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President Donald Trump’s own pollster released a survey finding that voters want Democrats to control Congress by a 7-point margin—a spread so large that it would cost Republicans the House and put the Senate in play.
The pollsters, Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward, tucked the finding in a memo that advised Trump and the GOP to regulate artificial intelligence at the federal level in order to build electoral goodwill.
The memo claims that if Republicans protect kids from the potential harms of AI, it could help turn a loss in the 2026 midterms into a massive victory. That is obviously farcical, and informed ballot questions—such as the one the pollsters asked—are good at message testing but are not at all predictive. It’s a sure bet that regulating AI for kids is not what the 2026 election will hinge on, as most Americans are telling pollsters that it’s the economy and cost of living that are most important to them.
Yet nestled in the data from Trump’s pollsters is a finding that if the midterms were held today, 45% would vote for the Democratic nominee while 38% would choose a Republican. Among “swing voters,” Democrats’ margin expands to a whopping 15 points, with 37% saying they would vote for the Democratic candidate and just 22% choosing the Republican.
Those findings are dismal for the GOP.
A 7-point generic ballot spread is close to the 8.4-points Democrats won the 2018 midterms by—when Democrats gained 40 seats in the House and took back control of that chamber for the first time in nearly a decade.
If 2026’s results are similar, it would be more than enough for Democrats to flip the three seats they need for a majority in the House, and would even put control of the Senate up for grabs.
The fact that Trump’s own pollster sees such a big Democratic generic ballot lead is likely why Republicans are in panic mode about the midterms.
After terrible recent performances in blockbuster gubernatorial elections in November and equally bad performances in special elections across the country, Republican lawmakers are now heading for the exits in record numbers.
GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik decided next year’s elections were looking so bad that she ended her doomed bid for New York governor on Friday and said she wasn’t even going to seek reelection in her district, which Trump carried by more than 20 points.
“While we would have overwhelmingly won this primary, it is not an effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York,” Stefanik said of why she bowed out of the gubernatorial election she was almost certain to lose.
Related | ‘We need to sound the alarm’: GOP panics as election losses pile up
Even the Republican National Committee chair said things are bad, predicting his own party’s demise.
“The chances are Republicans will go down and will go down hard,” RNC Chair Joe Gruters said in a radio show appearance earlier this month.
Political handicappers agree.
“The Republican Party doesn’t do well in elections in which President Donald Trump is the focus. And by nature of his personality and being the incumbent president, the GOP is on track for that scenario to repeat itself,” Nathan Gonzales, Roll Call elections analyst and publisher of the political handicapping outlet Inside Elections, wrote in a recent column.
There’s a long way until next November, but as Americans’ views on the economy sour, no amount of gaslighting from Trump or AI regulation could change the GOP’s fate.
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Emily Singer
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