The following is a lightly edited transcript of the February 19 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Several days ago, Donald Trump erupted in a wild tirade over voter ID and voter fraud, urging Republicans to make that central in the midterms. I thought at first that this was a one-off, but by my count—in the last 24 hours as of now—Trump has promoted at least half a dozen tweets about Democrats, about voter fraud, and about the GOP SAVE Act, which is all about voter suppression. Clearly, Trump is very worried about the midterms. And for good reason: A bunch of new polling is out that paints a dire picture for Trump and the GOP. So it’s a good time to take stock of what’s really going on with Trump’s approval and with midterm polling right now. We’re doing this with Lakshya Jain, head of political data at The Argument website. Lakshya, nice to have you on.
Lakshya Jain: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Sargent: So we’re seeing a lot of new polling out now that looks pretty rough for Trump and Republicans. A new Reuters poll finds Trump’s approval at 38 percent, with 60 percent disapproving. That’s 22 points underwater. The New York Times polling averages have Trump at 40 percent to 56 percent—so 38 percent might be a bit low, but it’s plausible.
Lakshya, your polling at The Argument has the generic ballot matchup at Democrats plus six: 53 to 47 points. What’s your view of the data right now? Can you run us through what’s out there?
Jain: Yeah, I would say that one of the biggest things that we are seeing with Trump is that everyone who cares about cost of living is really, really mad at him. Like, the thing is—I have seen a lot of public opinion data—I can’t remember the last time that a president was this imperiled for the economy right after his party enjoyed such a commanding economy edge, right?
It’s important to say here, Greg, that the Republicans have been known for their strength on the economy in the eyes of the voters. This is a Republican issue. Economics to Republicans is what healthcare is to Democrats—it’s a traditional issue that is in their corner. And Trump is so deeply underwater on cost of living that it’s not even funny.
Sargent: Lakshya, so what are you seeing out there on that?
Jain: Yeah, well, Greg, great question. I think if you look at our polling data—I can actually pull this from our latest poll—we are finding that Trump is 14 points underwater with people who rank “cost of living” as their top priority in the next election. And this is important to say: This is very ahistoric for Republicans. They are not used to getting clobbered on the economy.
The last time I recall a Republican really getting hammered on the economy like this was Bush in 2008. And here’s what we’re seeing: Among voters who prioritize cost of living, Democrats lead by three percentage points. And I’m telling you, I can’t recall the last cycle in which I saw that. Certainly not any time of late.
Sargent: And that’s the generic House ballot matchup, right? So in the House elections right now nationally, among voters who are concerned about cost of living, Democrats are up three.
Jain: That’s correct. And normally, Republicans are up by three, four, or five.
Sargent: Yeah, that’s pretty topsy-turvy. I just want to switch to Donald Trump exploding on Truth Social for a second. He unleashed this wild, “epic” rant a few days ago, but he’s now pinned it to the top of his feed. I’m going to read from it:
We cannot let the Democrats get away with NO VOTER I.D. any longer. These are horrible, disingenuous CHEATERS...Republicans must put this at the top of every speech — It is a CAN’T MISS FOR RE-ELECTION IN THE MIDTERMS!
Trump then says he has some sort of executive order on this coming—who the hell knows what he’s talking about—and then rages against “Corrupt and Deranged Democrats” Democrats and predicts they will do all sorts of terrible things if they get back into power. Then he rages that Dems are “demented and evil” people who want to “knowingly and happily destroy” the country.
Lakshya, this indicates to me that Trump has the midterms on his mind. In his head, he thinks he’s saying they’re going to be corrupted by voter fraud. But, of course, what he really means is that Republicans should try to suppress the vote in any way they can, or perish. What do you make of that?
Jain: The last election that happened—if everyone had voted, Trump would have won by more. The Republicans are not understanding that by putting requirements like requiring passports or whatever, they’re just making the voter pool more and more Democratic.
You know, for a long time, income and voting was very correlated in a way that was like: If you were poor, you would vote Democrat, and if you were rich, you would vote Republican. For a long time, that’s why low-propensity voters—who are very, very poor in a lot of cases—were also just very blue.
Now, here’s where it ties into today. Basically, over the last few years, Trump has made consistent and sustained gains up until the last presidential election among these types of voters: poor people. At the same time, Democrats are gaining with rich people. Rich people are more likely to have the forms of ID that the Republicans are requiring in their newest bills. These things are all things Democrats are more likely to have now because Democrats are richer. Republicans are basically making it harder for their own voters to vote.
Sargent: By my count, Trump put out at least half a dozen tweets in just the last 24 hours sharing things that hype the GOP SAVE Act—that are about how “Dems” used to want voter ID, that are about invented fraud in the 2020 election and ballots coming in late, that sort of thing. It was just kind of endless, one thing after another from him. Again, it’s really on his mind.
But if I understand you correctly, Lakshya, you’re suggesting that Trump is basically operating from an out-of-date conception of what benefits him and the Republican Party, right?
Jain: Yeah, exactly. These are conceptions that would have worked 25 years ago; they do not work today. The Republican Party is a place where voter ID is probably going to hurt Trump. Rich people are increasingly voting Democrat. Kamala Harris did better among voters who make more than $100,000 than she did among voters who make less than $100,000.
And so the Republican SAVE Act basically says you need to have either a passport or, like, a driver’s license and a birth certificate, whatever. These forms of documentation—whether you have them or not—just strongly correlate with how much money you have. So now imagine that you’re “chopping off” the poor end of the voting pool. That’s going to end up just helping Democrats by default.
All these states that Trump is talking about—like patriotic American states, West Virginia or Arkansas or whatever—does he really think people in Arkansas have passports at the same level that people in California or in New York do? No.
Sargent: That’s really, really interesting. He essentially is operating from a model in which the disengaged voter pool is the Democratic one and the engaged voter pool is the Republican one. And you’re pointing out that that’s flipped on its head. And I guess in a midterm election as well, it’s even more flipped on its head, right? Because the hyper-engaged voters who are paying really close attention and really care deeply about politics—those are the ones who vote in midterms, and they’re Democratic-skewing. Is that the basic size of it?
Jain: That’s exactly it. In every single poll that we have done at The Argument, Democrats always do better when you look at enthusiasm for the midterms. Not only that, Democrats just do better among people that are higher income.
This is one of those things where I don’t think people quite realize how different the issue environment looks when you start looking at people who make a lot of money. So Greg, among people making $200,000 or more, Democrats led by 12 in our last poll. And among people making between 50 and 100K, that lead was down to 5 percent.
Sargent: I want to talk about one other thing that you hinted at at the beginning of this conversation, which is that Republicans are suddenly suffering on issues where they’ve dominated. You talked about the economy, but this is also true of immigration as well.
A new Reuters poll has Trump’s approval on immigration down at 38 percent. That mirrors a recent Associated Press poll, which also had it at 38 percent. That, to me, is really striking. It’s not that Democrats are winning this election by running on healthcare—although that’s important—it’s actually that Republicans are crippled on the very issues where they’re supposed to be strong: the economy and immigration. And that’s highly unusual. Can you talk about that?
Jain: Yeah. You know, people will fairly point out that, well, immigration in the last election was extremely unfriendly towards Democrats. And they’re right—it was, in the last election. But we’re not fighting the last election. We’re talking about 2026.
And up until, like, November of last year, you could have clearly and fairly said that immigration was, at best, a neutral issue for Democrats. Right now, it is a place where Democrats have a clear edge. And now, the question is: What is immigration like now? We know that Trump had an advantage last election. What is it now?
Right now, Democrats have an edge on immigration in the court of public opinion. And this is solely because Trump has been intent on just making things worse for himself every single time. In Silver Bulletin’s average, Trump’s approval on immigration is negative 12. That is crazy when you consider that it was literally at plus five six months ago.
Sargent: That is absolutely crazy. That is just so striking. And this gives me an opportunity to raise something that you often hear out there, which is: Well, okay, Trump’s approval on immigration is upside down, but it’s really just a reaction to ICE tactics and brutality. It’s not actually a reaction to real policy or anything like that.
But it is a reaction to policy. Trump is underwater badly on the deportations themselves. And then also you hear people saying things like: Well, okay, Trump’s approval is on the toilet on immigration, but Democrats are at a disadvantage when you compare them to Republicans on the issue. And in some polls, that’s true.
But Lakshya, does that matter in a midterm? Isn’t the thing that matters the most in a midterm the impressions of the president? That to me, I think, really essentially wipes away whatever people are saying about Democrats in some fundamental sense. What do you think of all that?
Jain: The Democratic Party has a lot of problems, but none of those problems involve having a president whose favorable ratings are at negative 15 right now. Because the person in office is Donald Trump, not Joe Biden. And I think people have to calibrate that accordingly and just remember that, yes, the Democratic Party has a lot of deficits with the public right now and a lot of problems they need to fix. But one of the problems they don’t have is that they’re not the party with a very unpopular president in the White House.
Sargent: So can you talk about why presidential approval is such a dominant thing in midterms, and why that’s more important than issue impressions of the challenging party?
Jain: Yeah, because in the midterms, this is the first time voters get a chance to really express their opinion on how things are going. Right now, especially with a Republican trifecta in office, voters tend to judge what the state of the country is and who is responsible for that. In their eyes, it’s the president.
That’s why the president gets rewarded for a good economy; that’s why the president gets punished for a bad economy. That’s why the president gets rewarded for calm—and gets punished for [chaos]—and the president’s party gets penalized or rewarded accordingly.
And that is why—because we’re a very swingy country. Even in this age of polarization, we still have big swings. And people really just react to the reality on the ground, and they look at who induced that change. And usually, that’s the president that they blame for it.
Sargent: Yeah, that is such an essential point. So let’s just wrap this up. What’s striking to me about all this is that Trump’s 2024 win was driven in part by his success on immigration, his success on the economy, and his success among disengaged voters. A lot of analysts thought that these were permanent shifts—or quasi-permanent shifts, really seismic things—but it’s turning out that they weren’t.
The MAGA coalition’s kind of collapsing. He’s underwater on the economy. He’s underwater on immigration—issues where Republicans traditionally dominate. What’s your basic read on where we’re headed, right through the midterm elections now?
Jain: I think if you had to take a guess at what the environment would be, something very, very similar to what we had in 2018. And I would expect that a lot of this is going to be driven entirely by self-inflicted wounds from the Republican Party, because things did not need to get this chaotic and things did not need to get this bad with tariffs and immigration. It’s their own fault.
And what do you predict is going to happen? I think Democrats will gain about 20 or 25 seats in the House. And then I think they’re going to end up probably gaining two seats in the Senate, maybe three. If Peltola does a good job, maybe four if Sherrod Brown really manages to come back. The Senate’s in play; I would say a 40 percent chance the “Dems” take it.
Sargent: Well, Lakshya Jain, that is an extraordinary picture of where we are, and it happened very quickly. Thanks so much for coming on with us, man. We really appreciate it.
Jain: Thanks, Greg.