MS NOW’s elections and analytics director, Kabir Khanna, said Sunday that one number from a recent poll could decide control of Congress: the share of Trump voters who now regret backing him.
A Wall Street Journal poll found that 11% of voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2024 now regret their vote. It also found that 11% of non-MAGA Republicans plan to vote for a Democrat for Congress.
“I think that 11% stat is one of the most important figures to explain what’s going on in the midterms,” Khanna said on “The Weekend.” “There’s clearly been a disconnect between what voters expected and hoped when Trump was inaugurated and what they’ve seen.”
At the network’s big board, Khanna showed what happens to the House at different rates of voters crossing party lines.
If only 3% of Trump voters and 3% of Kamala Harris voters switched sides, he said, Republicans would keep the House with about 230 seats. That’s because there are more Trump voters overall, and because redistricting has given the GOP “a structural tilt.”
Then he turned it up. If even half of the regretful 11% of Trump voters backed Democrats, he said, Democrats would flip the House. And if 10% of Trump voters crossed over, Democrats would “not only win the House, they have a comfortable majority.”
“These numbers are actually quite similar to what we saw in the 2018 blue wave,” Khanna said to an audible “whoaaa” from a host.
He added that changing a voter’s mind matters more than turning out a new one.
“Flipping a voter is twice as good as turning out a new voter, because when you flip a voter, you take one away from your opponent’s column and you’re adding one to your column,” he said.
Khanna also urged caution about the new New York Times/Siena polls showing Democrats ahead in red states. Each poll spoke with only about 600 voters per state, he said, so the margins of error are wide.
“Even a D+6 result in Texas, that’s not a safe lead,” he said. “It’s why we still consider Texas a toss-up.”
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