Reports from Washington suggest the Republican Party has at last become concerned about Donald Trump’s deepening unpopularity and the party’s prospects in November’s midterm elections. It has taken a long time for them to wake up and smell the coffee.
Opinion polls suggest near-record levels of unpopularity for Trump’s presidency and growing dissatisfaction among voters with the administration’s handling of nearly every big issue.
More worrying to them are the stated priorities of those polled. Issues such as immigration and crime have fallen in importance compared with the state of the economy. There is no sign of the golden age promised by Trump at his inauguration 18 months ago. Inflation is stubbornly high. Gasoline prices have ballooned. Trump’s tariffs have not created a protectionist boom. Those in work face huge “cost-of-living” issues. The AI stock market boom – or bubble? – may be making the rich richer on paper. But middle America is feeling the pinch and losing economic confidence.
Trump’s disastrous involvement in Binyamin Netanyahu’s war in the Middle East has turned out to be a vote loser back home. It has ruptured Trump’s credibility in middle America. Repeated claims to have destroyed Iran’s military capacity have been exposed as threadbare lies. Putting boots on the ground in Iran is no longer a military option. Regime change in Tehran seems impossible. Trump’s failed appeal to Iranians to overthrow the despotic regime failed utterly. The ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard are more firmly entrenched than ever. The Strait of Hormuz will be safely reopened only by some form of negotiated deal with Iran. The global economic crisis caused by closure of the strait is really all that Trump can point to by way of achievement.
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The White House Correspondents’ Association, which hosts the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, has exacerbated Trump’s credibility issues. Watching his chaotic, rambling, self-indulgent speech at the reconvened dinner was a toe-curling experience. The impression created was that of a spiteful narcissist in serious mental decline. Scripted attempts at witticism and jokes fell utterly flat. Worst of all, he came across not merely as unlikable but stupid.
Of course, few Americans will have watched the entire speech. Few will therefore have witnessed his self-inflicted humiliation. But the event can only have further deflated political morale in the Republican Party as it faces into the midterm elections campaign.
Interestingly, US opinion polls suggest that Trump’s residual but declining popularity lies with white males with comparatively low educational achievement – perhaps the least likely to watch his speech at the Washington dinner and equally unlikely to follow the detail of his war operations in the Gulf. They probably have little understanding of, or interest in, America’s slump in international influence and importance. But they will easily grasp the dramatic increase in gasoline prices and the effect of price inflation at the supermarket checkout, while their wage slip does nothing to preserve their standard of living.
What leading Republicans fear is that Trump’s supporters are becoming disillusioned and demoralised. They may not switch their votes to the Democrats in huge numbers. But they may well simply stay at home and opt out of the electoral process.
Trump’s huge victory over Kamala Harris in 2024 was electrified by the Maga spirit. Some observers even claimed that influencers such as the Tate brothers played a significant role in motivating young American men to support Trump. With the Tate brothers behind bars and facing extradition to the United Kingdom, that cohort may lose enthusiasm.
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The murder of Charlie Kirk in September 2025 seemed, for a few months, to have the potential to re-energise the hard-right movement among young American men. But efforts to politically canonise Kirk seem to have evaporated over the past 10 months.
Although political pundits see a strong probability of Democrats securing a majority in the House of Representatives in November, there is no such consensus concerning the US Senate. The particular Senate seats in the contest in November are not as open to change as those in the House. To stave off a defeat in November, Trump wants Congress to pass a voter suppression measure requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and to require voter ID at the polls. It seems unlikely now that Congress will pass the Bill, named the “SAVE America Act”.
The bigger risk is that Democrats will lose the midterm election opportunities by their own unforced errors. If they lose the centre ground by self-indulgent radicalism, they will only have themselves to blame.
