Going into tomorrow’s midterm election, Donald Trump is as unpopular as any president in 80 years going into a midterm vote. Price inflation has outrun paycheques in most states, and the Democrats’ closing argument, corruption, now ranks at or near the top of voters’ concerns.
These forces come together in two scenarios:
- A normal Democratic win would still give them control of the House and potentially even the Senate: a six- to eight-point popular-vote victory on a map designed to minimize change by both sides.
- A big Democratic win would be the largest seat swing in a generation, compressing 2006 and 2008 into a single election.
The difference between the two outcomes lay in a band of 19 districts and a handful of Midwestern statewide polling results.
Which scenario we see depends on whether the wave stops at Trump +10 districts, or reaches Trump +14. We will have a window on what kind of night it’s going to be fairly early, from Florida, Georgia (Don’t expect Atlanta results early, though), and North Carolina.
FOLLOW ALONG ON INNOVATIVE’S HANDY SCORECARD!
The circumstances that set the stage for these scenarios include three key factors:
1) A president whose job approval is in Truman territory. The New York Times/Siena history chart puts Trump at 34 per cent approval going into the midterm. That is one point above Harry Truman’s 33 per cent in 1946 and below George W. Bush’s 37 per cent in 2006. The averages are only a bit kinder: 38.4 per cent in the RCP average, five points below his standing on Election Day 2018. His net approval, about −27, is eight points worse than Bush’s −19.3 in 2006. Truman’s party lost 55 House seats. Bush’s lost 30. Trump’s own party lost 40 in 2018, when Gallup had him at 40 per cent and the Times average had him at 42.
2) A late, regional squeeze on pocketbooks. Over the year to September, consumer prices rose 3.7 per cent, and private-sector hourly earnings rose 2.9 per cent (both not seasonally adjusted; September wages are preliminary). After adjusting for regional inflation, real hourly pay fell in 39 of 51 states, counting Kansas’s dip of less than a tenth of a point. Florida was flat.
This matters because the losses are concentrated in the electoral battlegrounds. The Washington Post, measuring a basic family budget against household income, found costs outpaced incomes in 42 of 46 battleground districts from 2019 to 2024. The worst was New York’s 17th District, a Harris-won Republican seat, where costs rose 34 per cent and incomes 19 per cent.
3) A closing issue set increasingly focused on corruption. In the final CNBC All-America survey, 36 per cent named government corruption as one of the country’s most important issues, ahead of cost of living concerns like groceries at 34 per cent and gas at 23 per cent. Fox News found 88 per cent extremely or very concerned about corruption, compared with 85 per cent for inflation. A record 89 per cent tell Gallup that government corruption is widespread.
Democrats are spending a lot of money tying corruption to prices. “Corruption is why your costs are high” summarizes the playbook, and Blue Rose Research found that making the connection raised Democratic support by about three points, according to Politico. If Trump can be painted as becoming the swamp rather than draining it, then disillusionment among previous Trump voters is a real turnout problem for the GOP.
See the scorecard here.
