Donald Trump is being forced to try to defend territory that, until recently, would barely have required his attention.
With less than four weeks to go before the US midterm elections, the US President is embarking on a campaign blitz through some of the most reliably Republican parts of the country – from Alabama and Texas to Ohio and Nebraska – as Democrats make an unlikely push into states Trump comfortably won in 2024.
Democrats are leading or within striking distance in Senate and House of Representatives races across a series of states that have long been considered Republican strongholds.
The latest polling suggests the Republican Party is facing a much broader threat than expected. RealClearPolitics figures published on Monday put Democrats ahead for Senate seats in Texas, Alaska, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Maine and New Hampshire.
Thirty five of 100 seats in the Senate are up for grabs. To take control of the chamber, Democrats need to gain four Republican-held seats while defending their own vulnerable seats – and they are now looking well beyond the traditional battlegrounds.
Laurel Rapp, director of the US and North America Programme at Chatham House, said the shift should be viewed in the broader context of the political cycle, rather than as a series of individual contests.
“All midterms are a distillation of public sentiment and a verdict on the President’s performance during the first two years of his presidency, and these midterms are no different,” she told The i Paper.
The margins are narrow enough that none of these races can be treated as a shoo-in for the Democrats, but collectively, they represent a dramatic expansion of the electoral map and a worrying sign for Trump and his allies.
Forecasting platform Race to the White House predicts that Democrats now have more than a 70 per cent chance of winning the Senate, with the Republican Party sinking below 30 per cent.
Decision Desk HQ gives the Democrats a 57 per cent chance of winning the Senate, compared with 43 per cent for Republicans. It rates Iowa, Ohio, and Texas as toss-ups, Alaska as leaning Democrat, and Kansas as leaning Republican. That is a striking turnaround from the beginning of the cycle, when Republicans appeared to have a favourable map and held a 53-47 Senate majority.
“We almost always see huge swings to the party not in power during the midterms,” said Rapp. “So we expect, or the history suggests, that the Democrats stand to gain at least one of the chambers of Congress, and that’s very much on track to happen, likely in the House, and the Senate is also increasingly in play.”
Reuters reported last week that Democrats were competitive in ten states Trump won by double digits in 2024. Trump won Texas by roughly 14 points in 2024, Iowa by 13, Kansas by 16 and Ohio by 11, but he is now personally campaigning in some of them, pointing to a growing realisation of the problems for his party.
After stops in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama last week, the President travelled to Ohio on Saturday and headed to Nebraska on Monday.
Nebraska would ordinarily be considered one of the safest Republican states in the country, but the Senate race between Republican Senator Pete Ricketts and independent Dan Osborn has become unexpectedly competitive. The latest public poll puts Ricketts on 45 per cent and Osborn on 40 per cent among likely voters, with 15 per cent undecided. This prompted Trump to campaign in Grand Island on Monday.
However, Trump’s interventions might not be welcomed by everyone. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in September put the President’s approval rating at just 32 per cent – the lowest of his political career.
Donald Trump greets Senator Pete Ricketts during a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty)A CBS/YouGov poll released on Sunday was somewhat more favourable, but still showed Trump underwater, with 39 per cent approving of his performance and 61 per cent disapproving. The same poll gave Democrats a nine-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot.
“These polls are a dire sign for the Republican Party,” said David Andersen, an associate professor in US politics at Durham University.
“These are areas that have supported Republicans and Republican candidates for decades now. Places like Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Alaska. What they all have in common is they have heavy agricultural bases, and farmers across America have supported Trump since his candidacy in 2016 … it seems like right now they feel absolutely abandoned and betrayed.”
Andersen said that Republican candidates are now torn, because if they stand toe-to-toe with the President and support him, they will face a backlash from the majority of voters. But if they oppose him, “then their own core supporters start backlashing against them”.
He predicted that many traditional Republican voters will simply not vote at all. “They just won’t show up at the ballot.”
Rapp said Trump’s standing is central to understanding why Democrats are making inroads in states that would normally be safely Republican.
Trump is “quite unpopular among large swathes of the American public. He retains strong support among his base, but a lot of his campaign focus these past months has been directed to really address his base and not those independent voters, or some of the more centrist or conservative Democratic voters,” she said.
Trump’s recent campaign strategy has centred on persuading voters that his administration is delivering an economic “golden age”. But the economic backdrop is particularly damaging for Republicans right now, with inflation and the cost of living dominant voter concerns in the face of Trump’s war with Iran.
In Alabama last week, Trump urged Republican voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot”.
Trump remains an extraordinary force for his base, but in states where independent and swing voters are increasingly hostile to the President, putting him at the centre of a campaign risks turning a local contest into a referendum on his presidency.
A Democratic victory in either chamber would give Democrats a greater ability to act as a check on the Trump White House, while winning both would leave the President in a deeply challenging position.
Momentum is particularly evident in the House, where Democrats are increasingly competitive across districts that had previously looked secure for Republicans.
“We’ve seen these trend lines for the past six months that the Democrats are polling increasingly well and making inroads in states that previously had not been considered competitive,” Rapp noted. “The map is looking increasingly certain to favour Democrats in the House, and I think that it’s the Democrats’ election to lose.”
In the Senate, however, the electoral map still favours Republicans in several states. Still, it is clear why Republican campaign money and Trump’s attention is being diverted towards areas that were once regarded as safe. Republicans have been outspending Democrats in several of the newly competitive states, according to AdImpact data.
“Cash is king,” Tim Scott, who chairs the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said last week. “It’s a powerful tool that is providing us with the firepower necessary to really share our message, and our message is incredibly important for us to win these races.”
Four weeks is a long time in US politics, particularly with Trump’s ability to dominate news cycles. Rapp cautioned that the current picture could still change dramatically before Americans cast their ballots.
“The American political system always warns of the October surprise, especially as it relates to the presidential agenda and presidential elections, but it also holds for the midterm.”
But the sheer number of Republican strongholds now being contested is difficult to ignore. Democrats will be feeling empowered, and Trump’s allies will be wondering what comes next.
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