Why the Midterms Suddenly Look So Bad for Republicans

In the following excerpt, Derek talks to Nate Silver about the state of the race before the midterms.

Derek Thompson: Let’s get your basic temperature check first. What is the state of the midterm elections?

Nate Silver: The state of the midterms is increasingly blue, I suppose I’d say. Look, as of Labor Day, the basic picture was Democrats were pretty heavy favorites to flip the House, and the Senate was a toss-up. You can debate if there was a slight tilt toward Democrats or not. Since Labor Day, Democrats have gained about two and a half points in the polls. The equivalent of a presidential national poll for congressional races is called the generic congressional ballot. It just asks, “Who do you plan to vote for in your congressional district?” Sometimes they name the candidate, sometimes they don’t. That shifted from about a six-point, six-and-a-half-point Democratic advantage to an eight-and-a-half- or nine-point Democratic advantage—sometimes even more in polls of likely voters, so people that they think are actually going to turn out and vote. We have seen D +11s and D +12s and D +13s, things that would portend a very large wave.

We always have to caution a couple of things. One, the polls can be off. We have experience with that in recent elections, particularly polls underrating Republicans—though it can go the other way, too.

No. 2, I think a lot of this is about the most recent rise in gas prices, going from $4 a gallon to more like $4.50; diesel is even higher. If somehow prices go down by November, then that might be a saving grace for Republicans. But yeah, the House was always going to be leaning Democratic. We can talk about the history of midterms, and that usually happens. But the Senate you can no longer fairly call a toss-up. That’s a cop-out. If you look at both the race-by-race polling and the national polling, the polling now leans Democratic.

Thompson: I want to jump into race-by-race polling in just a second. But first, to add a little bit of historical context, in early 2025, most people thought that the Senate was completely out of reach for Democrats. I was looking at betting markets, not because I’m a betting markets kind of guy, but just because it’s a really good snapshot of elite consensus in any particular time. Kalshi had Republicans at 80 percent to keep the Senate after the 2026 midterms. Even through this summer, Republicans were still significantly favored to keep the midterms. What did that consensus rest on, and why do you think it broke around August, September?

Silver: I think there’s both a macro-story and a micro-story, but let me start with the macro-story. I think your average political observer, including the people who are willing to actually bet on their opinions on prediction markets, underrates what I would call the thermostatic nature of public opinion—meaning the temperature goes up, people want to turn the dial in the other direction. It gets too cold, it gets too hot. Right now, all around the world, incumbent parties are very unpopular. In the whole history of the United States’ midterm elections since World War II, you almost always have backsliding, a backlash against the incumbent party, and now those two trends are converging. So all the think pieces that you read in late 2024, early 2025 about a conservative vibe shift, those stories mostly haven’t held up well. In some ways they have. I think we’re past peak, like, woke 1.0, for example.

But all those stories about “Oh, now there’s this big, huge mandate for Trump,” I think Trump took that too literally and did a bunch of stuff that was going to cause a lot of pain for voters. So the tariffs, but particularly the war in Iran—where he ran on no more Middle Eastern wars, he ran on lower gas prices; those two things were explicitly violated.

And at the micro-level, Democrats have what I would call a candidate quality advantage. We had a lot of consternation in the summer about what’s going on in Michigan and what’s going on in Maine. And those are probably the two more problematic states that are purple or blue states. Those are still closer races than you think they might be. But in states like Ohio, Alaska, North Carolina, Iowa, you either have really strong candidates, or, like in Texas, you have a really weak Republican candidate. And one problem with the Republican Party being a party: I don’t know if you want to call it a cult following around Trump. I’m not sure it’s a cult thing so much as an incentive thing, that if you’re not loyal to Trump, you’re cast out of the party. That creates really big problems. That creates sycophantic candidates who are maybe not ideal for their state.

So a state like North Carolina, North Carolina was a swing state in 2024. Trump went up by what? Two or three points. You would expect in this nine-point D environment, you’d expect North Carolina to flip. But other races like Texas, the candidates make a big deal here.

This excerpt has been edited and condensed.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Nate Silver
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman