With the GOP facing an uphill battle heading into the 2026 midterm elections, President Donald Trump embarked to Iowa Tuesday to tout his administration’s accomplishments on the economy, an attempt to energize his base that one GOP strategist warned could end in disaster.
Trump handily won Iowa in the 2024 election by a 13.2 percentage point margin, surpassing both of his previous two victories in the state in 2020 and 2016. But in 2026, Trump is faced with a different dilemma, multiple GOP strategists warned.
“The real question is, to me, are they going to go to these areas to gin up the base while repairing the damage in the middle on domestic policy as it relates to the economy? asked GOP strategist Paul Shumaker of North Carolina, speaking with Politico. “Or are they just going to try to take care of the base?”
That dilemma, the strategists said, was one of balance: in-person Trump appearances do well to energize the president’s loyal supporters, but also carry with them the risk of driving independents away from the Republican Party, with the president wholly underwater among independents.
For instance, a staggering 60% of independent voters disapproved of Trump’s immigration policy according to a private GOP poll completed at the end of December, and before the federal immigration officer killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
When Trump took office in January, his approval among independent voters stood at minus 1. By late December, it had plunged 44 points to minus 43, a collapse so steep that CNN data analyst Harry Enten likened the president to the French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau to describe just how deeply “underwater” Trump had sunk in the polls.
That dilemma, warned GOP strategist Samuel Chen, put Trump in something of a bind.
“This is almost a double-edged sword,” Chen told Politico. “If he doesn’t do this and Republicans lose the midterms, he’s going to get the blame.”