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A sour, anti-incumbent mood is sweeping across the nation on its 250th anniversary in what political analysts say is an especially troubling sign for Republican control of the House and Senate, given President Trump’s slumping approval rating.
Rising voter anger with the status quo has hit both parties, with eight House incumbents — five Democrats and three Republicans — losing primary races this year in addition to two GOP Senate incumbents, Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.) and John Cornyn (Texas).
Republicans on Capitol Hill fear the antiestablishment mood could cost them control of the House and perhaps the Senate as well.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott (S.C.) has warned Senate GOP colleagues privately “about how bad polling is, currently, for Republicans and how bad the president is losing ground among all groups,” said a senior Republican aide.
Senate Republican Conference Chair Tom Cotton (Ark.) also shared polling with Senate Republicans at a recent lunch meeting that showed independents moving in large numbers away from the GOP and toward Democrats, according to a GOP senator who attended the presentation.
Whit Ayres, a prominent Republican pollster, warned that Trump’s slumping approval rating is a red flag for Republican prospects, citing political trends over recent decades.
“We know that the party in power tends to lose House seats in a midterm election, but the number of seats lost is highly correlated with the president’s popularity. When presidential job approval is above 50 percent, the average loss of House seats for his party is 14. When it’s below 50 percent, the average loss of House seats for his party is 32,” he said.
Ayres said there is “a lot of variation around those numbers” and that with “extreme redistricting,” mid-decade redistricting and growing polarization among voters, GOP losses may be limited.
“But there are very few people at this point who are predicting that the Democrats will not gain seats in the House,” he added.
Republicans hold 218 House seats while Democrats hold 212. There is one independent and four vacancies in the lower chamber.
Trump’s approval rating stands around 40 percent and his disapproval rating is about 57 percent, according to an average of recent polls compiled by Real Clear Politics.
Lawmakers in Washington are watching with apprehension as voters unleash their frustrations over the economy and the general direction of the country on incumbents in both parties.
“This is going to be a big year for primary losses in the House. There have already been eight incumbents who lost. … There’s generally a sour mood in the country and you’ve already seen over the course of the last 10 to 15 years the Republican establishment became less and less powerful and popular and has basically been replaced by a new establishment, which is Trump,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Kondik said recent results have suggested there is a “Democratic Tea Party movement going on,” comparing the upheaval in Democratic politics today to the Tea Party movement that fueled big Republican gains in the 2010 midterm election.
“There’s an antiestablishment feeling on both sides,” he said. “Will the general election be an anti-incumbent election? It probably will be in the sense that you’re probably going to see a lot of Republican incumbents lose, at least in the House.”
Kondik said polls showing that most voters think the country is moving in the wrong direction and Trump’s low approval rating are flashing warnings for Republicans.
“A lot of people in the country are pretty disgruntled right now, and that’s not a good place for an incumbent party to be in. That same dynamic helps explain why Trump won in 2024, it’s just that he hasn’t been able to turn the ship around,” he said.
Some Republican pollsters, however, argue that while many Americans are unhappy over high costs and the general direction of the economy, they believe that Republican candidates will be able to overcome political headwinds by highlighting contrasts with Democrats on key issues, such as banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.
Pollster Jim McLaughlin said incumbents in both parties are losing for different reasons and argued that the rise of populist Democrats, such as Graham Platner in Maine or democratic socialist-aligned candidates in New York, will give Republicans a chance to draw contrasts in the fall.
“The ones that lose on the Republican side aren’t sufficiently pro-America First, Trumpy, and the ones who are losing on the Democratic side, which is a big problem for the Democrats, is they’re not socialist enough,” he said.
He said polling his firm conducted in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary last year showed that 80 percent of Democrats “had favorable opinions of socialists.”
“It’s not just in New York City, look at Colorado — they’re nominating Marxist extremists in their primaries, and all Democrats are going to have to answer,” he said.
Even so, Trump’s slumping approval ratings are a major challenge for Republicans.
A Fox News poll of 1,002 registered voters nationwide conducted in mid-June found that 23 percent of voters approve of Trump’s handling of gas prices and 31 percent approve of his handling of the economy.
Democratic strategists say that’s a major problem for GOP incumbents and candidates.
“It may be a very big change election in that the Republicans are going to lose the House of Representatives and could lose the Senate as well. And I think the Democrats will gain ground not just in those federal races but I think in governors’ races, in legislative races,” said Democratic strategist Tad Devine.
“I think the composition of the electorate in November is going to heavily favor the Democrats,” he said, predicting big Democratic voter turnout in the fall.
But he acknowledged that Republicans may blunt Democratic gains in the House through redistricting, which is projected to put six to 10 additional GOP leaning House seats on the electoral map.
“I still think that what’s going to happen in a lot of places is going to surprise people,” Devine said, arguing that redrawing the lines of heavily Democratic districts in some GOP-controlled states could wind up making surrounding congressional districts more competitive by adding new Democratic-leaning voters to those areas.
Incumbents in both parties are bracing for a backlash after watching this year’s primaries play out.
Two big-name Democratic incumbents were upset in primary races in Colorado last week.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) lost his gubernatorial primary race to state Attorney General Phil Weiser, who slapped Bennet with the D.C.-insider label, while 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), lost her reelection primary to a 29-year-old attorney and part-time barista, Melat Kiros.
Bennet’s loss to Weiser compares to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s (R-Texas) loss to Rick Perry in the Texas Republican gubernatorial primary in 2010, which turned out to be a major anti-incumbent year when Republicans picked up 63 seats and won control of the House during former President Obama’s first midterm election.
Kiros’s stunning upset of DeGette was reminiscent of 28-year-old political newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a former bartender, beating Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), a member of the Democratic leadership in 2018.
Two House Democratic incumbents lost their races in New York last month — Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Ayres, the GOP pollster, said both parties are seeing growing populism in their ranks and noted that the rise of Trump populism in the Republican Party is now being mirrored by the growing strength of populist — or socialist — Democrats such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani endorsed the progressive candidates who beat Goldman and Espaillat, who were backed by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).
One of them, Darializa Avila Chevalier, identifies as a progressive and democratic socialist.
“Right-wing populism begets a reaction with left-wing populism and populist movements tend to be overwhelmingly ‘anti.’ They’re not really for anything but they’re anti-elite and anti-establishment,” Ayres said.
“What we’re seeing in Republican and Democratic primaries is a continuation of this anti-elite, anti-establishment mood,” he said.
But he warned that the populist movements face challenges.
“The first is winning general elections, which is a whole different story with a completely different electorate,” he said. “The second is, if they should win a general election, coming up with a credible positive agenda rather than just railing against what is.”
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