Republicans brace for brutal midterms as Trump’s popularity slips

President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are down. Gas prices are up. Congressional Republicans are heading to the exits in record numbers. And Democratic enthusiasm is cresting.

With a little more than six months until the midterm elections, anxious Republicans are confronting a foreboding political climate that party leaders fear could lead to a wipeout in the fall if it does not improve.

The House is now favored to fall into Democratic hands while control of the Senate — not so long ago seen as a GOP bulwark — is increasingly up for grabs as Democratic candidates up and down the ballot build substantial war chests.

In private, Republican political strategists are grimly trading synonyms to describe the darkening environment: sour, ugly, bad, bleak. They note that much can change before November, holding out hope that the days of $4 gas and the war in Iran pass before the election.

“If the election were in May, Republicans would lose,” said Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker, who urged his party’s leaders to “get reality a little better — and get communications a hell of a lot better” to salvage their majorities this fall.

“The war, the sense of affordability and gasoline — some of that has to be cleared up in order to win,” Gingrich said. “If it doesn’t change, I’ll start tearing my hair out.”

The attack over the weekend at the White House Correspondents Association by a gunman was a vivid reminder of the volatility of American politics — and the long stretch until November, when more twists and turns could alter the landscape.

Still for months, the Republican Party’s outlook has dimmed in tandem with voter faith that Trump can fix the economy. For the first time in years, voters say in some polls that they trust Democrats more on such bread-and-butter issues as inflation and the cost of living, broadening the party’s opportunities.

“What’s shifted is, you always knew the House was going to be a challenge,” said Marc Short, a Republican strategist who served as the head of White House legislative affairs in Trump’s first term. “Now, far more people think the Senate is also in play.”

One bright spot, some Republicans say — and a major difference between the 2018 midterms and this year — is how organized and centralized the Trump operation is in the efforts to keep power. Last week, Trump’s political team gathered at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington to strategize and share plans. Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, urged attendees to ignore the outside naysayers.

“People should know by now not to count us out,” Wiles said, according to two people with knowledge of the remark.

In addition, Republicans entered the spring with one important advantage: cash. Leading Republican super political action committees and party committees have a roughly $600 million edge over Democratic rivals, federal records show.

Top Republicans also argue that the political terrain continues to favor them even as the political atmosphere has deteriorated. Only three current House Republicans are in districts that Trump lost in 2024. And for Democrats to win a Senate majority, they would need to flip at least three seats in states that Trump has won all three times he has been on the ballot: North Carolina, Alaska, Texas, Iowa or Ohio.

Right now, Democrats hold zero Senate seats in states that Trump has carried every time he has been on the ballot.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in an interview that he was confident because voters are feeling pinched economically and ignored by Republicans in power. Trump’s disapproval rating is at its highest point of his second term, according to The New York Times polling average.

“They’re seeing Trump hurting them — and not doing what he promised,” Schumer said. “Republicans should be very, very worried.”

For now, Republicans are mired in finger-pointing after a redistricting measure passed in Virginia last week. It is expected to cost the party as many as four congressional seats. The White House kicked off nationwide redistricting wars last summer in Texas, but after Virginia’s move and a new proposed map released Monday by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the GOP may end up only marginally ahead. Many are wondering when — or if — Trump’s team will unleash a $350 million super PAC war chest that so far has remained untapped.

Some of Trump’s allies are quietly exasperated at the president’s lack of focus, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen Republican strategists who spoke anonymously to discuss private conversations. Even events specifically designed to sell politically popular policies have been overshadowed by unhelpful and unnecessary fights.

Exhibit A was his public relations gambit this month to highlight the “no tax on tips” provision in last year’s tax bill, when a DoorDash courier delivered a McDonald’s order to Trump outside the Oval Office. But Trump stepped on his own staged event by talking about his ongoing feud with the pope.

Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist, described the climate as a moment of “panic” for the GOP, joking about a “spike in liquor sales to Republicans” who are seeking to numb the political pain.

“I can’t imagine a worse scenario than the one he is in right now,” Murphy said of Trump, adding: “The Democrats — not because they’ve done anything, but because they’re not Trump — have surged.”

For Republicans, the drumbeat of poor news has been quickening.

New rifts in the MAGA movement are appearing over the war in Iran. Tucker Carlson, the popular former Fox News host, apologized on his podcast last week for “misleading people” with his past support of Trump.

New signs of weakness have emerged on the key issue of the economy. A poll from Fox News last week showed voters trusted Democrats on the economy more than Republicans for the first time in 16 years. A woeful 34 per cent of voters approved of how Trump has handled the economy, while 66 per cent disapproved.

And new examples of Democratic advantages are showing up. The main super PAC aligned with House Democrats recently began to reserve $272 million in fall advertising time in battleground districts, with an estimated 80% of the spending targeting Republican-held seats.

The leading Republican super PAC, meanwhile, reserved $153 million in advertising the same day. But it split its spending more evenly between offensive opportunities and the defense of Republican seats.

The Cook Political Report, which handicaps political races, now rates 217 House seats as favoring Democrats. It takes 218 seats to win a majority, meaning Republicans would need to sweep every single race rated a toss-up or better to hold the House majority.

Cook also released a poll of the 36 seats likeliest to determine control of the House and found that Democratic candidates on average were favored over Republicans, 50 per cent to 44 per cent. Trump had carried those same seats by 2 points in 2024 — meaning the political environment had swung 8 points in the Democratic direction.

In the candidate-level race for cash, Democrats are mostly outpacing Republicans. In 11 of the 12 races that House Democrats have labeled “red to blue” — top seats they are seeking to flip — the Democratic challenger out-raised the Republican incumbent in the first quarter.

Only one Republican challenger who had been in the equivalent GOP program out-raised a Democratic incumbent last quarter. That incumbent, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, had been facing federal bribery and money laundering charges until Trump pardoned him last year.

Even before the fall elections arrive, Republicans are showing signs of diminished expectations.

Thirty-seven House Republicans have opted against running for reelection in 2026. That is more than in any year in almost a century, according to records compiled by the Brookings Institution, which has tracked congressional departures since 1930. The good news for Republicans is that most are leaving safely GOP seats.

Still, the only year when the numbers came close to that was 2018, in the middle of Trump’s first term. Thirty-four House Republicans retired or sought other offices before that election. They had been expected to lose the majority then, too, and they did.

“Being in the minority is not nearly as fun as being in the majority,” said Molly Reynolds, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, adding that other factors have also made congressional service unappealing.

At the end of 2025, Trump’s aides predicted that the president would turn his attention to domestic matters, specifically costs and the economy, in the election year.

But much of Trump’s attention has instead remained abroad, first on Venezuela and now on Iran. He has also busied himself with pet projects that Democrats have decried as exercises in vanity, including a new White House ballroom and a proposed triumphal arch in Washington. His handpicked arts commission approved a gold coin with Trump’s face on it last month.

At one point, Trump, frustrated by what he deemed critical coverage of his ballroom’s design, brought a printed rendering of it to the back of Air Force One to show reporters. “It will be the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world,” Trump said, before taking questions about the latest developments in the war with Iran.

Looming large over the midterms are Trump’s plans for his $350 million super PAC.

“I don’t think that Republicans will be at a spending disadvantage in this midterms,” James Blair, a deputy chief of staff at the White House who has taken a leave of absence to oversee Trump’s political operation full time, said on CNN last week.

Blair pitched the results in Virginia as a positive even though his party lost.

The ballot measure won, he explained, by 3 percentage points — a far smaller margin than Democrats registered when they carried the state in 2024 and 2025. “If Republicans perform anywhere near on average the way they did in Virginia last night, we not only add seats to the Senate, but we add seats to the House,” Blair said.

“We’re not ignorant of the history of the midterms, obviously, right?” Blair later added. “But it’s way too soon to declare defeat.”