This blog continues the discussion we began with Epic Journey: The 2008 Elections and American Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009).The next book in this series is The Comeback: the 2024 Elections and American Politics (Bloomsbury, 2025).
The POLITICO Poll finds most Americans see no clear way for the party to regain the advantage as the election reaches its final weeks, with even Republican voters skeptical that President Donald Trump could pull off a last-minute move that could shake up the campaign. And majorities of voters say they would not be more likely to vote Republican even if Trump were to pull off a major political feat before November — like announcing the Iran war was over, bringing the price of gasoline down by $1 or creating 100,000 new jobs.
That’s especially true of Democratic midterm and undecided voters: No matter the scenario or how significant the accomplishment, both groups hardly moved, the poll shows.
Voters’ perception of Trump’s actions and the economy are largely baked — a worrying sign for the GOP staring down an increasingly difficult landscape.
“I think a lot of the die is already cast,” said Mike Noble, the founder of Arizona-based polling firm Noble Predictive Insights. “It’s tough talking to Republicans, unless they’re just incredibly big die-hards. Like, how do they get motivated right now? Democrats are clearly motivated.”
Republicans have a massive campaign cash advantage going into the final stretch before Election Day, but a new POLITICO poll shows they aren't yet capturing voters’ attention.
More than 70% of poll respondents who had seen ads said they’d either seen more spots in support of Democrats or an equal amount between the parties over the past week — including ads on television, social media, or any other platform. Only 24% said they’d seen more ads for Republicans.
The numbers are striking considering Republican-aligned groups had triple the amount of cash on hand compared to their Democratic rivals going into the final months of the campaign. That figure includes the $400 million war chest that President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC reported over the summer, for which Dems have no equivalent.
Republicans have been racing to saturate key battlegrounds — and even some deep-red districts and states — with GOP messages in the final weeks before the midterms to counterbalance the favorable political environment for Democrats.
One reason GOP ad dollars could be getting less bang for their buck may lie in ad rates: direct campaign accounts from prolific individual fundraisers — Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff or Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, for example — can buy ads at cheaper rates.
Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton privately lamented the impact of the Iran war and gas prices on his campaign in a meeting last month, telling a group of donors and lobbyists, "I don't make the decisions," according to audio obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: It's a candid admission from a close Trump ally about the challenging environment Republicans face this cycle.
Paxton, the Texas attorney general, was speaking to donors and lobbyists at a closed-door fundraiser in Washington, D.C. The audio was provided to Axios by a person, granted anonymity because it was a private event, who was in the meeting and is opposed to Paxton.
President Trump is set to rally with Paxton in San Antonio on Wednesday.
Driving the news: Asked by one attendee what issues are "dragging" on his campaign, Paxton responded, "It's not tariffs. ... It's the war, it's gas prices, it's diesel," according to an audio file obtained by Axios."When it's over $6 per gallon for diesel ... people are feeling the pinch," he continued, adding that the rising cost of fuel "drives up food prices and everything else."
The Republican candidate said affordability is "by far our biggest problem" and "why we're having a hard time with numbers."
Republicans are flooding the electoral map with a deluge of advertising to defend their House and Senate majorities. But their once-towering financial advantage is starting to show its limits.
In recent days, Republican campaign groups began to make concessions to the punishing political environment, shifting money away from races they no longer believe to be winnable and falling back to reinforce another tier of seats in solidly red states that no longer look safe.
After abandoning a GOP-held Senate seat in North Carolina — a state President Donald Trump won three times — the outside groups began spending money to defend a seat in South Carolina. And they’re intensifying their advertising in Kansas, where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in nearly a century.
In the battle for control of the House, national Republicans gave up on defending a blue-leaning seat in Nebraska held for a decade by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.
Those dispiriting setbacks signal that the party’s defensive position is weakening with a month still left in the campaign.
One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.
“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”
Well, let's shift to Iran because a lot's going on over there. You initially said that the war would take about six to eight weeks. We're now entering the seventh month. Can you just explain, like, why is it taking so long?
Only because I wanted to go further. I took them out. I could have stopped then, but I wanted to go further. I didn't want them—because I met my timeline. If you look at what I did when we bombed the sites with a b2 bomber. Like we bombed those sites, and I call it nuclear dust—was under 1000s of tons of rubble. I could have stopped there, and I felt it was just inappropriate because—and they were itching to go on with their lives, if not there, someplace else. And so I went further. They're doing very poorly. Their economy is gone. Their inflation is at 300% or something like that. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Everything's gone, and they want to make a deal, but I want to make the real deal. But when I said I was going to be there for a short period of time, I was, and then I decided I wanted to go further than that because I didn't want to have them come back in some different form.
Do you think the American people misunderstood that? I feel like most people heard you say four to six weeks. [Fact check: true]
No, I think the press fed it to them, so that—look, we were in Vietnam for 21, 20, years. We were in Afghanistan for many years. We were in Korea for many. We're everywhere for many years. I'm in there now for six months, and I've destroyed their nuclear capability. I've destroyed their navy, 159 ships are at the bottom of the sea. I've destroyed their air force. All their planes are gone. I've destroyed their radar. That's why you know we have, we had more ships come through last night. We had more barrels of oil come through last night than at any time in the history of the Strait. Last night we set a record.
Well, on that note, were you aware in February that they would likely—they being Tehran—were likely to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz?
There was always a threat they had, and it worked for a little while. But we basically closed it on them. You know, they said we're going to close. I said, "Well, you close it, you're going to have big trouble." We took it over. You have to see the coastline. Everything is obliterated. They don't have radar. They don't have any anti-aircraft capability. Nothing. I have The New York Times saying how well they're doing, and it's so crazy. Their whole military is gone. Their radar is gone. Their leaders are gone. You know, we went through two levels of leaders, and The New York Times keeps writing about how well they're doing. They have no money. They have no value of money. They have nothing going, and just fake news, fake news, and maybe they’ll be next.
Last week, you said you might annihilate Iran. That was the word you used.
Yeah, I would do that. It's possible.
You've made versions of that threat before. You've also called yourself the president of peace.
Yeah.
How can the president of peace be calling for the annihilation of an entire people?
Because by annihilating Iran, we've created peace in the world. With Iran, I don't think you could ever have peace.
Democrats are adopting a drastically more negative tone toward their own party in the 2026 midterm elections, swapping promises of bipartisan collaboration with vows to "take on corruption in both parties."
Sam Forstag, a House candidate in Montana, told Axios in an interview that "a whole lot of my coworkers got a sour look on their face" when he revealed he was running as a Democrat.
"We have heard pretty loud and clear, whether it's at our town halls or on parade routes, that ... there's just a growing frustration with both political parties," said Jake Johnson, a Democratic candidate in Minnesota.
By the numbers: An Axios analysis of more than 350 ads in federal and statewide elections since 2018 found a huge uptick in Democratic ads mentioning either the Democratic Party or both parties in a negative context.The analysis looked at ads run between Aug. 24 and Sept. 22 of each election year that used phrases such as "my own party," "both parties," and "party leaders."
Candidates often try to appeal to swing voters by pitching themselves as bipartisan problem solvers, pointing out past instances of collaboration or making pledges to work across the aisle if elected.
But Democrats have leaned hard into more populist, anti-establishment rhetoric this year, with ads denouncing a broken political system or citing past instances in which they defied their party.
"I didn't care that he was a Democrat or the pressure that I got to make it go away," Virginia Democrat Shannon Taylor says in one ad about the prosecution of former state Sen. Joe Morrissey.
Data: AdImpact; Note: Party totals include independents running as the de facto nominee; Chart: Andrew Solender/Axios
“Under the Constitution, Congress controls our public money,” David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, told TMD. Federal officials who spend money for a purpose Congress didn’t authorize face administrative penalties under the Antideficiency Act—up to suspension without pay or removal from office—and knowing violations are a crime: Super said anyone involved in arranging, paying for, or running the ads could be prosecuted. Congress’ own lever is the purse; it could cut off the agency’s money until it obeys the law, Brand said.
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Whatever the legal fallout, the purpose of the ads—beyond flattering the president—is hard to see, and the commercials don’t seem to be persuading viewers. Steve Passwaiter, president at Silver Oak Political and a longtime analyst of political advertising, shared with TMD an analysis by PharosGraph, a data firm he advises, that scored the spots with the same model it runs on campaign ads. Among rural conservatives and evangelicals, they landed about as well as the average Republican ad. But for independents, swing-state voters, and suburban women, “a standard Republican ad from another candidate or PAC is actually performing better,” Passwaiter said. “It’s just preaching to the choir.”
Despite his low approval ratings, Trump has asked Republican voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot, and perhaps the ads are aimed at doing that (despite some Republicans disagreeing with that strategy). But they are not being placed in battleground states. According to PharosGraph’s read of AdImpact data, the spots have aired in 207 of the country’s 208 TV markets, with more than half the money going to football broadcasts and the Sunday political shows—a buy built to reach nearly everyone, carrying a message written for people who already agree with the president.
The sums are small, too. “$20 million might make a difference in Maine,” Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, told TMD, but at a national level, it’s hardly anything. Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has spent about $63.4 million on advertising in his Texas race alone. While CBP has contracted the full $20 million to an ad agency, only a fraction has gone to airtime so far: AdImpact estimated that the ads had cost at least $2.5 million to air through September 29. Nationally, Pitney said, the White House is likely “hoping for reverb”—news coverage, particularly from right-wing media, that carries the ads further than the airtime does.
Pitney said the ads suffer from a lack of specificity, noting that successful attack ads “need a visible enemy on the other side of the field.” Trump doesn’t have a singular adversary at this stage of his political career, so he is forced to call out anachronistic and abstract enemies, like “the villains, the communists.”
“It’s part of a broader phenomenon that he doesn’t have anything new to say,” Pitney said.
