U.S. President Donald Trump shields his eyes from light as he speaks during the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) annual fundraising dinner in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 25, 2026.
If President Donald Trump and the Republican Party were hoping to stoke a fire under disenchanted Republicans this year, it isn’t working, according to analyst G. Elliot Morris.
“The president thinks he can activate lower-turnout voters who like his agenda. But polls show his former supporters oppose his key policies, and don’t think he’s focused on affordability,” reports Morris, citing an aggregate of polls showing moderate interest GOP voters not only being disenchanted with the midterm election but downright hostile to Trump’s policies.
Morris said Republican strategists are banking on the convention to “help the GOP by increasing turnout among Republican voters who have so far this cycle been less likely to say they’ll come out this November.”
But Morris said he has combined “all eight of this year’s monthly Strength In Numbers/Verasight polls into one mega-poll proving over 11,000 interviews with self-reported registered voters on everything from their most important issue. This includes state vote choice in the midterms, approval of Trump overall as well as a dozen issues. It also includes respondents’ demographics and reported vote choice in 2024, said Morris.
He added that his “mega-poll” provides a breakdown of how voters feel about the current administration’s performance on their most important issues according to who they voted for in 2024 and their stated likelihood to vote again this November.
“With this we can directly test the theory that low-turnout Republicans will be activated by more Trump,” said Morris—but he added: “This is unlikely.”
“According to our polling, voters who are less likely to turn out to vote are actually much less approving of Trump overall and on key issues,” said Morris, citing a graph showing reported Trump approval and disapproval overall on deportations, inflation, and health care by all respondents.
This is why Trump and the RNC’s mid-term Trump-O-Palooza in Dallas this week is likely going to fizzle when it comes to pushing so-so GOP voters to the polls. Elliot says Trump is not the draw the RNC might think he is, and this will likely translate in a November enthusiasm gap between the GOP and Democrats.
“The initial reviews of the Republicans’ midterm convention — codenamed “Trumpapalooza” — are in, and they are not pretty,” said Morris. “… If you’re puzzled by the logic of holding a national convention featuring a president with an approval rating of just 35 percent, you’re not alone.
The idea was actually Trump’s, reports Morris, quoting the president saying Wednesday night that “When I’m on the ticket, Republicans always do very well. We won the presidency three times we won. We won it big, and we also won everything else because whatever it is — people came and we won the Senate.”
