A MAGA pollster who called President Donald Trump's last two White House wins warned Republicans are sleeping on red states now slipping toward Democrats.
In a Wednesday episode of Bulwark Takes, Rich Baris laid out the case during an interview with former GOP operative Tim Miller. Baris, the director of Big Data Poll, argued that the party is coasting on Trump's 2024 margins in states he won't be on the ballot to defend.
"Republicans are going to run out of a coalition soon if they don't build on what he started to build in '24," Baris said. He pointed to a cluster of seats that the GOP treats as locked down. The Republicans' assumption is "hubris," Baris said.
"They just thought Ohio and Iowa and even Texas would be within their grasp forever because of how Donald Trump performed in them," Baris said. "It's hubris. I don't know what else to call it."
Republicans have "repeatedly understated Democrats' chances" in Kansas, Nebraska, and Montana, Baris said. He described those three states as a "sleeper" cluster with "longtime populist and progressive roots that aren't as red as people seem to think."
Baris was blunter still about Texas, where the party redrew congressional maps off Trump's numbers.
"You don't perform like Donald Trump performs in Texas, folks. I hate to tell you, you don't," Baris said. "Hispanics don't like you the way that they like Trump in 2024."
He said the party built those maps "with the same arrogance," using Trump's ceiling as a floor and treating gains he called "squandered" as permanent.
Cost of living will be the biggest issue for voters, Baris warned. "Socialism" attacks fall flat with voters when "you can't pay your own bills," Baris said.
"They're much more afraid that they can't pay their rent or their car payment or get back-to-school clothes for their kids and fill up the refrigerator than they are about Republicans throwing around the word 'socialism,'" Baris said.