Republicans bet that Dems’ toxic brand could keep them in the running for the midterms

WASHINGTON — Republicans are holding out hope that Democrats’ toxic brand could ward off a midterm shellacking in November.

Despite polls pegging widespread unease with the state of the economy, the Operation Epic Fury attacks on Iran, and President Trump, many of those same surveys indicate that Republicans somehow have higher favorability ratings than Democrats.

“Typically, going into a midterm cycle, it’s a referendum on the party in power, but this provides an opportunity to Republicans,” veteran GOP strategist at Nestpoint, John Thomas, told The Post. “Voters may reject switching horses at this point, given the lower favorable numbers.”

“It’s going to be extraordinarily difficult. However, there are some indicators that if President Trump and the Republicans close properly and message properly, they could sneak out a victory,” he stressed, referring to control of the House. “It has to be executed flawlessly.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has publicly described being “very bullish about the midterms” and cited Democrats being “at historic lows in approval rating” as one of the reasons for his optimism. Many Republicans privately admit that they expect to lose the House in November.

Since 1938, the party that controls the White House has lost seats in the House of Representatives in all but two elections.

But Johnson’s rosy conviction gained a little bit of credence this week after CNN data guru Harry Enten spotlighted how Democrats are “running behind their previous benchmarks,” though he has assessed that they are still likely to flip the House.

During the 2006 blue wave cycle, Democrats netted an 18-point higher net favorability than Republicans and a 12-point higher net favorability in the 2018 blue wave year, at this stage of those elections.

Currently, Republicans’ favorability is 5 points higher than the Democrats’.

“It’s a 2028 problem, not a 2026 problem, and it’s a result of Democrats [being] mad at party leadership, not people who are going to vote Republican over Democrat,” one Democratic strategist bluntly told The Post. “Look at the double haters … by like 33 points, they say they are going to vote for Dems.”

“I don’t think it matters at all for the midterms and presuming Dems win the midterms, that will get better.”

GOP operatives are hoping to put Democrats on defense for lurching too far to the left or having ties to the fringe of their party. In Michigan, for example, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is currently polling in third place, has declined to disavow left-wing livestreamer Hasan Piker.

Piker, a nephew of “Young Turks” Cenk Uygur, claimed in a 2019 stream that “America deserved 9/11″ and later said that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was a “direct consequence” of Israeli actions, adding that if the terror group engaged in rape, it “doesn’t change the dynamic for me.”

El-Sayed has distanced himself from some of Piker’s remarks but called for pressure for him to denounce the livestreamer part of cancel culture. The two leading Democrats in the race have ripped his ties to Piker.

“There’s a chorus of left-wing influencers paid to provoke, not to win — and the message they send is a real liability to our national brand,” former Jill Biden’s spokesman Michael LaRosa explained.

“Whenever Democrats have gained power, our majorities were made in the ideological middle, not at the extremes.”

LaRosa stressed that the “midterms are decided race by race, shaped by candidate personalities and quirky local dynamics—and that’s where Democrats have the advantage.”

Despite the branding concerns, Democrats are 5.8 percentage points ahead of Republicans in the RealClearPolitics aggregate of a generic congressional vote. They had a 7.5 percentage point lead in RCP at this stage of the 2018 race.

Democrats have also pointed to their string of success in special elections, off-year races, and even in primaries. During the Texas Senate primary last month, for example, Democrats had a higher turnout than Republicans. Some have pointed to that as a bellwether for turnout in November.

On average, Democrats have overperformed in special elections by 12.9 percentage points and won or overperformed in 264 of 295 since last year, according to data from the Democratic National Committee.

“Donald Trump and Republicans are rattled to their core as Democrats continue to notch major flips and overperformances across the country,” DNC Chairman Ken Martin told The Post in a statement.

“We have momentum on our side, but we refuse to take a single day for granted. Democrats are all hands on deck ahead of November, because it’s time to send the Republicans packing.” 

This week, Republicans took solace in one of the Democratic stars of the 2025 off-year elections, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), clocking in at one of the worst approval ratings for a governor of that state at this stage since the 1990s in a Washington Post-Schar School poll.

Months into her term, she notched a 47% to 46% approval-to-disapproval rating in that survey, despite her landslide victory of over 15 percentage points last year.

“Democrats … are running on nothing but Trump Derangement Syndrome and America hatred, so it’s no surprise their poll numbers are in the gutter,” Republican National Committee press secretary Kiersten Pels chided.

Trump is keen on forestalling a Democratic return to power in the House, which will make his final two years in office a nightmare with constant investigations into him.

In an attempt to prevent that, he is planning to go “all in” on boosting Republicans in November, his top advisers told The Post earlier this year.