans are saying this time with their “hate election” business. The problem for that plan is that a lot of Democrats already hate their own party, but they definitely hate Trump more.
The Iran War is getting worse, and oil prices are rising again. The economic outlook might brighten this fall, but for GOP fortunes, any improvement will be too little, too late. Perceptions bake in by Labor Day.
