President Donald Trump has been a fixture on the campaign trail in the final weeks before the midterm elections, with one ask of his loyal supporters becoming a standard part of his stump speech: “Pretend I’m on the ballot.”
That’s exactly what Democrats are telling their voters too: Target Republicans who actually are on the ballot in November as a way of rebuking Trump.
Trump has made most of his campaign stops in deeply red states that are not normally competitive.
Former President Joe Biden spent much of his time campaigning in blue areas while successfully beating back the red wave in 2022, counting on the media to amplify his messaging while avoiding awkward appearances alongside vulnerable Democrats whose electoral prospects he could have hurt.
But at least some of the Republicans Trump is campaigning with may need his help in a sign of how bad the national environment has gotten for the party. Democrats are leading or tied in every toss-up Senate race, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, including Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932.
Trump is trying to solve a long-standing problem for his party: Some of his supporters do not reliably turn out and vote when he isn’t on the ballot himself. He is trying to get these voters to show up for other Republicans.
“I’m doing a tour right now, and I’m doing rallies. The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up,” Trump told reporters this week. “Not just where I’m doing them. For instance, [Sen.] Jon Husted, I heard he went up 9 points yesterday. I did the rally for him, and he went up.”
But this strategy comes with a huge risk: Midterm elections are frequently a referendum on the incumbent president, and the party that controls the White House has lost congressional seats all but twice since 1938.
Things are even worse right now than during a typical midterm election. Trump’s job approval rating is below 40% in the RealClearPolitics average. Sixty-four percent disapproved of the job Trump was doing in a Fox News poll earlier this month.
Trump’s approval numbers are even lower on the economy, Iran, and inflation, three of the dominant issues of the midterm election campaign. On inflation, Trump is nearly 43 points underwater.
Voters are angry about the high cost of living, believing that Trump has not only not solved the problem despite inflation being lower than its Biden-era peak but made it worse through tariffs and the war in Iran.
Republicans lost more than 40 seats and their House majority in the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term. And while the map is much more favorable now than then, national political conditions are worse.
The fact that Trump is spending so much time and money in red states and districts suggests he and his political operation now view once-safe places as being in danger.
Trump is a skilled campaigner, but as in 2018, he hasn’t always helped down-ballot Republicans. His fixation with the 2020 election arguably cost Republicans both Georgia Senate seats and their majority in the upper chamber in the subsequent runoffs on Jan. 5, 2021. Georgia Sen. David Perdue had won a plurality in the first round of voting but fell short of an absolute majority.
But Trump is a reliable motivator of Democratic voters as well as some anti-Trump independents who have fled the GOP during his decade at the helm of the party.
Certain polls of competitive Senate races have found in excess of 40% of voters saying they will cast their ballots to send an anti-Trump message.
Democrats have also added higher-propensity voters to their electoral coalition since Trump has been on the scene.
What worked in counteracting that in 2024, as Trump won the popular vote and swept the battleground states, may fail this year.
Republicans have nevertheless hugged Trump tightly in this campaign, holding a midterm convention that showcased the president and top administration officials alongside candidates in tough races. At least one such Republican, Texas GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, later complained his poll numbers declined afterward.
Many Republicans in difficult races have welcomed Trump on the campaign trail.
“When he comes to town, that itself helps us,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said late last month. “But then he always talks about the wrong things. He talks about things people don’t give a damn about.”
In Ohio, for example, Trump talked about Husted’s physique, including his posterior, and shouted out embattled Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), who stands accused of domestic violence against his ex-wife, who happens to be the state’s other GOP senator’s daughter.
Trump feeds off the energy of these crowds, who often appreciate his sense of humor even when others do not. The rallies could be good for presidential morale regardless of their effectiveness as GOP strategy.
IT’S NOTHING LIKE IT WAS UNDER BIDEN, BUT INFLATION STILL VEXES TRUMP
Trump also insists he is the only one who can effectively sell his record and the GOP agenda.
The possibility of a Trump drag on the Republican ticket is real, however, as erstwhile allies scrub him from their campaign websites and find other ways to distance themselves ahead of November. Some voters won’t have to pretend too much to see Trump when they show up at the polls.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
