Longtime forecaster Charlie Cook argues that President Trump’s low approval and escalating unpopularity have shifted midterm dynamics, increasing the risk that Republicans will lose House seats and potentially several Senate contests.
The House looked insulated because Republicans held roughly 220 seats, but that cushion has narrowed as Trump’s standing worsened.
Senate outcomes are idiosyncratic: only a third of seats are contested, so a few individual races can swing control.
# Midterms
Cook restates a simple historical pattern. When a president's approval rating isn't high — unless it's in the 60s, as Bill Clinton briefly had in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002 — the president's party tends to lose seats in the midterms. Examples he cites: Democrats lost 54 House seats in 1994 under Clinton, and 64 in 2010 under Obama. The post‑World War II average loss for the president's party in the House is about 26 seats.
Cook says the forecast changed when Trump's status moved beyond low approval into something closer to toxicity or radioactivity. He points to policy decisions and external shocks that hit voters' pocketbooks and attitudes: tariffs and trade moves that worsened inflation in parts of rural America, conflict with Iran pushing diesel and gasoline toward high levels, and heating fuel rising. Those factors make previously secure voters less loyal and could broaden the universe of persuadable or demobilized voters.
This isn't a narrowly theoretical shift. Cook usefully notes that the political map and individual decisions in key states matter more for the Senate. If Trump weren't in the White House, some Republicans might run who wouldn't now, and vice versa for Democrats. That can change candidates, primaries, and the general‑election calculus in a handful of races.
House because only about a third of seats are up in any cycle. Often only six to ten races are genuinely competitive, so each contest carries outsized weight. Cook emphasizes that the pattern of contests, candidate choices, and state‑level factors can produce different results than the House—historically, the party that gains in the House sometimes loses in the Senate.
Cook's remarks were given in an informal forum but reflect his long‑running role as a forecaster and his recent reassessment: what looked manageable earlier in the year has grown riskier for the president's party as conditions and perceptions shifted.
Michael Tomasky of The New Republic predicts a "tidal wave" against Trump in this fall's midterms. I am skeptical of a tidal wave: Gerrymandering will mute the bloodbath Trump deserves, and might save his party in one or both chambers of Congress, but Tomasky has successfully defied the conventional wisdom in the past:
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