'Death of the Republic': Top analyst fears GOP wipeout is only the beginning

Roger Chesley, Virginia Mercury
5h
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks to the media on the day of a NATO leaders' summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026.

Larry Sabato, the decades-long University of Virginia political analyst, had a dire warning for Republican congressional candidates last week:

You’re going down in the U.S. House of Representatives. And you might lose your slim majority in the U.S. Senate, too, after the Nov. 3 elections.

“It’s either going to be a sizable blue wave, or it’s going to be a tsunami,” Sabato, founder and director of U.Va.’s Center for Politics and head of the eponymous Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told nearly 250 people at The Slover building in downtown Norfolk last week. The perennial prognosticator relayed similar comments to me in a brief interview just before his address.

The Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis newsletter, forms its projections by polling, reporting, studying electoral history and other factors. Sabato said Democrats could win at least 224 seats in the House of Representatives (they now trail Republicans 218-214, with one independent and two vacancies). In the Senate, he said, Democrats should do no worse than 50-50. (The GOP currently holds a 53-47 advantage.)

Sabato’s Crystal Ball recently rated the seat held by U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach, as “leans Democratic.” She’s in a rematch with former Democrat U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria, and it’s one of the more-competitive contests nationwide. The group rated the race of longtime incumbent U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland, as a toss-up. He’s battling Democrat Shannon Taylor.

Such predictions and the latest polls explain why President Donald Trump has undermined the electoral process – including demanding uncustomary mid-decade redistricting in red states to try to gain more Republican seats in the House. He’s also lied incessantly about voting security and accuracy. More on that later.

Sabato told those gathered that a “national funk” often haunts the president’s party during the midterms – especially, he said, in the sixth year of an incumbent’s time in office. (This is Trump’s sixth year over two non-consecutive terms.)

I’d add that there’s despair coupled with outright fear among many Americans because of Trump’s policies that have caused so much havoc:

  • A war of choice in which the United States joined Israel against Iran. It was poorly conceived, the president hasn’t sufficiently explained why our country is even waging it, and the conflict has no end in sight. The war has boosted gasoline and diesel prices astronomically nationwide. For example, AAA reported regular gas cost an average of $4.09 a gallon in Virginia on Friday; diesel totaled $6.27 a gallon.
  • Trump’s misguided fascination with and implementation of tariffs. A recent Cato Institute/Morning Consult survey of 4,150 registered voters found 74% say that Trump’s tariffs increased the prices of things they buy – including 66% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats. A majority believes the tariffs have weakened the U.S. economy. Americans see the effects in their wallets.

Sabato, a Norfolk native, also worried about the fate of our democracy – regardless of elections.

“We’ve lost the ability” to have meaningful conversations about the public good, he told me. “We’re at the point where it is very possible to construct the decline and death of the Republic. … You can see how it might” happen.

Later, fielding a question from the audience about the lack of civility in public speech, Sabato added, “We’ve gone down some notches. And we’re so nasty to one another.”

That brings me back to Trump and his administration’s machinations going into the midterms. The president has brayed about electoral problems – knowing he’s exaggerating or outright lying. He’s doing this because his haphazard and narcissistic leadership has alienated many Americans and threatened their day-to-day living conditions.

The worst actions, which a GOP majority in Congress approved, targeted low-income people with cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. The cruelty was unnecessary.

That’s why Trump demanded, starting in 2025, that GOP-controlled states overhaul congressional boundaries to create more Republican-leaning districts. The decision defied customs. It led to a backlash from Democratic-controlled states that fought the craven map-drawing with their own craven map-drawing.

Democrats in Virginia embarked on a similar crusade, and a referendum passed by 3 percentage points to allow drawing of new districts in the commonwealth. But the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the electorate’s decision.

The president also has tried to pre-empt his party’s inevitable losses next month by relying on a well-worn practice: denigrating the very voting systems that placed him in office not once, but twice. He’d rather throw doubt on the upcoming results than concede defeat – leading us down the path of becoming a Banana Republic.

What else should we expect, however, from the person who incited the Jan. 6 attempted overthrow of the 2020 elections?

His wild-eye conspiracy theories usually don’t stand up to judicial muster: The Supreme Court this year blocked his attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail ballots.

That hasn’t stopped him mucking up things, even as his favorability ratings crater. He’s threatened local officials with criminal prosecution over their voter rolls. In Virginia last week, Arlington County officials sued the administration to prevent it from sending armed federal agents to polling places.

That’s why Sabato’s predictions aren’t a surprise.

People are suffering across Virginia and the country. They’ll express that discontent during the midterm elections.

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