Republicans are bracing for the worst with less than four weeks before Election Day, as internal polling circulated among top party officials shows “close-to-catastrophic scenarios” in a string of formerly safe red seats.
GOP House leadership, major political operations and individual campaigns received the polling in late September, three people with direct knowledge of the matter told Politico, and those numbers showed competitive races in parts of Kentucky, North Carolina and Nevada that President Donald Trump won by 10 points or more in 2024.
All three vulnerable Republican-held seats in Iowa looked doomed, and incumbents who haven’t faced serious races in years, from Oklahoma to Wisconsin, also appeared at risk.
“I think the scary part is we don’t know where the bottom is,” said one senior House Republican.
“Polls aren’t looking good,” conceded retiring Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA). “But we’ve also seen in the past couple of cycles, polls are really hard to predict.”
According to more than two dozen GOP lawmakers and operatives, the biggest fear is that white working-class voters angry about high fuel prices and the war in Iran won’t just stay home and tnough of them could vote for Democrats.
“The environment has a lot people scared to death,” said a GOP operative working on a competitive red-leaning House race. “Where is the surge in Dem votes coming from? Is it truly no turnout among white working class? It’s such an open question and we just don’t know the answer. It’s impossible.”
Party leaders brushed off the alarm.
“Anonymous strategists who spend more time bed-wetting to media than working in the trenches to win races have no idea what they’re talking about,” RNC spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said.
The party’s travel schedule reveals the internal GOP worry, as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) heads to Kentucky’s 6th District, which Trump won by 15 points. Trump is holding a rally Saturday in a deep-red Tennessee district, and both Republicans are planning trips to a Montana seat Trump carried by more than 11 points.
“I’m worried about all three in the area,” one Tennessee Republican said of the red-leaning districts Democrats are targeting. “Too many unknowns.”
Reps. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin and Brad Finstad of Minnesota won by double digits in 2024 and are now in uncomfortably tight races, while in Nebraska, Republicans have turned their attention to Rep. Mike Flood’s seat, which Trump carried by 12 points.
“People that are in R+10 districts are showing [polling that] they’re tied and they’re saying, ‘I need help,’” said a GOP operative working on a battleground race.
Even Rep. French Hill of deep-red Arkansas called it “a very tough political environment right now because of President Trump’s lack of favorability at the top.”
“It’s not the best of environments,” sighed Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA).
Democrats, meanwhile, are bullish.
“We feel confident that we will get to 218,” said Brooke Butler, political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The question that I’ve told people from the beginning cycle is ‘How much?’”