President Donald Trump’s unhealthy “obsession” with an election he lost more than five years ago could damage the GOP in the midterms, according to CNN’s data guru.
Harry Enten, the network’s senior data analyst, suggested that voters will be put off by the 79-year-old president’s continued efforts to rehash long-debunked claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him through widespread voter fraud.
Enten said this is especially likely to be the case in Georgia, where the FBI conducted a search this week at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center—a location Trump and his MAGA allies have for years falsely claimed was central to voter fraud that cost him the state in 2020.
“This is not a winner for Republicans. It’s not a winner,” Enten told CNN’s News Central. “You go to the last midterm election, 2022—Georgia voters were asked whether [Joe] Biden’s win was legitimate or illegitimate. Fifty-eight percent said the win was legitimate. Democrats are begging, begging, for the 2026 election to be about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.”
Enten backed up his argument by noting that online prediction markets are currently giving a Democratic candidate—which is almost certain to be the incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff—an 80 percent chance of winning Georgia’s Senate race in November.
“Every moment that Donald Trump talks about the 2020 election is a chance for Jon Ossoff to boost his probability of winning,” Enten said. “He would absolutely love for Donald Trump to continue on with his diatribe, his obsession—one that the American people do not believe, and Georgia voters don’t believe either.”
Enten also pointed to polling from November 2020 showing that 60 percent of Americans believed Joe Biden won the election “fair and square.” Despite Trump continuing to push baseless voter fraud claims for years, that figure actually rose to 62 percent in 2024.
“It was that same three in five Americans—they simply did not move,” Enten said. “Donald Trump has made the case, and the American people do not buy the case that Donald Trump has been making, no matter how obsessive he is about it.”
Historically, the party in power in the White House almost always suffers losses in midterm elections.
With the GOP holding a razor-thin majority in the House, Republicans already face an uphill battle to retain control of the chamber. Backlash to Trump’s erratic second term also means the Senate could be in play for Democrats.
