Trump’s collapsing voter enthusiasm creates a mess for GOP midterm chances

There has been much discussion of the headwinds Republicans face going into the November midterms. First, there is the simple fact that the president’s party tends to lose seats in midterm elections no matter who is in the Oval Office. Then there is President Donald Trump’s MAGA base, which has proven that it only comes out in large numbers when his name is on the ticket. And then there’s the matter of his historic unpopularity, which has caused fractures with some of his most long-running supporters.

What this adds up to, says CNN political reporter Aaron Blake, is a bad case of enthusiasm gap for the GOP, the result of which will upend the balance of power in D.C.

According to Blake, “A series of polls in recent weeks have taken an early look at enthusiasm and motivation to vote ahead of the 2026 election, and Republicans are suffering from a real deficit. The party has trailed significantly on such measures for months, as CNN polling has showed. But what’s particularly remarkable is how unenthused Republicans are, compared to other recent midterm elections — including those involving Trump.”

He cites the disparity between the 73 percent of Democrats who say the upcoming election is more important than previous midterms, versus the 52 percent of Republicans who feel the same. The latter number is a major drop from 2022 and 2018, when 72 percent and 63 percent of GOP voters expressed the midterms’ looming importance. On top of that, in a recent CNN poll, just 48 percent of Republicans agreed that they would cast a vote to “send a message that you support Donald Trump” (a dramatic plunge from the 71 percent who answered affirmatively in 2018), whereas 76 percent of Democrats said their vote would be cast in direct opposition to the president.

And as Blake notes, that 48 percent is below the 51 percent of Democrats who said their 2022 midterm vote was a direct show of support for Biden. “That’s particularly striking because Biden has never commanded anything close to the level of loyalty and devotion in the Democratic Party that Trump has in the GOP. And yet, their numbers are similar.”

What’s more, polling shows that the percentage of Democrats who are “very enthusiastic” about voting has remained roughly the same from 2018 to 2026, increasing from 60 to 61 percent, while the Republican rate has dropped from 65 to 53 percent. And currently, only 72 percent of Republicans surveyed say they are “certain to vote” in November, which is 7 percent below the Democrats, and below what both parties expressed in the 2022 election.

Perhaps the most telling number of all: a mere 28 percent of Republicans and right-leaning independent voters say they are “very enthusiastic” about voting in the upcoming midterms, which is nearly 20 points below the Democrats, and a 22 percent drop versus the GOP in 2022.

So while the GOP has always had turnout troubles, according to Blake, “right now, the GOP’s non-presidential-election turnout problem is looking even more problematic than usual.”