U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump after Trump signed the sweeping spending and tax legislation, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2025.
Democratic strategist Shripal Shah said that the GOP is abandoning some of its congressional candidates because it knows that they can no longer win.
Speaking to The New Republic's Greg Sargent for his Monday podcast, Shah, who oversees spending for advertising expenditures by the Dem-aligned House Majority PAC.
Sargent explained that there "are around 58 GOP-held districts that are really in play right now." Political analysts have predicted that despite the GOP's redistricting efforts, 2026 could be a "blue wave" election. Sargent wanted to know if that meant Democrats were putting "real money" behind some of these Democratic candidates.
"I think that what you’re going to see—in the same way that you saw in 2006, 2008, 2018, et cetera—is that it’s not necessarily playing in every single place, but the battlefield is going to move pretty dramatically from early September to mid-October," said Shah. He noted that if things continue moving in the current direction they may "not necessarily have to expend a lot of resources in tier-one places that six months ago I would’ve told you, like, We are going to be there till the end, because the environment is shifting in such a rapid way."
According to the strategist, there are races "where Republicans are cutting and running from certain districts that just don’t have paths to them that they thought maybe they were going to, and the terrain just shifts."
"So we could be potentially moving away from places from an offensive posture—this district doesn’t need these resources anymore because the Republican doesn’t have a path to victory," he added. "That’s what’s happened in a lot of positive election cycles dating back to 2018, 2006, et cetera, et cetera. I would not be surprised if that’s what happens this time around."
The Wall Street Journal highlighted a chart from the recent Fox News poll showing that Republicans have lost ground on the economy for the first time in 13 years. Trump, in particular, is underwater on the economy.
Republican pollster Mitchell Brown told the Journal that in focus groups he's seeing a clear "sign that views of the economy pose a clear danger for his party in this year’s midterms." Voters that he's speaking with know how much their bills are down to the dollar. It's also helping with healthcare costs and the price of groceries like beef.
Vanderbilt University political scientist John Sides said, “The set of events that would need to happen to produce a real change in the Republican Party’s fortune is pretty big."
Shah said that Democrats are going up against "MAGA Inc.," which he said "has close to a trillion dollars to spend, and that is one of the dynamics that could make it more consistent, where you’re just in a lot of places, as opposed to things shifting from one to another. A lot of it depends on how September plays out."
He pointed to a congressional race in North Carolina where Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) decided he was dropping out of the race amid an investigation for "inappropriate conduct" with female staffers. While Trump won the district by double digits, Shah thinks that the seat could not be in play.
