Title: Monday Morning Politics: Looking Ahead to Midterms

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. If you've been following the war news this weekend, you’ve been hearing about the attacks on ships by both the US and Iran, the negotiations and threats, rising costs in the United States and elsewhere from the twin blockades and the devastation for an estimated 1 million civilians displaced in Lebanon, with hundreds of thousands of their homes destroyed and no longer even there to return to.

Also, in some of the stories, but usually noted as a side thing, is the war for public opinion. On this, the US and Israeli governments are having opposite levels of success. Maybe you haven’t heard this. For example, The New Yorker reports it this way: "Unlike in the United States, where the war has hurt President Trump’s political standing, the war remains popular in Israel." The article goes further, saying, "Jewish Israelis are opposed to a ceasefire, despite thinking the war is not going well." It even says this in The New Yorker, "Israeli voters are against a ceasefire with Iran and think Benjamin Netanyahu has not gone far enough," not gone far enough.

The Times of Israel reports there was a protest in northern Israel on Thursday, not an anti-war protest, those are happening too, but an anti-ceasefire protest. That article quotes the mayor of Kiryat Shmona, saying, "President Trump, you wouldn’t let your kids live under threat. Why are you letting our children live like this?" That, of course, after Trump pressured Netanyahu to the ceasefire in Lebanon so Iran would open the Strait of Hormuz.

In this country now, a new NBC News poll finds two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the war. 54% say they strongly disapprove. A YouGov poll finds inflation is the number one issue, and that between his war and his tariffs, Trump is 35 percentage points underwater on inflation. That is, his approval-to-disapproval gap is that high. When asked about inflation on Fox Business last week, he could only muster this much optimism about the effects of his own policies. The question came from Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo.

Maria Bartiromo: Do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections?

President Trump: I hope so. I think so. It could be or the same or maybe a little bit higher. I think this won’t be that much longer.

Brian Lehrer: "Maybe even a little bit higher," Trump on Fox Business. On the alliance with Israel in this war, a headline on Vox says, "Israel’s critics are winning the battle for the Democratic Party. Democratic voters turned against Israel. Now their politicians are following." That from Vox. That follows a Pew poll last week that The Times of Israel broke down this way: "60% of US adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel. Only 37% view it favorably."

It continues, "About 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents express unfavorable views of Israel," 80%, "while 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning adults view Israel favorably overall." A big partisan split there. The Times of Israel summary of the Pew poll continues, "However, majorities under age 50 in both parties now rate Israel and Netanyahu negatively." Again, that on the Pew poll from The Times of Israel.

Now, this all has major implications for the midterm elections here in the United States, where the primaries are already well underway. Of course, the midterms have major implications for how much Trump can keep up the pace of right-wing and culture war change that he’s been on, and whether Democrats can reverse the government’s course and enact any kind of agenda of their own if they do take the congressional majorities.

Our focus for this conversation will be what some of this means politically in this country, with Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Among his recent articles, 5 Ways 2026 Looks Like 2018, that was Trump’s other midterm elections, and 5 Ways It Doesn’t. Dave, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Dave Wasserman: Good to be with you, Brian. Thanks.

Brian Lehrer: I threw a lot of numbers out there. In words, how would you begin to describe how the public ranks inflation as an issue now and how the president is doing on that issue?

Dave Wasserman: Inflation is still a voter’s top issue, but it’s really a series of issues. It’s healthcare, it’s the cost of groceries, it’s the cost of gas. Up until the launch of the coordinated attacks on Iran, it appeared that Democrats’ messaging in the midterms would be centered around the reconciliation bill and Republican cuts to the social safety net, particularly Medicaid, the premium spikes associated with the Obamacare cliff, and the expiration of enhanced subsidies.

These were unpopular measures under unified Republican control of government that Democrats were going to exploit, and they still will. Now there’s this additional aspect of an unpopular war, and the supply chain disruption and higher oil and gas prices that come with it. It has compounded Republicans’ problems politically because President Trump won over independent voters in 2024 by promising an economic golden age, extracting America from foreign conflicts, and not really making broad changes to entitlements. Democrats can now capitalize on all three of those.

Brian Lehrer: You heard the Trump clip from Fox Business. I heard a TV analyst say, "This is the same playbook that President Biden failed with when he was running for reelection. 'Don’t worry, this inflation is only transitory. It’ll calm down on its own. Trust me on this.'" Do you see a parallel?

Dave Wasserman: The stimulus spending under the Biden administration didn’t do much to improve his standing with voters who were facing higher prices. I think one difference between where we are today politically and where we were eight years ago, back then, voters still had generally positive views of life under the Obama years. Today, voters are cross-pressured because they don’t view the Biden years favorably. They view them as the start of this inflationary environment, and so they are having a hard time trusting either political party to make their lives better.

Brian Lehrer: Are you following the partisan splits on this then? Like Trump and the Republican Congress got elected in 2024, despite fairly high overall disapproval ratings for Trump, partly, I think, because voters who identify as Republican stayed with him and the Republican candidates for Congress. That was enough with a lack of Democratic turnout or enthusiasm. How are the partisan splits at this intense moment with tariffs and the war, as the midterm election season has begun?

Dave Wasserman: There are a couple components to what we’re looking at. The first is the enthusiasm gap between the two parties. The March NBC News poll showed that 74% of Democrats were extremely motivated to vote in the midterms, rated their interest as either a 9 or 10 out of 10, compared to 61% of Republicans. That enthusiasm gap is showing up in a lot of the off-year and special election results that we’ve seen.

The second component of that is the independent voters who were not firmly committed to either candidate for much of 2024, or are either softly committed, people who do not pay a ton of attention to political news or consider themselves all that ideological, but still vote at the end of the day. They broke for Donald Trump by double digits in 2024, not because they liked him personally. In fact, they really don’t like his style on social media or otherwise. They rehired him because they were nostalgic for what things cost when he was president the first time around, and what car and home loan rates were. Those voters have turned on the president.

When we look at his ratings among self-identified independents, who now make up nearly half or roughly half of the electorate, they’re at around 30%. They’re not sold on Democrats either. I think their turnout is going to decline by even more than that of the partisans, but they have swung against Republicans in a meaningful way. Many of these voters, even if they voted for Trump, have never had that warm of a feeling towards congressional Republicans who actually are on the ballot.

Brian Lehrer: Let me come back to independents in just a minute. I want to invite our listeners in. We’re talking midterm election politics with Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. We can take your questions for him, 212-433-WNYC, call or text 212-433-9692.

This can be on any individual race, or the impact of the war, or tariffs, or the president’s approval ratings generally, or if the Democrats’ own struggles with approval ratings, and what alternatives they’re actually offering other than not being Trump. We’ll get into some of that. Your calls can be about that or anything else related at 212-433-WNYC, for Dave Wasserman from the Cook Political Report, 212-433-9692. You can call or you can text.

Picking up where you left off, Dave, a YouGov poll just before the war found Trump’s approval rating with independents was already really bad, two-thirds disapproval. A Quinnipiac poll last week found only 27% approval among independents. That was actually up a tick from a few weeks before that, but 27% approval in the 20s among independents. Can you start to say how any of this rubs off so far on the outlook for congressional races? Because Trump, after all, is not on the ballot. The Senate and House candidates are.

Dave Wasserman: That’s right. It’s a telltale sign of a wave. When we look at our polling aggregator and narrow it down to independents, he’s been hovering right around 30% for a long time, but now we’re at 28%. The question is whether this is a durable shift or whether it is a low point for the president. At that level, that’s when the Senate really becomes at risk for Republicans, because to win the Senate, Democrats have to reach pretty deep into states that Trump carried by comfortable margins. When his approval rating is this low and there are sustained high gas prices, it’s a recipe for Republicans potentially losing states like Ohio and Iowa.

One of the fascinating elements demographically here is that the independent electorate or the persuadable electorate, what we found in 2024, at least, was that it skewed a little bit more female, a little bit more diverse, and a little bit younger than the rest of the electorate as a whole, which should have suggested upside that year for Kamala Harris and Democrats, because Democrats typically do well with those groups, but they were very negative towards both candidates and they trusted Trump more than Harris to turn around the economy. Now that they’re not seeing it, they’re reverting to their Democratic inclinations to the extent they’re turning out to vote at all this fall.

Brian Lehrer: A listener texts to my reference before about Biden saying inflation was transitory in 2024 when he was running for re-election. Listener reminds that Harris was on the ballot, not Biden, but of course, that started late in the season, and Biden was running for re-election for a lot of 2024 in part on that message, and it wasn’t landing.

Just one other thing about independent voters, who we talk about when we say independent voters, because we probably think largely of centrists, largely white suburban centrists. You were just saying the demographics are a little more diverse than that right now. There are also people to the left of the Democratic Party who would call themselves independents and people to the right of the Republican Party, even though that party has moved so far in their direction under Trump. When you say independents pull this way or that way, is it mostly the centrists?

Dave Wasserman: I don’t know that there’s one fixed spot on the spectrum that contains most of these voters. I think what unites them is that they are disgusted with the culture of both political parties. They don’t like Democrats’ wokeness, but they also dislike President Trump’s brashness and his proclivity to pick fights with the Pope and others, and threaten the end of entire civilizations.

We’re seeing upheaval on the Democratic side, and I’m sure we’ll get into that. The independent vote has opted for change in midterm election after midterm election. Pretty much every midterm since 1994, with a few exceptions, the party in power has tried to make big changes, usually in terms of healthcare, and independents have reacted badly to it. Now they give both the One Big Beautiful Bill and the war in Iran very low marks.

Brian Lehrer: Here’s an interesting question from a listener who writes, "Why does analysis always focus on the economy and never on immigration, corruption, incompetent cabinet?" How would you answer that as an elections analyst and a polling analyst?

Dave Wasserman: I think there’s been plenty of ink spilled on both immigration and allegations of corruption among people who are running or in office. This time around, the median voter who’s really going to determine what happens in a lot of these races is a voter who does believe that people who are in the country illegally should be deported to their country of origin, but that the tactics that ICE has engaged in under Trump 2.0 are unacceptable, and believes that there needs to be a much more professionalized operation targeted at deporting those who are here illegally.

One of the reasons why the president has lost his advantage on immigration is that the conversation has shifted away from border security to the tactics that are used by ICE that independent voters and a number of soft Republicans believe to be indiscriminate and excessive. That has definitely hurt Republicans. In addition, there are races where Democrats hope to seize on stock trades by Republican members of Congress as evidence of corruption. One example is in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Republican freshman Rob Bresnahan faces a stiff challenge from former Scranton mayor Paige Cognetti. That’s absolutely going to be playing out in the ads we see this fall.

Brian Lehrer: Here’s another question from a listener who writes, "The Times had a front page story last week questioning Trump’s mental stability. Has that issue made an impact on the public?"

Dave Wasserman: Every time Democrats have sought to run ads that focus on the president’s mental state or on fitness for office, they are preaching to their own choir. It kind of makes Democrats feel good to diagnose the president with a mental disorder and try and rally their own troops that way. What we’ve seen in focus groups and in polls is that that argument doesn’t really change the preexisting ways in which voters see the president, doesn’t change many minds.

Instead, what has hurt Republicans is the argument that the president’s policies have negatively impacted their pocketbook and their outlook in terms of their healthcare coverage, their ability to pay for their housing or their car. Some of the changes that we’ve seen under the One Big Beautiful Bill won’t take effect until 2027 or later. The threat of hospital closures or Americans losing insurance is a rallying cry that has moved votes in the past. In 2017/'18, when Republicans embarked on repeal and replace, it didn’t even pass. They didn’t succeed in gutting Obamacare. Yet Democrats’ barrage of ads when it came to preexisting conditions helped them win the midterms by a wide margin.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, a little more to the listener who asked why immigration isn’t getting discussed more in the recent political analyses of the polls that are coming out. Looking at the NBC News poll, which is new, and it has immigration way down as an issue, certainly compared to in the 2024 election cycle when Trump ran so much on immigration, and it was very high among a lot of voters’ priorities. Now it’s way down on that list.

Only 12% is, I think, the number I saw of voters saying that’s their number one issue right now, and that’s below inflation and other economy things and the war. It’s kind of neutralized, I guess, Dave, by what you said. Voters like that the border is closed, but don’t like the tactics that ICE has been using, that they see as horrific or over the top. That kind of makes it not necessarily a plus or a minus. He is, I think, in negative territory on immigration overall now, but also it’s just a low voting priority in this cycle unless something changes, correct?

Dave Wasserman: Yes, I’d argue that the downticks in the president’s approval have been related to a variety of different issues, including the passage of the reconciliation bill--

Brian Lehrer: That’s the One Big Beautiful Bill, so-called, right?

Dave Wasserman: Right. The Liberation Day tariffs, but then also Renée Good, the killing of two civilians in Minneapolis, and then the start of the war in Iran. With each of these events, we’ve seen small declines in the president’s approval, and it has transformed the relative popularity he started with. He’s never been above 50%, but he began his second term with roughly 48%, 49% approval, roughly the share of the vote that he got in 2024, and now it’s down to 40%. This is danger territory.

Brian Lehrer: All right. We’re going to get more to the Democratic side of this equation with Dave Wasserman right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Dave Wasserman, elections analyst for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. We’ve been talking largely about Trump’s approval ratings and how they may be affecting the midterm elections. Also in the intro, though, I mentioned the dramatic decline in Americans holding a favorable view of Israel, and that’s so far an issue for the Democrats in the primary season.

To repeat what I quoted from The Times of Israel story on the Pew poll, because many of you have just joined since, "60% of US adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, only 37% view it favorably. Majorities under age 50 in both parties now rate Israel and Netanyahu negatively." The Vox headline recited, "Israel’s critics are winning the battle for the Democratic Party. Democratic voters turned against Israel. Now their politicians are following." Dave, I imagine this would be playing out so far in Democratic primaries. Are you seeing it?

Dave Wasserman: Yes and no. Look, there’s no doubt that there’s been a massive shift among Democrats in the last dozen or so years when it comes to their views of Israel. Republicans have remained strongly supportive of Israel, but we’ve seen sympathies polarize along partisan lines. Israel-Palestine has become an increasingly partisan issue as the Netanyahu government has been perceived by Democrats to be representative of Israel and also in league with President Trump.

That has, of course, been most on display in the ongoing conflict with Iran. Also, this ranks as an important issue for some voters, but not most voters. Take the NBC News poll from March. When given the option of whether voters have positive, negative, and neutral or not sure, 39% of voters overall said negative, 32% said they had a positive view of Israel, but 30% said that their views were neutral or they were not sure, and it’s true. Now, 57% of Democrats have a negative view of Israel, according to that poll.

That is far different from where we were just a couple of years ago when in 2023, 35% of Democrats had a negative view, 34% positive. We’ve gone from -1 among Democrats to -44. Democratic candidates in primaries, with a few exceptions, seem reluctant to make this a core campaign appeal. They’d rather run on the ways in which they plan on confronting Trump when they’re elected, and on immigration or on healthcare, because they are wary of alienating some of the Democratic vote that might feel cross-pressured on this.

The leading pro-Israel PAC, AIPAC, has gotten involved in a number of Democratic primaries. This isn’t anything new. They’ve been big spenders for years now in a lot of these races. They’ve had a mixed track record so far, but it’s also telling that their messaging is never about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. They are spending their money on topics that they believe to be most effective in supporting the more pro-Israel candidate, or at least to stop what they perceive as the anti-Israel candidate in each of these Democratic races.

So far, they’ve had some high-profile defeats in a suburban Morris County, New Jersey district, in a few races in the Chicago suburbs. We have a small primary sample set so far because we’re very early in the season. My suspicion is that the energy on the progressive left may have peaked a little bit after the unrest in Minneapolis, but we’re going to find out how many Democratic incumbents are at real risk.

Brian Lehrer: A follow-up on AIPAC. Certainly, there are attacks now against Democratic politicians for taking AIPAC money, and you can say if you think that’s affected any primary results. Some of the criticism of AIPAC recently, and you were kind of suggesting this, has been that it hides who it is with generic-sounding interest group names that go on the ads, like the United Democracy Project. To be sure, AIPAC isn’t the only kind of interest group that does that sort of thing routinely. Do you know how much the law allows campaign finance and lobby groups to hide their real affiliations with that sort of naming, or is that beyond what you cover?

Dave Wasserman: No, the law allows for groups to present themselves as they wish to be presented. There’s nothing that says that they have to advertise on a topic that their stated mission covers. For example, when AIPAC got involved in a Democratic primary recently in a suburban Chicago district, the 9th District, where there were two very progressive candidates running, and one Democratic legislator who’s had a record more sympathetic to Israel, AIPAC went in with a series of ads highlighting that legislator, Laura Fine’s record on healthcare access. They didn’t mention anything about her stance on foreign policy. After all, she’s been a state legislator.

Still, the fact that AIPAC was spending heavily on that race became a lightning rod in the district. The more progressive candidates in the race were highlighting the fact that she was getting outside help from a group that’s at odds with where most Democratic voters have trended on that issue. In the end, she fell short, and a progressive mayor of Evanston, Daniel Biss, ended up taking that race with about 30% of the vote. The second-place finisher was also a progressive, even more so.

Brian Lehrer: Nick in Margaretville, New York, you’re on WNYC with Dave Wasserman from The Cook Political Report. Hi, Nick.

Nick: Thanks so much, Brian. Thanks, Dave, for your work. I just feel like we’re stuck in a weird loop, and I think no one’s more happy about the current moment than corporate war hawk Democrats, which dominate the Democratic Party because once again, here we are. They got the war on Iran that they ultimately wanted, but Trump is taking the fall for it. Like after 2016, these Democrats got to change basically nothing, but completely, it’s almost a hack point at this point, but rely on the fact that they are not Trump, and nothing changes.

Maybe they’ll be able to get some more corporate Democrats cashing in on that reality, and then nothing will change, and we’ll be often in a worse situation. I want to remind people that Kamala Harris said Iran is the biggest threat to America. She said we’re going to be the most lethal military. She basically refused in any meaningful way to ever, even during the atrocities in Gaza, to really meaningfully condemn or say she would do anything different than what Joe Biden did.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting, Nick. Let’s follow up on that. Nick, thank you for your call. Here’s a clip, relevant, of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, kind of warning his party that they can’t win just on being against Trump.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani: I think it’s time for a party that reflects the urgency that we’re seeing across this country, frankly, that is not as much tied just to age, but to vision. We know very well what we oppose. What are we for? That is a question that I think we have to be able to answer. What are we fighting for? It was not just enough in this mayoral campaign to say that I wasn’t like other mayoral candidates. We had to always answer the question of New Yorkers, what we'll deliver for them. I really think that that is at the heart of the question for our party.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Mamdani on Meet the Press. That doesn’t go to the part of Nick’s critique that the Democrats have been as big war hawks on Iran as the Republicans. I’m not sure it’s really right to say they always wanted this war as opposed to they always wanted to say they were tough on Iran, but only Trump, for whatever reasons, actually took this step of getting us into this war.

To what Mamdani did address that overlapped with Nick’s call, do you have a take on how much that’s why he got elected? Not just being strongly anti-Trump or against Israel’s war in Gaza, which he certainly was, or against Andrew Cuomo, but because he offered things that mattered to enough voters: universal child care, free public buses, freeze the rent on rent-stabilized apartments?

Dave Wasserman: Yes. He was speaking to voters about their everyday concerns in ways that were easily relatable and that they could digest. They didn’t perceive that he was reading off a teleprompter or that he had a big speechwriting staff that was poll-testing what to say. It was these man-on-the-street clips. It was a campaign style that was accessible and broke through.

Look, the numbers show that there are plenty of voters in New York City who voted for Trump in 2024 that also voted for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that also voted for Zohran Mamdani for mayor. What is the common thread there between these seemingly opposite worldviews that united a small but decisive set of voters? They are fed up with the status quo, whether that’s Andrew Cuomo or the Biden-Harris administration. They’re also fed up with high prices, and they heard politicians who were speaking to those concerns.

I think the big advantage for Democrats this cycle is that they don’t really need one common message or messenger to succeed when it’s a referendum on the party in power. That’s a question for 2028. I do think you’re going to have a variety of different kinds of Democrats, whether it’s DSA-endorsed candidates in some places, whether it is Graham Platner in Maine, who’s called for universal healthcare and abolishing ICE, or whether it’s more moderate candidates, for example, Josh Turek in Iowa or Mary Peltola in Alaska. All of these candidates could end up doing well.

Brian Lehrer: We have about three minutes left. I want to touch two things real briefly before you go. Tomorrow, this is going to be in the news, folks, Virginia will hold a referendum on a redistricting proposal there that you’ve written about before, Dave, that could add a few Democratic seats to Congress. My one question on this is, is either party winning the redistricting war so far? We’ve heard a lot about the one in Texas that the president and other Republicans are pushing, the one in California by Gavin Newsom and other Democrats. Do you have a scorecard to this point?

Dave Wasserman: Neither party is on track to come out ahead, and that’s good news for Democrats, because at the outset of this, it appeared that Republicans had much more juice to squeeze from their states than Democrats did in theirs. Essentially, Republicans launched this in Texas, thinking that they were going to net five seats there, and perhaps two each in Ohio and Indiana. What happened was that Democrats retaliated in California, drawing a map that I think is even more effective than the map Republicans drew in Texas.

We’ve seen changing attitudes among Hispanic voters that threaten the gains Republicans were counting on in Texas. Then states like Ohio and Indiana, they balked at pressure from the White House. Now in Virginia, Democrats are embarking on a pretty brazen gerrymander to basically end the careers of four Republicans who represent that state. It would be a 10:1 map, and it’s close. The polling on the referendum for tomorrow suggests it may narrowly pass, but if this campaign had gone on longer, there’s a chance that it might not have.

The messaging from the "No" side in Virginia is using terminology that appeals to Democratic voters, talking about the plan’s elimination of two Black plurality seats. The "No" campaign is kind of masquerading under this "Justice for Democracy PAC" label. Then Florida, under Governor DeSantis, could end up drawing a map that eliminates several Democratic seats.

The fact that this is overall looking like a wash means that Democrats still have an excellent opportunity. They’re still overwhelming favorites to pick up the House majority this November. The big loser in this redistricting war is the minority party in each of these states. These maps are going to be heavily distorted to inflate the lean of the states where they’re being implemented, and so we’ll have fewer Republicans from blue states and far fewer Democrats from red states.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe fewer mixed districts, which is part of the formula for more polarization in Congress, as people are responsible more to their bases and less to swing voters in the district. Last question. Cook Political Report, where you work, rates congressional races in categories like solidly Republican or Democrat, or leans one way or another, or toss-ups. As we sit here today, if the November midterm election was held today and realizing that a lot can happen between now and November, the war’s probably going to end and we don’t know if that’s going to be as salient an issue as it is then, all of that, can you say who your ranking shows would control the House or Senate if the election was held today?

Dave Wasserman: Democrats would clearly win the House if the election were held today. The question would be how many seats. I could see it being similar to where we landed in 2018 when Democrats reached 235 seats. Of course, they’re starting out from a higher floor this time, so gaining 20 seats this year would get them to the same seat count as gaining 40 seats did 8 years ago.

In terms of the Senate, it’s a very, very close call. I suspect that if the election were today, Democrats would have a very good chance of picking up at least 2 of their 4 reach states, those being Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, and Texas. I’d say more likely Ohio and either Iowa and Alaska. The average over the last year has been more favorable to Trump and Republicans than where we are today, which could be a low point. The fact that there’s still a long way to go is good news for Republicans.

Brian Lehrer: Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Dave, thanks so much for all the information. We appreciate it.

Dave Wasserman: Thanks, Brian.

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