Late Polls And Early Votes Stir Fear Of 'Train Wreck' Among Republicans
Rep. Nancy Mace
With the midterm elections now just four days away, Republicans are in a defensive crouch, battening down the hatches in red states amid uproar over President Donald Trump and his handling of the economy.
How badly are things going?
Trump on Wednesday announced his final event of the cycle will be a tele-rally in Louisiana, a state he won by 22 percentage points just two years ago. He will be stumping for Rep. Julia Letlow, the Republican he recruited to oust GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy in the primary.
Letlow’s general-election race hasn’t been on anyone’s radar for most of the cycle. However, anemic GOP turnout in the early-vote period, coupled with a massive surge in Black voters going to the polls, is making Republicans anxious about that seat.
And then the bad news kept on coming.
On Thursday morning, CNN released a raft of polls that showed Democrats leading Senate contests in Maine, Texas, Kansas, and Michigan, the last of which Republicans were hoping to pick up this year. If Democrats are victorious in all of those races, they will almost surely win a majority since North Carolina’s Republican-held Senate seat is projected to flip blue as well.
But Thursday also saw Fox News move its rating of South Carolina’s Senate contest from a “Lean Republican” race to a “Toss-up.” Trump-backed GOP nominee Darline Graham is struggling to win a state Trump took by 18 points. Graham is floundering because even many Republican voters view her as unqualified and are angry that Trump forced her upon them with his endorsement.
“It’s a fucking train wreck,” Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, told MS NOW of the GOP’s woes in the Palmetto State.
Meanwhile, in the race for the House, Democrats are injecting cash to run ads in a spate of GOP-held seats in districts Trump won by double-digit margins two years ago. It’s a sign they see encouraging data that will help them increase the size of the majority they are overwhelmingly favored to win Tuesday night.
The spending includes Nebraska’s 1st District, a seat Trump won by 13 points but where rural voters’ backlash to Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran have made the GOP uniquely vulnerable this cycle.
Democrats are also spending in multiple Republican-held House seats in Florida that Trump carried by double digits, signaling that the gerrymander Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican legislature passed may indeed be the dummymander Democrats warned it would be.
Indeed, things are so bad that once-optimistic Republicans are now sounding increasingly pessimistic about their party’s odds. That includes GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini, who was writing pieces in September arguing polls were overstating Democrats, but he is now sounding alarm bells about Republican early-vote turnout in the South and what that could mean for his party on Nov. 3.
Less than a week from polls closing, and there is little good news out there for Republicans.
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