GOP braces for 2018-style midterm wipeout – thanks to Trump

President Donald Trump’s poll numbers are so low, only three out of eight Americans support him compared to five out of eight who oppose him — and that bodes poorly for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

“President Trump’s surging disapproval rating is threatening to become a liability for downballot Republicans as the party looks to keep its fragile GOP trifecta in November,” wrote The Hill's Julia Mueller and Caroline Vakil on Monday. “An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Sunday found the president at a new high in his disapproval — 62 percent — while 37 percent said they approved of his job helming of the country.”

They added, “On Trump’s handling of the cost of living and inflation, 76 percent and 72 percent disapproved, respectively. In addition, 66 percent of respondents said they disapprove of how Trump is handling the Iran war. The polling, coupled with low marks he’s received in similar surveys, risk jeopardizing GOP candidates in an election cycle already shaping up to look like the 2018 midterms fueled by anti-Trump sentiment.”

Mueller and Vakil pointed to Trump’s ongoing problems with high inflation, rising unemployment and an unpopular war against Iran.

“Trump’s approval rating on the economy dropped 8 percentage points between March and April in The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll,” Mueller and Vakil wrote. “Though a majority of Republicans still had a positive view of Trump’s economic moves, that number dropped from 74 percent to 62 percent in the last month, a stark change from the president’s base.”

Mueller and Vakil added that, with all of these factors working against Trump’s political brand, Democrats are likely to focus on them in the hope of hurting Republicans.

“The Democrats are going to say, ‘This is about Trump. Forget about who we are. Forget about our platform or issues. This is just about what the president is,’” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, told The Hill.

He added, “The Republicans are going to have to somehow distance themselves from some of those policies while still coming up with other ideas for why voters should vote for them as opposed to just continuing on with the Trump policies, and I think they’re in a tough place.”

Because Trump is doing so poorly in polls, and historically incumbent parties in a president’s second term lose seats in midterm elections, the president has said he is determined to keep control of both houses — prompting conservative historian Robert Kagan to express the fear in February that he will attempt to rig the midterms and thereby put America on “one big step into dictatorship.”

“I am worried, as I have said and others have been pointing out, about whether we will even have free and fair elections in 2026, let alone in 2028,” Kagan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at the time. “I think Trump has a plan to disrupt those elections, and I don't think he's willing to allow Democrats to take control of one or both houses as could happen in a free election.”

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