MAGA can’t save Trump and Republicans from this one: GOP pollster

Conservative pollsters say the Republican Party is in trouble if they’re relying on President Donald Trump’s loyal MAGA cavalry to j save them from angry voters this year.

Likewise, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that whatever schemes are brewing to sway the election with vote tampering and voter restrictions is not likely to make a significant difference with so high a percentage of the nation turning on the White House.

“There’s no question the president is uniquely motivating for MAGA voters, but MAGA voters aren’t sufficient to win in swing districts or states,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “Nationalizing an election does not make sense when the president is at 38 percent job approval.”

“During the GOP’s two-day convention here this week, Trump — term-limited and facing backlash from voters — will be everywhere,” reports WSJ. “The president’s name and face are plastered all over the arena where the convention is being held. Dozens of Republicans will take the stage to defend his record. The president will deliver a prime-time keynote address.”

However, the strategy comes with political risks, said WSJ. Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted in his second term, including among the independent voters that Republicans need if they are going to retain their majorities in the House and Senate. Voters have also broadcast high skepticism of Trump’s policies in most polls. They largely oppose his entirely voluntary war in Iran and they despise the high gasoline and food prices the war brings, in conjunction with Trump’s punishing tariff policies.

It is the president himself and his senior advisers who say Trump remains the party’s most dynamic figure, however, and they claim Trump is “uniquely capable of energizing Republicans, raising money and marshaling the attention of voters across the country,” according to the WSJ. It’s one of the reasons, they say, that Trump is making the midterms a referendum on his second term, asking voters to pretend that he is on the ballot.

But Trump is a divisive figure at a time when the party needs a wide spectrum of Republicans, right-leaning-centrists and centrists to both turn out and vote to help the GOP maintain its majorities in the House and Senate. And the polarizing figure who drove Republican primaries is not the same personality that easily wins a more centrist national election.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Democrats themselves backed off the idea of hosting a midterm convention this year, likely do to staging what looks like celebration at a time when voters are suffering under inflation and paychecks that are not rising fast enough to keep up with rising consumer prices.

“But Trump, a former reality-television star, was intrigued by the prospect of hosting a glitzy event and pressed the party to make it happen, according to Republicans involved in planning the convention,” reports WSJ.

“Republicans need to give voters a reason to show up to the polls,” said Chris Pack, a GOP strategist. “They need to get voters [irritated] by dropping the gloves, throwing some haymakers and painting a crystal-clear picture of the insanity being proposed by an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party.”

However, the sitting president’s party is “often saddled with deep losses in midterm elections, as voters grow frustrated with the performance of the party in power,” WSJ said, adding that most of what the GOP has to run on is their controversial Big Beautiful Bill signed into law by Trump in 2025.