April 7, 2025, 7:52 p.m.
Economic anxiety—encompassing inflation, the stock market, declining retirement-account balances—now seems to be at a once-a-generation level. President Trump’s stewardship of the economy, particularly his tariff policies, could hardly be more important as we look to the midterm elections.
Any Republican on the ballot in the next year and a half in a state or district with a Partisan Voting Index (PVI) score of R+5 or less, as measured by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, or a state or district that Trump carried by 5 points or less, should already be reaching for the Xanax. There are 39 GOP House members in such districts and four Senate seats at R+5 or less. Even GOP candidates representing states and districts with PVIs in single digits would be well advised to move at least to DEFCON 2 before their constituents’ 401(k) plans are reclassified as 200.5(k) plans.
Having said that, Democrats should not hold their collective breath for Trump to drop another 10 points in approval on top of the half-dozen points he had already lost.
In the old days, a president could drop as low as 24 percent approval (Richard Nixon in July and August of 1974), 28 percent (Jimmy Carter in June 1979), or 29 percent (George H.W. Bush in July 1992). Since then, however, the only time a Gallup presidential job-approval rating dropped below 35 percent was toward the end of George W. Bush’s tenure, when he hit 25 percent in October 2008 amid a financial meltdown.
Over the last quarter-century, the U.S. has become so polarized, with many now displaying what political scientists call negative partisanship, that shifts are no longer quite so dramatic. This has forced us to recalibrate our thinking. Few in either party are willing to express disapproval of the performance of their own president, or even vote against their own party’s candidate. They see it as an act of partisan heresy. Staying home or leaving a blank on the ballot is as far as partisans will go. This has effectively installed concrete-hard floors underneath presidents and impenetrable steel roofs above them, making it unlikely for a president’s job-approval ratings to drop into the 20s or soar into the 60s in all but the most extreme examples, if at all.
In midterm elections, the House is the more sensitive barometer of the national public mood, even though gerrymandering has made few congressional districts competitive. There are still enough indicators to tell us which direction the partisan winds are blowing and whether the velocities are light, moderate, or hurricane-force.
In the Senate, where only one-third of members are up every two years, it matters not only which group faces the voters in a given election but what happened six or even 12 years before. That’s why there is such a divergence between House and Senate outcomes. In the 13 midterm elections this century, the same party gained (or lost) both House and Senate seats in the first nine (2000-2016). Since then, however, the two chambers have gone in opposite directions each time.
One thing that candidates, campaigns, donors, and activists should keep in mind is that many of them exist in partisan and ideological cocoons, surrounded by like-minded people and consuming like-minded media, sometimes not realizing until too late that the weather outside of the climate-controlled environment of that cocoon may be getting hostile, if not downright dangerous. Former President Biden’s numbers tanked long before many Democrats sensed that there were problems outside of the bubbles where they lived. That is no less true on the Republican and conservative side.
Democrats should keep several other things in mind. While Trump’s actions are creating and fueling this economic turmoil, it is still quite possible for Democrats to screw this up. For example, if in purple competitive states and districts they were to nominate candidates who can only attract votes from the party base and not among those few remaining independents, they could end up with very disappointing outcomes, like Republicans did in Senate races in 2010 and 2012 and up and down the ballot in 2022.
Democrats should also note that even though some of their candidates have overperformed the 2024 results in a number of special elections this year, the sample size has been small. Moreover, many of the same people pushing this line today were pushing it prior to the last election, which was a sub-optimal election for the party.
For Republicans, one more thing is worth considering. Trump encountered a lot of adversities through his first term, but it was the economy that kept him in the game, even after the stock-market selloff of the early pandemic days. It is unlikely that strong numbers on handling immigration and the border can provide that same level of buoyancy.
Politics and the economy are inexorably intertwined. Hyper-partisanship has diminished the sensitivity between the two, although not the overall relationship. There are more voters locked into support for one side or the other, but a hurting economy, particularly when it can be blamed (rightly or wrongly) on a president, still can have a real impact on the few people remaining in the middle, the pure independents—the only truly malleable voters we have left.
