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History teaches us that the 2026 midterm elections are unlikely to prove successful for Republicans. The opposition almost always performs well in the cycle following a presidential election, thanks to an angrier, more motivated base and because swing voters tend to like checks and balances. This dynamic is even more potent when the president’s team controls all of Washington, as Republicans do now. The deck truly gets stacked under these circumstances when the public is also broadly dissatisfied with the chief executive and the direction of the country.
Therefore, the ingredients for a blue wave appear to be falling into place. Republicans are spinning a story of pick-up opportunities and “going on offense” ahead of the fall, some of which looks plausible, if you squint. But if the current trajectory continues apace, or actually worsens, they’ll be playing lots of defense and will likely find themselves engaged in triage in the months ahead.
The GOP’s best hope for a decent cycle is a strong economy that voters really feel. Amid some decent-to-great economic developments over the last years, Trump’s ratings on the economy and cost of living concerns haven’t appreciably improved. Progress isn’t sinking in. If that doesn’t change by the late summer or early fall, baked-in economic dissatisfaction will be an albatross around the ruling party in November.
Alarmingly for Republicans, a few recent data points have soured, including a few worse-than-expected inflation readings and a dismal February jobs report that actually showed employment contraction last month. The U.S. economy unexpectedly shed 92,000 jobs, in addition to downward revisions from previous months’ data. At the very least, headwinds and uncertainty remain sticky challenges. If these turn out to be signposts down a worsening path, rather than a brief blip, Democrats will be heavy favorites to handily win the House of Representatives and quite possibly regain control of the Senate, too.
A new national survey from NBC News underscores the precarious position in which Republicans find themselves. The poll’s sample is split evenly between Democratic and Republican leaners, 42% each, which cannot be explained away as “skewed” or unfair. The relatively good news for Trump and company is that the president’s overall job approval ticked up by 2 net percentage points over the last survey in this series, improving slightly to negative 10 points, 44%-54%, overall.
Additionally, the GOP still enjoys double-digit advantages over Democrats on border security, crime, and immigration. But that’s where the non-gloomy numbers end. Democrats have now pulled even on the question of which party would handle the economy better, a 19-point swing in their favor since the 2022 midterm cycle, which fell during biting Democrat-fueled inflation.
While Trump remains right-side-up on border security, that issue has lost salience, thanks to his administration’s inarguable and glittering success in halting its predecessors’ illegal immigration crisis. Due to the controversies surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, however, the president is underwater by 10 points on immigration overall — though, as noted above, Democrats are still much less trusted on this issue. On inflation and the cost of living, Trump sits at an abysmal 36% approval rating versus 62% disapproval, a new low in this series.
Democratic-aligned voters are also far more engaged and fired up ahead of the fall than their Republican counterparts. Approximately 3 in 4 self-described Democrats, 74%, say they have a high level of interest in the 2026 midterm elections, compared with just 61% of Republicans. With independents tipping back toward the opposition party, that’s a recipe for a wave year. This survey gives Democrats a 6-point lead on the “generic congressional ballot,” more or less in line with the 4.5-point gap in the RealClearPolitics average. Republicans need economic realities and perceptions to improve — soon. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, they try to do with the slim majorities they hold, as the calendar churns toward November. They may only have one more big bite at the legislative apple, if they can even agree on a course of action.
Finally, the NBC poll also shows the commander in chief sagging by double digits on Iran policy. Much of the public opinion data on that subject point to an unconvinced or ambivalent electorate. But for all the online chatter of a schism within MAGAworld, or among conservatives generally, the numbers don’t bear that out. The U.S. strikes against the Iranian regime are overwhelmingly supported by Trump’s base and party — it’s some loud influencers who are out of touch with these voters, not the president.
What the administration needs to do a much better job of is convincing independents of the wisdom of these actions, which must involve making an aggressive and frequent public case. The U.S.-Israeli mission, backed by a large coalition of other nations, very much including Arab Gulf States, has been a resounding military success thus far. The regime’s leadership is dead or reeling, air superiority was established very early on, key targets are being pummeled unopposed, and the Iranian people overwhelmingly loathe their evil overlords. The regime’s largely impotent retaliatory moves are petering out. This is all excellent news.
But many Americans don’t understand what exactly our goals are and aren’t sure why this attack needed to happen now — it’s because the recalcitrant, bloodthirsty regime refuses to negotiate in good faith and disarm, and is at its weakest ebb in decades. If the operation continues to yield positive results, it should be a bright spot for the president. Right now, it’s being met with muddled confusion.
Trump still has a golden opportunity, however, because many critics are misreading the notably soft polling on this. A recent CBS News survey showed that a lopsided majority would approve of what we are doing vis-a-vis Iran if the attack lasts days or weeks — we are just over one week in. Support drops dramatically if that time frame stretches into months, then falls off a cliff if the time horizon is even longer.
MARCO’S MOMENT: IT’S TIME TO TAKE A RUBIO RUN SERIOUSLY
If the American component of this mission can wrap up in the weeks to come, with clear deliverables demonstrated and articulated, this could turn out to be a political winner, in addition to a foreign policy masterstroke. Deeper and longer involvement, on the other hand, represents a major risk on both fronts.
It does not take much political insight to conclude that an unpopular leader simultaneously presiding over an unpopular economic situation and an unpopular war is the stuff of intense backlash. Consider this an early wave warning.
