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The Bulwark
Trump’s Polls Are Collapsing. Is a Blue Tsunami Coming? (w/ Ron Brownstein) | Bulwark on Sunday
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- [00:03]
A
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Welcome to Bulwark on Sunday. I'm very pleased to be joined today by the person I regard as our nation's preeminent election analyst and a long time, long friend and excellent journalist beyond elections, on pop culture and music. Baseball. We were just discussing baseball before we went on the air, but we'll spare you that discussion. Ron's exultant as a Dodger fan over last night's trade, but I'm not going to get into that. And we'll talk about the polls and above all, the November election, which it's hard to believe. What is it, three, three months away? Almost exactly. Right.
- [00:31]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
- [00:32]
A
I know. So, Ron, thank you for joining me.
- [00:35]
B
Yeah.
- [00:36]
A
So lots to talk about. Let's go. Let's begin with the polls. I mean, pretty striking this past week, I think I've got CNN, Trump's approval below 35 and four respectable polls, I think, right. CNN, AP, Quinnipiac and Pew. Pew is maybe a couple of weeks, a week earlier, I think a couple weeks earlier in the field because the others were pretty much a week ago. And I think a couple of those were registered voters, not even adults, which Trump's been doing a little better with typically. So probably that, I mean, pollsters correctly say if you look at the president's approval, you want to see what the whole country thinks of him. So it should be all adults. But when you're getting close to it off year election, you want to look at registered voters anyway. So there he is below 35, which is a striking drop, isn't it, from where he was even a few months ago? So what does it mean? What does it mean for the midterms?
- [01:22]
B
Well, as we talked about before, the president's approval rating, the approval rating of a sitting president has become the single most important factor in shaping midterms. And there are a lot of things that are going on, different cross currents, who Democrats are nominating, what the map looks like. But I would argue that these kinds of polls and what we're seeing in polling in both House and Senate races, to me, has already coalesced. The core question of 2026 and, and the core question of 2026 in my mind is can Republicans win significantly more voters who disapprove of Trump than they did during his first term? That is the central question in this election. As I said, a lot of things go into that, including what's happening with Democrats. But if you look at Trump's approval rating now, it is significantly lower. We're talking 10 points lower than Bill Clinton in 94, Barack Obama in 2010, Trump himself in 18, Biden in 22, and about 6 or 7 points lower than George W. Bush in 2006. And those were all elections where the president's party lost the House and with the exception of Biden in 22 elections where the president's party did really poorly in the Senate. I mean, you know, his approval rating is now at the level that typically has produced really bad outcomes for the president's party. And so, you know, the reason Republicans are remaining relatively calm about this election and are not yet kind of in that 1929 standing on the ledge, you know, of the, of the high building is because Democrats are not winning in these polls nearly as many people who disapprove of Trump as they did during their first term. We can talk about the details of that in a minute. And to me, that is the core question, like can Republicans in fact hold many more voters who disapprove of Trump than they did in 2018 and 2020? Because it's pretty clear that is what they are going to have to do to prevent a really good night for Democrats.
- [03:28]
A
So say a word more about that and about I've been struck by this. The strongly disapprove of Trump is around 50%.
- [03:35]
B
Yes.
- [03:35]
A
And that presumably are overwhelmingly going to vote against the Republican candidate when the Republican part, my only footnote to what you said is especially true obviously when the party of the president controls Congress. So it becomes fully a referendum on do you want to.
- [03:50]
B
Yeah.
- [03:50]
A
And a party that's been so supportive of the president, so fully a referendum on do you want Trump to have a compliant Congress for the next two years or a check and balance Congress for the next two years? That's the major issue, presumably in this election. Democrats aren't going to govern the country for the next two years if they win.
- [04:04]
B
Right.
- [04:05]
A
But Trump will if the Republicans win anyway. So and the stronger disapprovals around 50, the strong approvals, what, low 20s, kind
- [04:12]
B
of low 20s, which is a turnout marker as well historically.
- [04:16]
A
So then, yeah, Republicans need to win a lot of those somewhat disapprovers of Trump. They need to come back to the Republican fold and tell themselves. And many seem to be in the polls, as you say, and it makes sense that they're not such MAGA Republicans, but they still prefer a Republican Congress for various traditional Republican reasons. So what does the polling tell us about this and what's your sort of educated guess as to how that moves over the next three months?
- [04:42]
B
So In Trump's first term. In the exit poll in 2018, 90% of people who disapproved of Trump voted Democratic for the house. In 2020, 93% of people who disapproved of Trump voted Democratic for the House over all of the elections, over all of the Senate elections. In 18 and 20, for which we have exit polls, every Democratic Senate candidate, incumbent or challenger, won at least 89% of people who disapproved of Trump, except Sarah Gideon against Susan Collins in 2020 in Maine. Susan Collins in Maine in 2020 was the only Republican Senate incumbent or challenger who won more than 8% of people who disapproved of Trump, according to the exit polls. And then in 2025, we saw the same thing. I mean, Sheryl in New Jersey, Spanberger in Virginia, they won, I think, roughly 93% each of voters who disapprove of Trump. Even Jay Jones. Right. That Attorney general candidate who had some political baggage in terms of texting about killing political rivals. He won 89% of people who disapproved of Trump. Okay, so that's kind of like the baseline that we're operating at. And those numbers, the correlation, and you know, by the way, the other side is true, too. I mean, 90% plus of people who approve of Trump vote Republican in all of these races. And the numbers for Trump in terms of the number of disapprovers who voted for the other party is a little bit higher than for most other presidents in this period. For the reason that you cited, such a high percentage of Trump disapprovers strongly disapprove. And the strong disapprovers historically have behaved very differently than the somewhat disapprovers. I mean, you know, generally, the out party, the party that isn't the president, the other party, the opposition party, wins most of the somewhat disapprovers. But among the strong disapprovers, it's been like 95% usually. I mean, even Biden in 2022, who did pretty well among the Democrats, did okay. Among the somewhat disapproving of Biden, 95% of the people who strongly disapproving Biden still voted Republican. Now, you know, so part of the challenge Republicans have had in the Trump era is that there are not a lot of somewhat disapprovers. And if you look at the polling carefully now, Bill, not only are Republicans running unusually well among the somewhat disapprovers, but Democrats are not up to 95% among the strong disapprovers yet so you have to ask yourself, okay, are there reasons why all the way through Election Day this will endure and Republicans will run significantly better among people who disagree with Trump than they did in the first term? Or is this kind of like a mirage? I asked whether it's a seasonal problem or a structural problem. Right. So let's go through it, and I'd be interested in your thoughts as well. Okay, so why would Republicans, Senate and House candidates run better among significantly better Democrats, 10 points better among people who disapprove of Trump than they did his first term? Well, one reason would be you cited more of those disapprovers are Republicans. 20% of Republicans now disapprove of Trump. So some of them are still gonna vote Republican. So it's reasonable to assume that Democrats may not get quite to 90, 93%. I mean, that could tick down a little, but it's not ticking down a little. It's dropping a lot. Second reason, Democratic Party image is weaker than it was in 2018. Right. I mean, you had the Biden presidency in the middle in 2018. In the exit poll, people split evenly on whether they had a favorable or unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. That's not the case now. It's net negative by 15 to 20 points. And yes, some of that is Democrats who are angry at their own leaders, as I'm seeing here in Michigan, but it also includes independents, so that might suppress it. And then finally, third big reason it might be different is the map. You know, this election is being fought out primarily on Republican terrain. I mean, in 2018, there were still two dozen Republicans in districts that voted for Hillary Clinton and Democrats, kind of, that was the core. That was half of their gains. They beat 21 of them. I think of the 24, you know, before redistricting, there were only three House Republicans in districts that Clinton won. So Democrats have to go deeper into Trump country to win their House seats this time. And the same thing in the Senate. I mean, you know, most of the, all of the states except Maine the Democrats are targeting this year voted for Trump in 2024, most of them by double digits. So all of those reasons, you could say, okay, Democrats may not get quite as high among Trump disapprovers as they did in 18 and 20, but are they really only going to win 80% of them, which is what they're getting now? Low 80s and polls? I personally do not think so. I mean, I think that, like Bogart, I believe the fundamental things apply and that over time, the get wonky here. The generic ballot will bend toward presidential approval, not the other way around. I mean, Democrats in the generic ballot now are usually winning around somewhere between. I mean, CNN still had them at 70% among Trump disapprovers, and they're in that poll that had Trump at what, whatever it was, 34%. And most polls have them somewhere between high 70s, low 80s. I don't think it's gonna be that low. I think in the end, a reasonable share of those Republican leaning voters who say they disapprove of Trump, but are now voting Republican for House and Senate and thus keeping down the Democratic number among the Trump disapprovers, I think a reasonable share of them are not gonna show up, and that's going to move the overall number back up. One last. I know we're going to talk about the Senate, but just to kind of put the frame on the Senate. You know, I mentioned that Collins was the only Republican who won more than 8% of Trump disapprovers in his first term. She is also the only Republican Senate incumbent or challenger who won in a state where the exit poll showed that more people disapproved than approved of his job performance. She was the only one. You know, you look at those New York Times Sienna polls from a couple of weeks ago, Republicans were winning in Ohio and Iowa and tied in Texas, even though Trump was only at 44% approval in each state. Okay, is that like, you know, my instinct is that if he's really at 44% on election day and he might recover a little, but if he is that low, that it would be shocking if they won any, much less. It wouldn't be shocking if they won any. It would be shocking if they won all of those races. Because again, Republicans in polling today are routinely doing something that only Susan Collins did in his entire first term. And I just don't know if that's sustainable. I tend to think it's more, like I said, a seasonal problem. Democrats aren't defined. The individual candidates aren't that defined yet. People are reacting to their overall view of the party, which is more negative than in Trump's first term because of the Biden presidency. But I think it's going to be very hard for half a dozen Senate Republicans to hold their Democratic opponents to only 80 to 85% of people who disapprove Trump after only one held them to less than 89 over his entire first term.
- [12:04]
A
That's really interesting. I want to get to the Senate races, really by state, but let's just one more on the generic ballot in the House. I take it if right now it's 6ish, 7ish most of these polls, the Democratic edge. I assume that if the Democrats are at 7 or 8 in the generic, they win the House, I mean, despite redistricting. Yeah, right.
- [12:25]
B
Yeah. I mean, you know, even with, like I said, even before redistricting, there are fewer obvious targets than there were in 2018. I mean, obviously Democrats started lower than, what were they, 199, I think, or 200ish. So they don't have as many tires. And then redistricting has further narrowed the playing field for them. But, you know, Trump's approval now is what I mean, like literally in these last polls, it's 15 points below his vote. Now. I don't know. I don't think it's going to stay that. I don't think in the exit poll, if I was just. If in the exit poll, 34% of people disapprove of Trump, 15 points below his vote, there are going to be a lot of Republicans who do not expect to lose or wake up, you know, looking for new employment. But even if his approval comes in somewhere like 41, okay, that's eight points below his vote, right? I mean, that's eight. That's an eight point. So if you have a fairly uniform swing, which may or may not, we should. Because I want to mention one other thing. You know, you're talking places where he, where he won north of 55% that would, would be in play now, as I've written, and with help from Kyle Condike at Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, you know, even in really good midterm years, 06, 10, 14, 18 and 22, the opposition party have won very few seats where the President got at least 55% two years earlier. But there are enough seats between up to 55 for Democrats to win the House. And as I say, if Trump stays this low, there are going to be people in 55% Trump, 24 districts that lose. You know, unless this is something completely different than we've seen before, which in
- [14:12]
A
the era of Trump is we should rule out 100%. But I tend to write, I'm sort of with you. I, I just gave a talk the other day and I, my whole theme was, we're in a new era. It's not going to be like anything we knew growing up. Who knows what 2028 looks like within each party, between the parties, 30, 20, 30, can't even think about, you know, it's a whole new world to Trump. Say nothing of free and fair elections. I said that. I then someone said, what about 2026? I said there I have a fairly conventional, traditional view, which is I do feel like, absent a little bit, the election interference question, it feels now like a pretty normal midterm in the sense that it's a midterm that you have when a party has controlled the presidency and Congress and has had pretty uniform voting in Congress for the president and it just becomes a referendum on the president. One questioner asked, well, isn't that a little simple? Shouldn't the voters be judging each candidate? And I actually, they don't define, defend the voters on this. I mean, the most important thing for the next two years, and I'm saying this analytically, obviously I'm anti Trump, but I mean, is, do you have a Congress that goes along with Trump or the Jackson? That just is factually the most important thing. The Democrats aren't going to pass some radical overhaul of health care. They couldn't even get the votes in their own conference to do it, let alone, you know, get Trump to sign it. So the most important thing, I think, is the Trump question. And that's where I think your argument, there's a sense that the reversion will be to the Trump number, not to the current generic number. Makes a certain amount of sense to me. Just gotta be, well, it doesn't have to be, but it could be the case. In August, September, October, more and more voters focus on the question of, well, what do we want for the next two years?
- [15:40]
B
You know, so Dan Cena, who ran the DCCC in 2018, said to me that in their polling at this point in the summer, they saw something different, they saw something similar, where Democrats were having trouble consolidating the voters down on Trump. But he said that in the end, in the districts that were fought out, the districts that were targeted, he believed, he recalls, that virtually no Republican House member or candidate ran above Trump's approval rating in the district in the end, that it was a ceiling, that it was a hard ceiling. So we'll see, because I am sure Trump's at 35, he's underwater in a lot of places. Now, here's the other thing to kind of keep in mind. And I have to think if I know the answer to this question that I'm posing, but in 2018, you know, Democrats, 2018 was the bookend to 2010. 2010, Republicans swept away these last rural Democrats representing blue collar districts that had been holding on even though those places had been voting Republican at the presidential level since the 80s. Right. It was just kind of the culling. The floorboards have been rotting for years. And then with the weight of the Affordable Care act and everything else, you know, all these guys, John Tanner and Rick Boucher and all these guys fell through the floor. 2018 was the bookend to that, where you had all of these suburban Republicans representing white collar districts who have been hanging on, even though those places have been voting Democratic really since Clinton. And they were swept away. Three quarters of the Democrats won. Three quarters of the seats of Democrats won in 2018 had more white college graduates than the national average. So the result of that is that there aren't that many places of the many places like that left to target. I mean, there's Don Bacon's seat, there's Mike Lawler, there's Brian Fitzpatrick, there's Tom Kane Jr. That's about it. Like maybe a couple more here or there. So this time, two thirds of the seats the Democrats are formally targeting have fewer white college graduates or more non college whites than the national average. And so, you know, even though Trump's approval has fallen among them too, it is significantly higher than it is among other groups. I mean, you know, in national polling, he is, you know, he won, he's won almost 2/3 of non college white teacher 3 elections. He's now down to around 50, 50among them in national polling. Okay, that's much worse than his vote. And it's a significant, it's like everything else, like a 15 point fall, but it's still 50, 50. It's not 40, 60 like it is among college whites or 25, 75 like it is among the working class minority voters that everybody focused on so much in 24. So, you know, if you're talking about Northeast Pennsylvania or the seats of Democrats are targeting in Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin, you know, Trump's going to be a lot closer to 50 in those districts than he is in Tom K. Where he's probably at 35 right now. So that is just another factor. And the same thing is true in the Senate. Most of the states that are in the mix have more non white, more white, non college graduate, non college whites than the national average.
- [18:45]
A
And I suppose just to conclude this section of our discussion, we'll get to the Senate race. I suppose there is an argument that the non college whites, it wouldn't be crazy to say they will revert, they will become less anti, that they're the anti Trump number might move back a little bit up as opposed to what we were saying that the, that the generic was the towards the other way. You know what I mean?
- [19:05]
B
I think so. I do. And look, those are voters, those voters have the most, they're the most other weapons that Republicans can use to hold them or magnets to hold them, even though they're unhappy with Trump, even though they're unhappy with the economy. I will say the risk to Republicans is twofold. I think there one is that a lot of them don't show up. I mean that's entirely a possibility that they don't show up. But the other one is that it's just worth noting that in 2018, which was an election really where healthcare figured highly prominently, Democrats ran a few point notably like four or five points better among the non college white women than they did in any election before since. And I do think the Medicaid ACA nexus of issues could allow them to peak into the 40s among those non college white women and that will make a difference in some of these blue collar House districts and Senate races that they have to win.
- [20:06]
A
This has been terribly, really helpful and informative. Okay, Senators, I guess let's maybe do it in two buckets if that makes sense. I feel like there, there's the, yeah, the Democrats were at some risk, are at some risk I suppose of losing a couple of seats. They hold Michigan and Georgia and they have been favored mostly I'd say to pick up two seats. They don't hold North Carolina and maybe Maine so that they've started 40.