May 18, 2026 01:10 PM UTC

Republicans Can't Redistrict Their Way Out of These Numbers

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• by: Colorado Pols

A redistricting war has been underway for the last year after President Trump directed Republicans to re-draw congressional boundaries in order to give the GOP an advantage as it tries to maintain control of Congress in 2026. New polling numbers suggest that it won’t be enough to survive a coming Blue Wave.

Republicans are currently looking at netting somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-9 additional seats in 2026 through partisan gerrymandering and the U.S. Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act; this assumes, of course, that Republicans are able to win all of their newly-drawn seats. Nevertheless, a best-case scenario for Republicans in redistricting won’t likely be able to overcome the toxicity of the GOP brand under Trump.

As Nate Cohn reports for The New York Times:

Just 37 percent of Americans approve of his performance as president, a drop of four percentage points from the last Times/Siena poll in January and his lowest approval rating in any Times/Siena survey in either term.

A four-point decline isn’t necessarily huge, but it puts Mr. Trump’s ratings in new political territory. While recent presidencies have often been unpopular and polarizing, no president’s approval rating has been under 38 percent for more than a few days in the last 17 years, according to our average. [Pols emphasis] If there has been a floor during this partisan era of politics, Mr. Trump’s ratings today have fallen to it.

While it’s too soon to say whether the war in Iran and high gas prices will ultimately break the floor in Mr. Trump’s support, the poll leaves no doubt that these issues could pull his approval ratings down even lower. Just 28 percent of voters approve of his handling of the cost of living, and only 31 percent approve of his handling of the war. Just 30 percent say he made the “right decision” in choosing to attack Iran.

President Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low just about every week in the last two months, with concerns about the economy (and Trump’s stated indifference about affordability) driving numbers downward:

It’s not Trump’s approval ratings alone that should terrify Republicans such as Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo. Springs) and Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton). The Generic Congressional Ballot has shifted significantly, as Cohn continues:

The most immediate political consequence is that Democrats appear increasingly well positioned for the midterm elections in November. The poll shows Democrats have a double-digit lead, 50 percent to 39 percent, when registered voters are asked which party’s candidate they’ll support for Congress. That’s a notable shift from Times/Siena polls earlier this cycle — which showed Democrats up two to five points.

Anything like it would easily overcome the Republicans’ redistricting advantage in the House and suggest that Democrats could be highly competitive in the Senate. And although there’s still a long time until the election, Democrats held an even larger 14-point lead among those who said they were “almost certain” or “very likely” to vote.

Recent history shows that polling data on the “Generic Congressional Ballot” tends to be fairly predictive of future election results. The average Generic Congressional Ballot result is now at D+7.2 (via Real Clear Polling), which is about where things stood at the midpoint of Trump’s first term in the White House in 2018. Democrats went on to net 41 seats in the House to re-take control of the majority. Should these numbers hold, Republican seats in competitive districts — such as CO-08 — are all but lost.

Republicans did gain two Senate seats in 2018, but the Senate map for Democrats was brutal. Democrats were defending 26 seats in 2018 — including 10 in states won by Trump two years earlier — compared to just 9 for Republicans. The 2026 map isn’t nearly as favorable for Republicans, and Trump’s awful numbers have moved control of the Senate into toss-up territory.

It’s encouraging to see that a majority of Americans are seeing through all of the bullshit from the Trump administration. Republicans can only hope that reality falters before November.