GOP pollster exposes why Trump's 'shock value' strategy is falling flat

President Donald Trump participates in a midterm election rally for Oklahoma Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei at the Choctaw Event Center in Durant, Oklahoma, US, October 1, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

President Donald Trump frequently rails about “communists” and “socialists,” and the GOP has increasingly leaned into such attacks as it has grown more desperate in the face of an uphill midterm battle. But according to a longtime GOP pollster, accusations of “socialist” don’t have the “shock value” they once had.

As Politico explains, Republicans have struggled to define an opponent during this midterm cycle, though “Trump has frequently sought to blame Biden for high prices and other challenges that his administration has faced. Even so, the former president has become a far less useful punching bag for Republicans since leaving office and remaining largely out of the spotlight.” The same goes for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. No other Democrats have managed to elicit the same level of conservative anger, so Trump and the GOP have turned to the classic red baiting.

Besides peppering speeches with accusations of communism and socialism, “the GOP has run ads seeking to tie Democratic candidates to socialism or communism — the concepts themselves — in dozens of House battleground races and nearly every major Senate race,” reports Politico. “Just this week, the Trump administration launched a national $20 million DHS-funded campaign-style ad spree that features Trump lambasting ‘communism, socialism, and Marxism.’ But when it comes to specific political figures — like Mamdani, New York City’s mayor — it gets complicated. Republicans once salivated at the prospect of Mamdani as a foil when he was first elected last year. But his first year in office has largely boosted his standing with voters, complicating efforts to turn his tenure into a negative for Democrats. Trump’s surprising continued embrace of the New York City mayor — just last week, the president stood by Mamdani and said he hoped he would ‘be a great mayor’ — has further complicated GOP efforts to paint him as a villain.”

But while the GOP has characterized prominent Democrats as socialist for decades, writes Politico, “being called a ‘socialist’ may not have the same shock value it once did.” According to GOP pollster Matt Towery, “I don’t think just calling a candidate ‘socialist’ works that well for Republicans, particularly this late in the game… Republicans just assume people have a bad reaction to the term socialist, and the term doesn’t elicit the same reaction it used to.”

Indeed, as experts have noted, MAGA and even Trump himself have come to embrace a variety of policies associated with socialism. And according to a Fox News poll, support for socialism has grown dramatically, from 18 percent approval in 2010, to 32 percent approval in 2022, to a record high of 38 percent in March 2026. A number of surveys have also shown an increasing approval for socialist policies specifically among conservatives.

As the New Your Post explains, “In a 2025 survey of young likely voters, 42 percent of conservatives said they would like to see a democratic socialist win the presidency in 2028. Among 2024 Trump voters, the figure was 35 percent in another poll. A March 2026 poll found 77 percent of all voters support raising taxes on billionaires, including 65 percent of Republicans, 75 percent of independents, and 91 percent of Democrats. It also found 62 percent of voters are more likely to back a candidate who supports an increased billionaire tax, versus 12 percent more likely to support a candidate who opposes it.”

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