95 DAYS AND COUNTING. Nov. 3, 2026, seemed a long time off back in December, when President Donald Trump started the first, short-lived “pivot” to campaigning for the midterm elections. It still seemed a long time off in January, when Trump’s venture into Venezuela eclipsed any attention the White House was paying to the midterms. And even at the end of February and the beginning of March, when Trump joined with Israel to start a Middle Eastern war, many Republicans believed there was still plenty of time before the midterms. The hope was that if it was all cleared up by the Fourth of July, GOP candidates would have plenty of time to campaign on their best issues.
Now, however, as August arrives and there are less than 100 days until Election Day, it’s hard to say there is plenty of time left before the midterms. And the Republican Party’s prospects for keeping control of the House of Representatives are still poor. Here are five reasons:
1) Trump’s job approval is at nearly the lowest point it has been in his second term, 39.7% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
2) On the single most important issue to voters, the economy, Trump’s job approval rating is even lower, at 36.5%, also according to RealClearPolitics.
3) The Iran war is an enormous source of uncertainty. Plus, it remains unpopular — 61.4% disapproval to 36.2% approval. And it is to blame for an increase in the price of gasoline. A gallon of gas is $4.10 today, according to AAA, up from $3.14 just one year ago.
4) The generic ballot, which Democrats lead by 5.4 percentage points according to the RealClearPolitics average, is still so-so. At this point in Trump’s first term, Democrats led by 7.3 and went on to pick up 41 seats. Today’s situation is better than that for Republicans, but probably not enough to actually keep control of the House.
5) History is still history. In the past half-century or so, the only presidents who did not lose seats in a midterm election were Bill Clinton in 1998, which was an unusual circumstance because of the Lewinsky scandal, and George W. Bush in 2002, which was an unusual circumstance because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This doesn’t seem like that.
The only Republican upside, and it is a significant one, is that many Democrats seem to have gone completely insane. The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America inside the party — an unwelcome event that has deeply distressed many mainstream Democrats — is an opportunity for GOP candidates to portray the entire Democratic Party as nuts. Worse than nuts — dangerous.
So that is good for the GOP, if bad for the country. But is it enough to actually win the midterms? “I give us a 20 percent chance [of holding the House],” said one veteran Republican strategist via email. “Which is generous.”
“The people who are bullish cannot answer the question: Why will this midterm be different?” the strategist went on to say. “They say, ‘We have a lot of money, redistricting helped us, and the Dems are crazy.’ All three of those are true. But that does not feel like enough to beat: very bad president numbers, gas prices, history.”
“I’d like to be wrong,” the strategist concluded. Republicans would undoubtedly agree. But the situation is what it is.