President Donald Trump could see his political power drain away the moment midterm ballots are counted next week, according to an MS NOW analysis that signals the Trump era may be nearing its end.
Election forecaster Nate Silver laid out the stakes on Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast, saying "he’ll still be president for two more years, but the minute the election, the votes, are counted … the 2028 election campaign begins, and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super-lame duck.”
Silver compared Trump’s position to that of George W. Bush after Republicans were routed in the 2006 midterms, and said the map already looks like “a different regime.”
“Kansas is competitive, Texas is competitive,” Silver said.
Veteran election analyst Charlie Cook called the contest “a unicorn election,” unlike any of the 22 he has covered. The voters in play aren’t suburban independents but “normally reliable Republicans,” many of them in farm country, who believe Trump made “colossally bad decisions” on Iran and trade.
Even Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has called this the hardest race of her career.
Trump, for his part, has made the election a referendum on himself.
“Just close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot,” he has told crowds, according to The Associated Press.
The fallout could reach well beyond Congress. Democrats could win a majority of governorships for the first time since 2010, and Cook noted that states such as Georgia, Ohio, Nevada and Iowa “could be critical when it comes to upcoming redistricting fights and battles over election integrity in 2028.”
Democrats are also finding success in places they had written off. Wins by James Talarico in Texas or Mary Peltola in Alaska would return pro-oil, red-state Democrats to a Senate where that bloc currently numbers zero.
“All of the above is back, baby,” one Democratic strategist told Politico.
In Iowa, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, who opens his town halls with a prayer and “America the Beautiful,” leads by 7 percentage points in FiftyPlusOne polling averages.
Meanwhile, the populist mood is cutting against the GOP. A plurality of battleground voters told Cook that the nation’s biggest corruption problem is “greedy billionaires and corporations using their influence to rig the rules.”
Trump’s closing message has centered on belonging.
“America belongs to those who love it,” he told a rally in Lubbock, Texas.
But if the polls hold, the 2028 race, which Trump is constitutionally barred from entering, could begin to eclipse him almost immediately.