Just When Republicans Thought It Couldn't Get Worse, It Did

Republicans were thinking that they might be able to survive the midterm election, but then the Iran war returned along with more tariffs, and midterm election polls are looking worse for the GOP.

Republicans started to think that the worst might be over for them, and maybe they could make it through the midterm election with minimal losses. The GOP’s base case scenario was losing the House, but Democrats having a small majority while keeping control of the Senate.

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The Republicans were hoping that the Iran war would end, inflation and prices would drop, and voters would put the pitchforks and torches down and go back to being just angry.

Those hopes have been shattered as the Iran peace process fell apart. The war is back on. Oil is at $100 a barrel. Trump has resumed his tariff obsession, and things went back to being the darkest timeline for Republicans.

The new Emerson College Poll was the stuff of Democratic dreams and Republican nightmares.

According to the Emerson Poll:

A new Emerson College Polling survey of likely 2026 voters finds the Democrats with an 11-point advantage over the Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, leading 53% to 42%. President Trump holds a 39% job approval rating, consistent with the past two months, whereas his disapproval increased another point, to 57%.

“Driving the Democrats’ significant lead on the ballot are women voters, who break for the Democratic candidate by a 27-point margin, 56% to 39%, while men are more split: 49% support the Democrat and 44% the Republican,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said.

If Republicans lose with men, they will get slaughtered in the midterm, but Emerson wasn’t the only poll to show how bad things are for Trump’s party.