Trump's Low Approval and Voter Apathy Threaten GOP Midterm Hopes

Alex Castellanos has spent six cycles advising Republican presidential campaigns. He isn’t worried about a "blue wave." He’s tracking something else. Something he calls the "Red Scream."

According to Axios, Castellanos argues that Republicans and independents are "screaming for attention." Many of them, including those who backed Donald Trump, might express that frustration by simply staying home. This is the real threat to GOP candidates heading into next week’s midterms.

President Trump is crisscrossing the country right now. He’s trying to energize voters to support less popular Republican nominees. In many cases, he hand-picked these candidates in primary contests. The party wants to defy history despite his low approval rating. Polls released this week show his support has rebounded slightly to 40 percent. But that number is still underwater in almost every single battleground state, according to Civiqs’ rolling tracker of registered voters.

The stakes are high. Democrats need to flip four Republican-held seats to take control of the Senate. Their best shots are North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and Alaska. The Cook Political Report currently lists Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas as "toss-up" states for US Senate races.

Disapproval is the key metric here. In Maine, Trump’s disapproval rate hits 61 percent. That’s the highest among swing states. Kansas is the lowest at 45 percent. Ohio and Texas are tied at 56 percent disapproval, just behind Iowa at 55 percent. Michigan sits at 59 percent, and Alaska at 53 percent.

Young Republicans are particularly restless. Among voters aged 18 to 34, Trump’s approval rating dips to 63 percent. Twenty-one percent of that group explicitly disapprove of him. Another 16 percent say they neither approve nor disapprove. In the battleground states mentioned earlier, double-digit percentages of Republicans are unhappy with his job performance.

This dynamic is especially dangerous in Ohio. Fourteen percent of Republicans there disapprove of Trump. He’s trying to keep the state’s Senate seat red by tightly linking his name to incumbent John Husted. Trump has won Ohio three times as a presidential candidate. The same pattern is emerging in Texas, where 13 percent of Republicans disapprove of him. He’s backing Ken Paxton, his handpicked US Senate candidate.

Michigan presents a similar challenge. Thirteen percent of Republicans there disapprove of Trump’s performance. Former GOP congressman Mike Rogers is running for the US Senate against Democrat Abdul el Sayed. The numbers are slightly more favorable in Alaska and Maine, where disapproval among Republicans stands at 12 percent each. In Kansas and Iowa, only 10 percent of Republicans disapprove of the President.