Republicans are bracing for a brutal election night, convinced they’re set to face some previously unthinkable losses in deep-red Trump territory as key battleground races hang on a knife’s edge.
House Republicans are privately discussing not just if they’ll lose their majority, but by how many seats. Imperiled GOP incumbents in once safe districts have been begging party leaders for more money in the final few days to stem the bleeding, according to six people involved in internal conversations, granted anonymity to discuss them. Senate Republicans have found new cause to worry about contests in Ohio, Kansas and other red states.
“It could be quite a brutal evening,” said one senior Republican involved in the private conversations, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Once the dominoes start falling it becomes hard to stop them.”
Some Republican incumbents made an eyebrow-raising emergency decision. They stopped doing their own polling weeks ago as they tried to save every dollar for swaying voters as they begged for the GOP cavalry to arrive from President Donald Trump’s political operation to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to three of the people.
One Republican strategist working on midterm races simply responded to a question about the environment with a video of a dumpster on fire that was being swept away by flood waters.
Top GOP officials and lawmakers have long known the political landscape would be bad, amid voter anger over the cost of living and aspects of Trump’s policy agenda. But they’re facing a worse position than they expected earlier this year, with less than one week until Election Day.
Republicans for weeks have worried that young men who’d voted for Trump, including white and Hispanic working class voters, will stay home amid disillusionment with high costs and the Iran war.
That alone could allow Democrats to overperform in some areas after they hemorrhaged support among that voting bloc in 2024.
At a Kwik Trip in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, this week in the hotly-contested 3rd District, Isaiah Romero was filling up his silver Ram truck. The 20-year-old said he cast his ballot for Trump in his first ever presidential election two years ago. His verdict on high fuel prices? “I think they’re bull,” he said as he looked over to the $6.39 per gallon diesel and $4.29 gas at the pump.
Is he voting this time? “No,” Romero responded, adding: “I didn’t vote for this.”
New fires have been popping up across the map just as soon as top GOP officials put out others. Trump canceled in-person rallies in deep-red Kansas and Iowa set for this weekend to instead hold a series of tele-rallies for GOP candidates in the final stretch.
“Any Democrats telling you they aren’t winning the Senate [besides] a couple of seats are sandbagging expectations,” the senior Republican said.
In Ohio, the race between GOP Sen. Jon Husted and former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is still incredibly close in private and public polling. But Republicans have watched with horror as GOP governor nominee “Vivek’s [Ramaswamy’s] numbers have gone off a cliff” in the last few days after he ran an ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother saying her daughter is a liar, according to the senior Republican and two others who saw the internal polling. Acton’s stepfather was charged with raping her when she was 12.
The headwinds across all of Ohio are deeply problematic for Republicans. They now believe embattled Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) — who is facing child and domestic abuse allegations that he denies — will lose in a seat Trump won by double digits.
South Carolina has become another unexpectedly nailbiting race for Republicans, where political newcomer Sen. Darline Graham is facing a well-funded Democratic challenger. But GOP operatives and officials are feeling somewhat better after outside groups injected cash into the race earlier this month and Trump announced another rally in the state to energize Republicans’ base.
“It’s a lot closer than I think we would ever want, but I think she’s going to pull it out,” said Jeff Davis, chair of the Greenville County Republican Party.
But in one of the most dire signs, once-unimaginable GOP worries have started to creep about deep-red Louisiana — where Trump announced this week he will hold an election-eve tele-rally for Senate nominee Julia Letlow. Speaker Mike Johnson, who is close with Letlow, will join as Republicans have grown wary about a surge of Black voters and other Democratic-leaning voters in early voting across the South.
Senior Republicans believe Letlow will win, but they fear it will be by single digits if nothing changes.
“The cakewalk turned into a knife fight,” said one Louisiana Republican who has talked with Letlow recently. “If Democrat turnout surges on Election Day, it’ll be a long night in Monroe,” the person added, and they expect Letlow to win by just 6 points in a state Trump won by 22 points two years ago.
In another painful development for Republicans in Louisiana, GOP groups have even started an eye-popping spending war in a safe red gerrymandered seat — where a bitter Republican-on-Republican primary is unfolding between state Sen. Blake Miguez, who was formerly endorsed by Trump, and state Sen. Rick Edmonds, Johnson’s former pastor. Club for Growth Club poured another $220,000 into the race Thursday. Republicans fear the messy race is poised for a December runoff.
“POLITICO’s sad little rolodex of loser strategists have no idea what they’re talking about, and if they really believe what they’re saying they should come out of the shadows and put a name to their brain-dead comments,” said RNC spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre.
“While Republicans have focused on real solutions to improve costs of living and make our nation safer, Democrats have nominated a gang of radicals who want to raise taxes, force everyone on government healthcare, and release criminals onto the streets,” said Joanna Rodriguez, spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
On the House side, Republicans are bracing for a brutal night. But they’ve long been spending in some redder GOP districts to forestall a true disaster.Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the NRCC, said that the committee worked in partnership with the campaigns and the RNC to launch coordinated advertising early in GOP-held districts not initially rated as competitive, including those represented by Reps. Jeff Hurd (Colo.), Bill Huizenga (Mich.), Rob Wittman (Va.), Mike Turner (Ohio), and Monica De La Cruz (Texas).
The NRCC began airing coordinated ads in early August, more than a month before the DCCC. The NRCC also conducted polling in more than 100 districts, an eye-popping number, as they worked to see how far the fires had spread into red terrain and make sure they were moving resources where they were needed.
Republicans still think they can unseat Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) and Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), while flipping retiring Rep. Jared Golden’s (D-Maine) seat. But privately, Republicans believe North Carolina’s open 11th District is close to gone, as are several other deep-red seats Trump won by double digits, according to four people with knowledge of the situation. And they’re still not confident they’ll beat Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.) in a seat the GOP thought would be an easy flip when they redrew it early this year. It’s become the most expensive House race in history.
The Republican in Kentucky’s 6th district, where Trump won by 15 points in 2024, is barely hanging on, according to the four people.
Even in the South Texas districts the GOP redrew in their favor, Republicans reached the point days ago where no amount of new money is going to change the upcoming catastrophe, said one Republican official involved in conversations about those races.
Johnson traveled to Minnesota on Thursday to headline a fundraiser for GOP Rep. Brad Finstad, who Republicans are scrambling to shore up in a +12 Trump district. Finstad told POLITICO in an interview this week that he had warned senior Republicans for weeks about Democratic groups pouring money into the race in his southern Minnesota district.
“We raised that with anybody and everybody that would want to hear it,” Finstad said. “From a global perspective, people were like, ‘Well, you won by 18, you’re fine.’ And, you know, those of us in Minnesota know that this district has always had kind of an independent streak to it.”
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are upbeat at their prospects, but public and private polling across close to the entire battleground map is running within the margin of error — meaning those states could break either way.
“I would rather be us than them. But if anyone tells you they know what’s going to happen, they’re full of shit,” one senior Senate Democratic operative said. “Everything is close.”
And some Republicans are taking solace in the fact that at least it’ll all soon be over.
“I can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said a GOP strategist working on a campaign that is trending toward Democrats. “It might be a semi-truck, but at least I can see it.”
Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty and Alec Hernández contributed to this report.
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