Republicans face a dire predicament heading into the midterm year with independent voters breaking away from President Donald Trump and a conservative base losing faith in the GOP majorities on Capitol Hill.
That point was driven home by the surprisingly difficult effort it took to eke out a win Tuesday in a conservative district in Tennessee.
Republicans had to spend several million dollars to retain the seat, by about 9 percentage points, after both Trump and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) won the district by 22 percentage points last year.
Tuesday’s outcome gives a temporary boost to House Republicans in need of every vote possible to pass anything with their historically small majority, but it sent a warning shot to several dozen lawmakers from seats that the party presumed were completely safe heading into the November midterms.
“I don’t know how much you can read into any individual special election, but certainly they are a data point. And I think there’s a lot of data points at this point showing that the dissatisfaction with the public is real. And naturally that would that manifest itself in the midterms,” Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-California) said.
Rank-and-file Republicans are pushing leadership for help on issues from health care subsidies to the sagging farm economy across the Midwest, as part of their effort to buy political insurance against a possible Democratic wave.
“It’s me worried about many of my friends, who it will hurt — some people that only won by one or two or three points. And it’s me worrying about the majority,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-New Jersey), who is leading an effort to find a compromise on tax credits under the Affordable Care Act.
Republicans said fears of electoral troubles now extend beyond the initial 16 GOP incumbents placed on the “Patriots” program by the National Republican Congressional Committee, into districts that a few months ago would have been considered fairly easy reelection victories.
Republican strategists have worried for several months about Trump’s plummeting support among independent voters, which helped lead to blowout wins for Democrats in governor races in New Jersey and Virginia last month.
But the underperformance in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District backs up some research showing a lack of energy among conservative base voters. Republican Mark Green won reelection to the district by more than 20 percentage points in 2022 and 2024, before resigning over the summer.
Democrats estimate that about 70 House seats held by Republicans are more friendly than this Tennessee seat.
In its monthly poll released last week, Gallup found a seismic drop in approval from Republican voters for the job performance of Congress, down to 23 percent. Back in July, more than 6o percent of Republican voters approved of the GOP-run House and Senate.
That’s the type of drop that is usually accompanied by a calamitous event that is considered an act of betrayal by one’s own political party. That poll has been shared among House Republicans, according to lawmakers, who are warning each other about how difficult the next 11 months could be for several dozen incumbents.
“I think that there is a growing realization in the conference about that,” said Kiley, who is deciding where to run next year because his previously competitive district is disappearing through mid-decade redistricting.
Charlie Cook, the founder of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, cited a number of reasons that Trump’s base of support could be disappointed so far.
“MAGA Republicans could be disappointed in Trump’s handling of the economy, and the effect of tariffs on the cost of living. An America First-er could be growing increasingly uncomfortable with the possibility of military involvement in Venezuela,” Cook wrote Tuesday.
He also cited the slow release of Justice Department files related to the investigation of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as something that would disappoint far-right voters. That slippage with conservatives, along with the more critical erosion among independent voters, creates the potential for bigger Democratic gains than some independent analysts have been predicting.
“If Republicans can keep their net losses under 15 seats, they will be lucky,” he wrote.
For now, Cook’s team has remained conservative in ratings as several states are awaiting final court and legislative rulings on redrawing their congressional maps. The Cook report lists about 20 seats from each party in the most competitive rankings.
Following Tuesday’s victory for Rep.-elect Matt Van Epps in Tennessee, Republicans have the full 220 seats that they won in last year’s elections. Democrats have 213, with two vacancies that will likely fall back into their column in special elections early next year.
The McLaughlin brothers, Republican pollsters who have been in Trump’s political orbit since 2011, wrote an op-ed on Newsmax that served as a warning shotto Republicans on Capitol Hill to figure out how to step up their game.
In particular, Jim and John McLaughlin said, voters do not understand the purpose of the massive domestic agenda bill that passed Congress in early July.
“Most voters remain confused about President Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’” the McLaughlins wrote.
They suggested that roughly equal numbers of voters considered it a tax-cut plan as those that viewed it as a big spending bill, and that independent voters opposed Trump’s landmark legislative victory by a wide margin.
Even conservative voters do not fully understand what’s in that sweeping agenda legislation, they wrote. “Voters need clearer communication about how Trump’s tax cuts would benefit them and grow the economy.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who spent Monday stumping with Van Epps, acknowledged Tuesday that the legislation was “both a blessing and a curse.” In addition to extending tax cuts and pouring funds into border security, the bill included dozens of other provisions from Coast Guard activities to sugar pricing.
“It’s as if it just got brushed aside,” Johnson told reporters.
Based on Gallup, Republican voters seemed to initially like the “big” bill when it passed in July: GOP approval of Congress hit 61 percent that month.
By the fall, however, voters of all political stripes started to register deeper concerns with the economy and inflation, which crept up to 3 percent after falling as low as 2.3 percent early this year.
Republicans predicted, in early October, that the shutdown of the federal government would backfire politically against Democrats, who held out for 43 days over the dispute about health care tax credits.
But polls repeatedly showed that voters blamed Trump and Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown, and Democrats accused Johnson of shuttering the House during the shutdown to avoid a vote on a resolution trying to force the release of Epstein documents from the Justice Department.
Democrats eventually surrendered without any assurances of passing legislation to extend the health care credits, sparking bitter anger with their own liberal base voters.
But the main storylines out of Congress for almost two months were about a shutdown caused by a health care fight and the Epstein case, all while voters voiced growing concern about rising costs.
Within a week of the shutdown ending, Republican infighting resumed center stage.
Van Drew, a former conservative Democrat who switched parties six years ago, has been leading a group of Republicans from swing districts demanding Johnson’s leadership team come up with a compromise plan that will avoid the massive spikes in premiums for health policies next year.
He complained that the speaker has been more dug in against finding a compromise than Trump. Republicans cannot simply shrug off rising insurance costs as the fault of Democrats and their 2010 health law, because the GOP now runs Washington.
“People don’t deserve it. It’s not their fault that their premiums are almost doubled,” Van Drew said.
Johnson, however, still sounds like a speaker first trying to pin blame on Democrats. “It is not the Republicans who broke American health care,” he told reporters Tuesday, hinting that some proposal could come next week. “The Democrats broke health care.”
Kiley said it will take more than traditional messaging bills to retain the majority, when only 14 percent of voters overall approve of Congress, per Gallup.
“We’ve got to go a long way to even not be failing anymore. To get to a D, you’ve got to be at 60 percent,” he said.
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