Why Trump could be a 'burden' for the GOP next year: analysis

President Donald Trump's dominance in American politics will likely cast a shadow on the Republican party in the 2026 midterm elections, according to a CNN report.

“Donald Trump has so thoroughly dominated American politics for the last decade, and he has been so demanding of complete loyalty from anyone running as a Republican, that views of the Republican Party and Republican candidates are synonymous with views about Donald Trump,” said veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres.

That is both a curse and a blessing, CNN says, beacuse while it has typically benefited red states where Trump has "helped the GOP consolidate unprecedented control," the Democrats' sweeping victories in Virginia and New Jersey "are a reminder that Trump’s indelible stamp on the GOP may once again become a burden next year on more politically contested terrain."

Data has shown that "attitudes toward the president and the outcomes of other elections has grown much more powerful over roughly the past half century," CNN notes, adding that more recently, trends have shown that "parallel changes created a political environment in which only the rarest candidate could survive despite partisan ties to a locally unpopular president, or succeed against a rival from a well-liked president’s party."

“You can surf somewhat above or below the tide” of attitudes about the president, says GOP consultant Matt Gorman, “but the differential is a lot smaller than it was 20 years ago.”

Trump has intensified these trends, CNN says, as "widespread disapproval of his performance during his first two years powered the blue wave that swept Democrats to control of the House in 2018: 90 percent of voters who disapproved of Trump supported Democratic House candidates that year, the exit polls found."

Across the 2018 and 2020 elections combined, every Republican Senate candidate lost at least 89 perfcent of voters who disapproved of Trump, with only one exception —Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), CNN notes.

The same trend was seen in governor's races, " which were long thought to be more insulated from national currents than Congressional contests," CNN reports.

"The strength of these trends made the Trump shadow almost impossible to escape for other Republicans during his presidency," they write.

Data shows that in states where Trump's approval rating fell below 50 percent, "Republicans lost Senate races they once thought they could win in Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania in 2018 and Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota and Michigan in 2020, as well as the Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin governor races in 2018."

The flip side, they explain, is that Trump was "an asset" for Republican candidates in states where a majority approved of his performance.

Republicans are raising red flags this time around, however.

"The correlation is so high for Trump also because such a high percentage of voters who disapprove of him do so strongly — and those strong disapprovers have always voted against candidates from the president’s party in much larger numbers than those who disapprove only 'somewhat'," CNN explains.

Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz says that “It’s not just that Trump is unpopular, but the intensity of the opposition is very strong."

This was seen in Virginia and New Jersey, where Democrats won by wide margins.

"Significant majorities of voters in each of the major contests said they disapproved of his performance as president and overwhelming majorities of those disapprovers backed the Democrats: 93 percent of voters who disapproved of Trump voted for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and 92 percent of them supported Democrat Abigail Spanberger in Virginia," according to the Voter Poll conducted by SRSS for a consortium of media organizations including CNN.

Most telling, CNN says, is that 89 percent of voters "who disapproved of Trump supported Jay Jones, the Democratic Attorney General candidate in Virginia who had been battered by a scandal over text messages in which he had mused about shooting political rivals."

“It’s pretty clear that the vote was largely a referendum on Trump and his policies,” Abramowitz says, “and the verdict was overwhelmingly negative.”

The unusually high rate of voters who disapprove of Trump and oppose other Republicans "presents GOP candidates with a crucial choice," CNN says, adding that they can either distance themselves from him or embrace him hoping it will bring out "more of the irregular voters who have flocked to the polls when he’s on the ballot."

Ayres says that embracing Trump will be a dangerous move for Republicans.

"“I don’t know how you expect to win running as a clone of a guy who lost your state three times,” Ayres said, referring to the Democrats' blowout wins in New Jersey and Virginia.

Democratic pollster Geoff Garin agrees.

“The election we had a few weeks ago, and the elections we will have in 2026, will largely be about the need to place a check (on Trump) both in terms of his policies and his efforts to amass unaccountable power,” Garin says. “It’s much less of an election about Democrats.”