An analysis of Republican voters has raised “scary” warning signs for the GOP ahead of the midterms.
Republican voters have shown a worrying lack of enthusiasm about turning out for the November polls, with 1 in 5 reliable GOP voters in Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Montana, New Hampshire, and Michigan weighing either staying home or voting for Democrats, according to an analysis by the conservative super PAC Americans for Prosperity Action.
“This is a big chunk,” AFP Action executive director Nathan Nascimento told The Washington Post. “This is a scary number.”
In rural Iowa, for example, three-time Trump voter Lance Sulentic, 56, described the past three presidential elections as “the worst three mistakes I’ve ever made in my life,” saying President Donald Trump has failed to fulfill his campaign promises.
“We voted for Trump, and he did the opposite of what he said he was going to do,” he said. “Gas prices were going to be two dollars, food was going to be cheaper, energy prices was going to be in half, we were going to get two rebate checks to the American people, and we weren’t going to have any new wars, and we were going to build a wall and deport 30 million illegal aliens, and he did none of it.”
Mitchell Brown, a partner at polling firm Cygnal, said Republicans are less motivated about voting at this point than they were at the same time ahead of the 2018 midterms. In contrast, Democrats are just as fired up as they were at the same period.
“It’s not that the Democrats are outperforming a topline number that we’d expect; it’s that Republicans are underperforming,” he said.
An earlier Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that registered voters prefer Democrats to Republicans—but only by a slim margin. The survey showed that Americans would vote for the Democratic candidate rather than the Republican one, 48 percent to 45 percent, if an election for the House were held today.
Brown warned that men under 40 are the most at-risk among Republican voters, largely due to their concerns about the economy and prices. This group helped steer Trump’s victory in 2024, which included a sweep of battleground states.
The White House and the Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Republican strategists maintained that the declining support among these voters may still change as the midterms inch closer.
“Republicans are united, on offense, and armed with our largest war chest in party history because voters are energized and understand what’s at stake in November’s election,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said.
