Dem
47
GOP
53
Although Charlie Cook has turned over his newsletter to Amy Walter, he still writes regular columns for it. The most recent one is about the midterms. In it he notes that midterms are almost always a referendum on the president and his party. Next year, MAGA could be disillusioned with Donald Trump's failure to lower prices as he promised. America Firsters could be upset with his military involvement with Venezuela, despite promising to stay out of foreign wars. QAnoners could be unhappy with his refusal to come clean about Jeffrey Epstein. They might express their displeasure by not voting next year.
But all of these pale in comparison to what is going on with independents, who make up about a third of the electorate. Independents are clustered in swing states and swing districts. That's why those states and districts swing. In 2024, the independents were angry with the Biden-Harris administration for not keeping prices down. They voted for change, and Trump was the change candidate.
Next year, Trump will be the "more-of-the-same" candidate. In a Gallup poll released last week, Trump's approval among independents sunk to a dismal 25%, with 68% of independents disapproving of his record. These voters did not sign up for saber rattling in South America, killing many government programs that help people, bulldozing a third of the White House, dissuading the best STEM minds in the world from doing graduate work at M.I.T. or Stanford, and undermining vaccines. They just wanted the cheaper eggs Trump promised.
Despite all the gerrymandering in progress, some of which will backfire if there is a big blue wave, Cook believes that if the Republicans can keep their net losses under 15 seats, they will be lucky. He thinks their worst-case losses could be in the 20-25 seat range. He also thinks that if Trump gets even less popular going forward—and history shows that presidents rarely get more popular in their 6th year—his problem with independents (and, thus, swing states and districts) is only going to get worse next year. (V)