Midterms and Presidential Approval

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

Nate Cohn at NYT:

Historically, there’s a reasonably strong relationship between presidential approval nationwide and midterm outcomes. It’s not a perfect correlation — in 2022, for instance, Joe Biden’s approval ratings were worse than Barack Obama’s had been in 2010 (and as bad as Mr. Trump’s today), but Democrats held their own and nearly retained full control of Congress. But the relationship is good enough to say that Republicans are in trouble.

How much trouble? If the only thing you knew was Mr. Trump’s 40 percent approval rating (and the number of Republican-held seats), you might guess that Republicans would lose 30 seats in the House. And while there have been exceptions, this year’s midterms don’t look like one of them.

Take the 2022 midterms, when Republicans failed to capitalize on Mr. Biden’s unpopularity. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the persistent Republican effort to overturn the 2020 election kept voters atypically focused on the actions of the party out of power. “Democracy” and “abortion” rose as top issues; Mr. Biden, while unpopular, didn’t attract the spotlight. It was enough to give Democrats an advantage among highly engaged voters, which in many key states mitigated the usual midterm turnout disadvantage for the party in power. Democrats demonstrated their advantage with a string of impressive showings in special congressional elections before the November election.

There are still many months to go, but for now it’s hard to see a similar set of factors aiding Republicans. And it’s easy to imagine how this election could be a referendum on the president. He’s center stage, and that’s the way he likes it. The Democratic Party’s weaknesses, while real, are quite ordinary. There’s nothing that seems likely to fundamentally shift the most important issues at stake to the advantage of Republicans, as the court’s decision in Dobbs did for Democrats. And this time, the same Democratic turnout edge that hurt Republicans in 2022 will probably supercharge Democratic strength.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, this newsletter devoted a lot of energy to downplaying strong Democratic showings in special elections. I can’t offer similar reassurance to Republicans this time. For one, midterm electorates tend to have a bigger share of highly engaged voters than presidential electorates, making them much more like special electorates. If you have a clear advantage among the “special” electorate, you probably also do among the “midterm” electorate, albeit to a lesser extent. And this time, it’s clear that the Democratic strength isn’t merely a matter of turnout: There are many Republican-leaning voters backing Democrats.

Immigration Issues and the Texas Gerrymander

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

Myah Ward and Megan Messerly at Politico:

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.

Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.

Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.

This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.

“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.

...

The meetings this month came after Democrats crushed a Republican in a special runoff election for a state senate seat in a Trump-friendly district in Tarrant County, which includes most of Fort Worth, rattling Republicans nationally. New research from the American Business Immigration Coalition and Comité de 100, first obtained by POLITICO, shows how slipping support among Latino voters could affect Republican-leaning districts in Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.

This study was buried in the POLITICO story. GOP could lose 6 seats (including 2 of their own!) they thought they gerrymandered Dems out of if Latinos swing 15% left https://t.co/HniLYDFYuc pic.twitter.com/Z6jtvnqDGm

— BeshearStan (@BeshearStan) February 14, 2026

ICE Barbie

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski have done significant harm to DHS. Michelle Hackman, Josh Dawsey, and Tarini Parti at WSJ:

Throughout her tenure as secretary of Homeland Security, a sprawling agency charged with carrying out Trump’s central campaign promise of a mass deportation, Noem has attempted to burnish her personal stardom at every turn. With Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, at her side, she has staged a headline grabbing immigration crackdown while sidelining rivals and dissenters.

She’s carried out confrontational operations over the objections of longtime immigration officials who warned such flashy displays would discredit the department’s ultimate mission, according to two dozen current and former administration officials. Instead, she’s made the case that her approach would lead to more arrests as well as induce more people to leave on their own.

She has donned flak jackets on ICE raids, posed toting a large gun and recorded messages urging immigrants to self-deport. In one, she stood before a group of imprisoned men with shaved heads packed into tight rows in a notorious El Salvadoran prison. And she has done it all with an eye to her style, with TV-ready hair and makeup.

Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees—in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.

Simmering criticism over the past year for Noem’s policies and publicity moves exploded in Minneapolis, jeopardizing her grip over DHS and putting her standing with Trump on thin ice. Though some in Trump’s inner circle have tried to persuade the president to fire Noem and Lewandowski, according to administration officials, he has so far resisted, saying publicly he has no plans to dismiss her. Lawmakers from both parties have been critical, and Democrats in Congress are demanding changes to the department’s enforcement methods, threatening to withhold DHS funding.

Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more:

The pair have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country, according to people familiar with the matter. DHS is leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million. DHS has previously used other planes through the Coast Guard or other agencies for the secretary’s use.

 

Pushback Against Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.   But there are some green shoots, too.

Mike Allen at Axios:

Look how 2026 has started for Trump, and the new pushback he faces, as synthesized by Axios' Zachary Basu:

⚖️ Retribution: A federal grand jury unanimously rejected the Justice Department's attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video they made urging service members to refuse unlawful orders. It's at least the fifth time that charges against Trump's adversaries or protesters have been turned away by a grand jury. A federal judge also shut down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's attempt to punish Navy veteran Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over his role in the video.
🚨 ICE raids: Trump's border czar Tom Homan announced an end to the 10-week ICE surge in Minneapolis yesterday. The president acknowledged his mass deportation campaign could use a "softer touch."
🪖 National Guard: Trump withdrew federalized National Guard troops from L.A., Chicago and Portland after repeated legal defeats and opposition from local leaders, dealing a blow to his efforts to crack down on crime in Democratic-run cities.
📦 Tariffs: Six House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a resolution rescinding Trump's tariffs on Canada. The vote became possible only after a smaller group of Republicans staged a floor rebellion against GOP leadership.
🗂️ Epstein files: Trump's push to shut down MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein obsession backfired spectacularly. The Justice Department is still grappling with backlash, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voicing rare criticism over revelations that DOJ tracked what lawmakers searched while reviewing the unredacted files.
📽️ Racism: A chorus of Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), condemned Trump's reposting of a video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House initially defended the decision to post the video, but removed it from Trump's account, blaming a staffer. Later, the president said he "didn't make a mistake."
🇩🇰 Greenland: Trump dominated Davos last month with his threats to seize Greenland by any means necessary — only to retreat amid market turmoil, European fury, warnings from congressional Republicans, and a vague "deal" promising the U.S. greater access to the Arctic territory.
🏦 Fed: The DOJ's criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has drawn deep skepticism from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has vowed to block confirmation of Powell's successor, Kevin Warsh, unless the probe is dropped.

Nationalization of Congressional Elections and Midterm Swings

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

 Alan Abramowitz at The Center for Politics documents how House and Senate elections have become more nationalized and polarized.  But significant seat swings are possible if the national vote margin is big enough.    

The results in Table 5 suggest that a large Democratic seat swing is possible in both the House and Senate, although we have much more confidence in the House predictions. The national popular vote results will not be known until after the election, but we can use recent generic ballot polling, averaging the results of pre-election polls asking voters which party they would support in the congressional election, to estimate the likely outcome of the national popular vote. However, the generic ballot is a much more accurate predictor of the national House popular vote than of the national Senate popular vote since not all states hold Senate elections in a given year. The correlation between the generic ballot and the national House popular vote is .89 while the correlation between the generic ballot and the national Senate popular vote margin is a much weaker .75.

A Democratic vote margin of 5-6 points, roughly what recent generic ballot polls have been averaging, would result in an expected Democratic gain of about 20-25 seats in the House and 6-7 seats in the Senate, more than enough to shift control of both chambers. However, the group of states holding Senate elections in 2026 is considerably more Republican than the nation. In 2020, the last year in which this Senate class was up for election, Democrats won the national popular vote for the House by 3.1 percentage points but lost the national popular vote for the Senate by 2.3 percentage points. A 5-6 point popular vote margin in the House elections might predict a less than one-point popular vote margin in the Senate elections and a gain of only about four seats—barely enough to shift control of the upper chamber. These results suggest that the battle for control of the Senate is likely to go down to the wire even if Democrats easily win a majority of seats in the House. Once again, we see that the peculiar make-up of the Senate, with its vast overrepresentation of sparsely populated rural states, poses a serious potential obstacle to electoral accountability in the 21st century.

 

A Day of Setbacks for Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.   But there are some green shoots, too.

 Olivia M. Bridges and Valerie Yurk at Roll Call:

Three House Republicans helped thwart a White House push to block lawmakers from moving to terminate President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs until July 31, by which time the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the duties’ legality.

The 214-217 vote Tuesday evening to reject a rule that would bar use of a fast-track disapproval resolution for the tariffs came after House leaders delayed a floor vote scheduled for early afternoon while they tried to pressure Republicans to switch votes.

After the rule’s defeat, which GOP leaders expected after their whip effort fell short, the Rules Committee met again to report out a revised rule minus the tariff provision.

That would allow several unrelated bills to come to the floor this week if adopted, but also opens the door to an onslaught of Democratic tariff disapproval resolutions — starting as soon as Wednesday with an attempt to overturn Trump’s tariffs levied on Canadian goods.

GOP Reps. Kevin Kiley of California, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Don Bacon of Nebraska, who declared their opposition early, remained firm and voted against the rule, joining all Democrats.

Perry Stein and Salvador Rizzo at WP:

A federal grand jury in D.C. refused the Justice Department’s attempts to indict six Democratic lawmakers over their comments to military service members — the latest rebuke of the Trump administration’s push to prosecute the president’s foes, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Federal prosecutors last year launched an investigation into the lawmakers — all of whom served in the military or with intelligence agencies — after they released a short video advising current military members to reject “illegal orders.”

The lawmakers include Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut from Arizona, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst from Michigan, both of whom sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. They have criticized the administration’s attempts to deploy the National Guard to cities run by Democratic officials and conduct strikes on alleged drug traffickers’ boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

It is exceedingly rare for grand juries to reject indictments, in part because prosecutors only need to convince a majority of grand jurors that there is a probable cause that a crime was committed — a relatively low threshold. But the Justice Department’s campaign to target President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries has repeatedly been rebuffed by grand juries and judges, including in its efforts to prosecute former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).

Jeremy Roebuck and Patrick Marley at WP:

The FBI relied heavily on previously debunked claims of widespread election irregularities in Georgia as it persuaded a federal judge last month to sign off on plans to seize 2020 voting records from the state’s most populous county, court documents unsealed Tuesday show.

In a pair of Jan. 28 search warrant affidavits, authorities said they were seeking evidence that would determine whether “deficiencies” in the vote tabulation in Fulton County, home to Atlanta, were the result of intentional wrongdoing that could constitute a crime.

But many of the issues they cited — including claims of duplicate ballots and missing ballot images — have been previously explained by county officials as the types of routine errors that frequently occur, are typically corrected in the moment, and are not significant enough to sway the outcome of an election. Independent reviews have backed up that conclusion.

 

Epstein Files, Continued

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Jay O'Brien, John Parkinson, and Lauren Peller at ABC:

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a key member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet, is facing bipartisan calls to resign over new revelations about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Documents released by the Justice Department late last month show Lutnick remained in contact with Epstein as recently as 2018, years after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes including soliciting prostitution from a minor.

...

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein for over a decade, previously suggested he had distanced himself from Epstein back in the mid-2000s prior to Epstein's conviction in 2008.

"So, I was never in the room with him socially, for business or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn't going because he's gross," Lutnick said on the "Pod Force One" podcast back in October.

"That's my story. A one and absolutely done," Lutnick said.

But one email from Epstein's schedule for May, 1, 2011, showed plans for drinks with Lutnick.

And in December of 2012, other documents showed Lutnick and his family planned to visit Epstein's private island. That same month, both Lutnick and Epstein invested in the same business, according to legal documents.

 Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns at Politico:

WHAT WE’RE ALL READING: Ten days on from the DOJ’s mass dump of Epstein files data, the revelations keep coming. The files thus far have largely exposed a murky world of conspiring elites with questionable moral standards.

Digital democracy: And we are witnessing this through the prism of an entirely new phenomenon — an internationally crowdsourced scandal, unfolding in real time across your social media feed. In many cases, citizen journalists have been nearly as capable as professional journalists and investigators at finding insightful documents within the millions of DOJ files and bringing them to the fore.

Parlor games: Washington being what it is, the universal access to raw investigative data has given rise to another new fad. People are also scouring the Epstein files for references to their bosses, their corporate rivals, their political enemies — even their own families. Gossip about some of the highest-profile revelations had been swirling in D.C. circles for days in advance, uncovered by the associates of those involved. Plenty of people are hunting not for criminal behavior, but for the intrigue.

“We are all searching the files: for colleagues, competitors, clients,” one well-connected PR operative tells POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman. “It’s shocking to see what some of the most powerful people in the world say to each other in private — and it’s also shocking how many folks we know are mentioned in some capacity, even completely innocuously.”