Why your party will (or won’t) have a good Election Day

Election Day is tomorrow, and while there are high expectations for Democrats, it’s impossible to know for certain what will happen in the race for control of Congress.

Many Democrats are worried about the polls overestimating the strength of their candidates again, while President Donald Trump and some in the GOP seem sanguine in the final days.

So, what if Republicans overperform or even keep their majorities? And what if Democrats have a historic midterm?

Let’s break down how each of those scenarios could happen.

The polls were wrong

A Kansas Senate poll released by The Washington Post on Friday epitomized the nightmare scenario for Democrats: that polls — especially in red states — could systematically underestimate Republicans because they don’t respond to them as much.

This “ nonresponse bias ” led to polls being off in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. It hasn’t been seen as much in the midterms in the Trump era, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. And given Democrats are chasing a lot of red territory, this would likely take a big chunk out of their gains.

The Senate map was just so red

Consider this: Even if the margins of the 2024 vote uniformly shifted toward Democrats by 10 points in every state, Democrats would still get to only 49 Senate seats. In other words, they could notch one of the biggest popular-vote victories in decades and still not win the Senate because this year’s battlefield is overwhelmingly made up of Trump states.

Democrats need a net gain of four seats, which requires them flipping at least two states that Trump won by double digits. (To underscore the difficulty of the playing field for Democrats, they are on offense in only one state where Kamala Harris won in 2024.)

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The GOP pulled an upset in Maine and/or Michigan

The number of GOP Senate seats Democrats need to pick off increases if they lose the ones they’re defending — namely Maine, Michigan or both. Democrats probably should have put those away by now, but haven’t — in part thanks to Democratic Senate nominees who aren’t running as well as the gubernatorial nominees in the same state.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

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The GOP’s gerrymandering was too successful

It’s conventional wisdom that the House very likely flips to Democrats. But if Republicans pull the unthinkable and keep their majority — or even just keep Democrats’ gains to a minimum — the GOP’s brazen mid-decade gerrymandering push will likely have played a role. The effort, which Democrats weren’t able to match because they lack as much control in state governments, will have allowed Republicans to win as many as nine additional seats . They surely won’t win all of those, but the creation of those safer GOP seats raised the bar for Democrats.

Voters didn’t care much about the Iran war, corruption and other unpopular Trump ideas

So much of what Trump has done has been unpopular — often by large margins . But if Republicans do better than expected, a big reason might be that voters didn’t care enough about Trump’s actions for them to matter.

Maybe they think his White House ballroom and efforts to glorify and enrich himself are gauche, but that behavior isn’t as important to Trump’s base as culture wars and opposing Democrats. Maybe they don’t like the Iran war, but since it’s not a conventional ground war with many US troop deaths, it’s not as front of mind.

Trump’s historic unpopularity

By many measures, Trump is the most unpopular president in modern history heading into a midterm . He’s 30 points underwater in the CNN Poll of Polls , with 34% approving of his job performance and 64% disapproving. And Trump is so ever-present that it’s nearly impossible for Republicans to distance themselves from him. It’s simply very difficult to win elections — no matter how favorable the Senate map is to Republicans — when people dislike the face of the GOP by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

Trump’s coalition broke down

Trump swept the swing states in the 2024 election in large part by making big gains with young people (especially men), Latinos and infrequent voters. But the polls suggest all three groups have turned sharply against him . And it’s not just that; his tariffs and the Iran war appear to have damaged Trump’s standing with his most reliable and consistent demographic: White voters without college degrees . The GOP hoped Trump was building a lasting new coalition. But it hasn’t turned out when he hasn’t been on the ballot, and now it might desert the GOP.

Trump’s neglect of affordability

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Trump’s cardinal political sin might have been his utter neglect of what almost always polls as voters’ chief concern: affordability. He was elected in large part because of high inflation under former President Joe Biden and his own promises to fix it quickly.

But Trump not only launched policies that exacerbated economic problems — a recent New York Federal Reserve study found the overall cost of consumer goods would have fallen without his tariffs — he also called affordability a “hoax” and falsely claimed he had fixed the problem. Polls showed Americans never bought that, though. Around three-quarters said he and his administration hadn’t focused enough on affordability. And more Americans blame Trump for economic problems than ever blamed Biden .

Related to the two preceding items is that Trump simply didn’t do the things he promised. He said he wasn’t going to start wars, but he did. He said he was going to fix inflation, and it’s now worse. A recent AP-NORC poll found that 54% of Americans said Trump didn’t try to keep his promises. And even among those who said he did try, more said he had failed to actually keep them (28%) than said he kept them (17%). That’s 8 in 10 Americans who said he’s failed to keep his promises.

Podcaster Joe Rogan, who backed Trump in 2024, has been big on this . It’s one thing to break promises when the economy is good (as Trump did in his first term); it’s another to break them on voters’ central issue.

Megan Varner/Getty Images

The GOP mobilized non-White voters — in the wrong way

Perhaps no demographic has swung against Trump by as much as Latino voters . That’s in part thanks to his economic policies, but also a mass-deportation effort that is widely seen as overzealous. There is also some evidence that the Supreme Court further weakening the Voting Rights Act and Republicans gutting heavily Black congressional districts could be mobilizing Black voters . That demographic, especially, could play a major role in Senate races that Democrats are targeting such as in Florida, Mississippi, Ohio and South Carolina, as well as those they’re defending like in Michigan.

Corruption has emerged as a major concern for Americans — sometimes even polling above prices. But more significantly, there is growing evidence that voters’ concerns about corruption are more of a problem for Republicans than Democrats, perhaps because of a spate of headlines about Trump’s self-enrichment and members of his administration apparently leveraging their positions for financial gain. CNN and New York Times/Siena polls have shown Democrats leading Republicans on the issue by 7 and 11 points, respectively. And a CBS News poll showed 52% of Americans said corruption would increase if Republicans win the midterms versus just 37% who said the same if Democrats won.

明天就是选举日了，虽然人们对民主党抱有很高的期望，但国会控制权的争夺战结果如何，目前还无法确定。

许多民主党人担心民调再次高估了他们候选人的实力，而唐纳德·特朗普总统和一些共和党人似乎在最后几天里保持乐观。

那么，如果共和党表现超出预期，甚至保住多数席位呢？如果民主党在中期选举中取得历史性胜利呢？

让我们来分析一下每种情况是如何发生的。

民调结果错了

《华盛顿邮报》周五发布的堪萨斯州参议院民调，生动地展现了民主党人最担心的局面：民调——尤其是在红色州——可能会系统性地低估共和党人，因为他们对民调的反应并不强烈。

这种“无应答偏差”导致2016年和2020年总统大选的民调结果出现偏差。在特朗普时代的中期选举中，这种情况并不常见，但这并不意味着它不会再次发生。考虑到民主党正在努力争取大量共和党传统票仓，这种偏差很可能会大幅削弱他们的选情。

参议院地图上全是红色的。

试想一下：即使2024年大选的选票在每个州都向民主党倾斜10个百分点，民主党也只能赢得49个参议院席位。换句话说，即使他们取得了几十年来最大的普选胜利之一，也仍然无法赢得参议院的控制权，因为今年的战场主要由特朗普的票仓州组成。

民主党需要净增四个席位，这意味着他们至少要拿下两个特朗普以两位数优势获胜的州。（为了凸显民主党面临的严峻形势，他们目前只在一个州发起攻势，而卡玛拉·哈里斯在2024年赢得了该州。）

通往2026年中期选举的道路现在开始

每周，亚伦·布莱克都会以犀利的分析，拨开政治迷雾，深入剖析可能决定国会控制权的选情、候选人和趋势。订阅《20/26 视野》周刊，了解今年中期选举的最新动态。

共和党在缅因州和/或密歇根州爆冷获胜。

如果民主党失去他们正在捍卫的席位——即缅因州、密歇根州或两者兼有——那么他们需要从共和党手中夺取的参议院席位数量将会增加。民主党本应早已拿下这些席位，但他们却未能做到——部分原因是民主党参议员候选人的表现不如同一州的州长候选人。

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共和党的选区划分操纵过于成功。

人们普遍认为众议院很可能转而由民主党掌控。但如果共和党出人意料地保住多数席位——或者至少将民主党的增幅控制在最低限度——那么共和党在本世纪中期肆无忌惮的选区划分行动很可能发挥了作用。由于民主党在州政府的影响力不如共和党，他们无法与之匹敌，而共和党的这一行动使共和党得以额外赢得多达九个席位。他们当然不可能全部获胜，但这些原本稳固的共和党席位的出现，无疑提高了民主党的门槛。

选民们并不太关心伊朗战争、腐败以及其他不受欢迎的特朗普理念。

特朗普的许多做法都不受欢迎——而且往往反对声浪很大。但如果共和党的表现好于预期，一个重要原因可能是选民对特朗普的所作所为并不十分在意，所以这些行为对他们的影响微乎其微。

或许他们认为特朗普在白宫宴会厅的作秀以及他自我吹嘘和中饱私囊的种种行径十分不得体，但对特朗普的支持者来说，文化战争和反对民主党人远比这种行为重要。或许他们不喜欢伊朗战争，但由于这场战争并非造成大量美军伤亡的传统地面战争，因此并未引起他们的足够重视。

特朗普的历史性不受欢迎程度

从很多方面来看，特朗普是现代史上最不受欢迎的总统，尤其是在中期选举前夕。在CNN的民调汇总中，他的支持率比对手低了30个百分点，只有34%的人认可他的工作表现，而64%的人则表示不认可。特朗普的影响力无处不在，以至于共和党人几乎无法与他划清界限。当民众对共和党的代表人物的反感程度接近2比1时，无论参议院的选情对共和党多么有利，赢得选举都难上加难。

特朗普的联盟瓦解了

特朗普在2024年大选中横扫摇摆州，很大程度上得益于他在年轻人（尤其是男性）、拉丁裔选民和不常投票的选民中获得了巨大支持。但民调显示，这三个群体都已大幅倒向反对他。不仅如此，他的关税政策和伊朗战争似乎也损害了他最可靠、最稳定的选民群体——未受过大学教育的白人选民——的支持率。共和党原本希望特朗普能够建立一个持久的新联盟。但当他不在选票上时，这个联盟并没有发挥作用，而现在，这个联盟可能正在抛弃共和党。

特朗普对可负担性的忽视

乔·雷德尔/盖蒂图片社

特朗普最大的政治罪过或许在于他完全忽视了民调显示选民最关心的问题：生活成本。他之所以当选，很大程度上是因为前总统乔·拜登执政期间的高通胀，以及他自己承诺迅速解决这个问题。

但特朗普不仅推行了一些加剧经济问题的政策——纽约联邦储备银行最近的一项研究发现，如果没有他的关税政策，消费品总成本本会下降——他还称“可负担性”是“骗局”，并谎称自己已经解决了这个问题。然而，民调显示，美国民众从未相信过这种说法。约四分之三的受访者表示，他和他的政府对提高可负担性关注不足。而且，指责特朗普造成经济问题的美国人比指责拜登的要多得多。

与前两点相关的是，特朗普根本没有兑现他的承诺。他说他不会发动战争，但他发动了。他说他要解决通货膨胀问题，但现在情况更糟了。美联社-NORC公共事务研究中心最近的一项民调显示，54%的美国人认为特朗普没有努力兑现他的承诺。即使在那些认为他努力兑现承诺的人当中，认为他未能兑现承诺的人（28%）也比认为他兑现承诺的人（17%）要多。也就是说，十分之八的美国人认为他没有兑现承诺。

播客主持人乔·罗根曾公开支持特朗普参加2024年大选，他对此事一直持强烈批评态度。经济形势良好时违背承诺是一回事（就像特朗普在第一任期内所做的那样），但在选民最为关注的问题上违背承诺则是另一回事。

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共和党动员非白人选民的方式不对。

或许没有哪个群体像拉丁裔选民那样强烈反对特朗普。这部分归因于他的经济政策，但也与他被普遍认为过于激进的大规模驱逐移民行动有关。此外，有证据表明，最高法院进一步削弱《投票权法案》以及共和党大幅削减黑人占多数的国会选区，可能正在动员黑人选民。尤其是在民主党重点关注的佛罗里达州、密西西比州、俄亥俄州和南卡罗来纳州等州的参议院选举，以及民主党正在捍卫的密歇根州等州的参议院选举中，黑人选民可能发挥重要作用。

腐败已成为美国民众的一大担忧——有时甚至比物价问题更受关注。但更重要的是，越来越多的证据表明，选民对腐败的担忧对共和党人的影响比对民主党人更大，这或许是因为近期有关特朗普中饱私囊以及其政府成员利用职权谋取私利的新闻铺天盖地。CNN和《纽约时报》/锡耶纳学院的民调显示，民主党人在这一问题上的支持率分别领先共和党人7个百分点和11个百分点。CBS新闻的民调显示，52%的美国人认为，如果共和党赢得中期选举，腐败现象将会加剧；而持相同观点的人仅占37%。