Analysis of Midterm Election Dynamics (Part 3)

President and his party. President Trump has said if he was on the ballot, they would have won in a landslide and blamed the other GOP candidates. Then we have Vice President J.D. vance blaming the Iran war, other Republicans talking about inflation and the cost of living, then also immigration. What do you think? Was this mostly a referendum on President Trump and Republicans in power. Was it a particular issue? A combination of things. What led to this? I think it was just a referendum on Trump and Republicans. And I think that when voters went to Trump in 2024 in that presidential election, I think they were expecting, first of all, he had a much better reputation on the economy, and his approval rating on the economy was generally positive throughout his first term, even if his overall approval rating was weak. And I think that when voters gave him the job back in 2024, they did so in part because they trusted him on the economy, and he just did not address any of those concerns. Now, look, it is. It's easy for politicians to complain about something like inflation. It's actually hard to do something about it. But the policies that the president pursued ultimately led to higher prices or at least contributed to higher prices. The most striking example of that is the decision to attack Iran and the consequences for gas prices, which really weren't a problem in the sort of constellation of high prices and affordability problems, wasn't really a problem until the attack on Iran. But then the consequences that you had, higher gas prices in addition to Americans being upset about the cost of living in lots of other ways. And the President, he just didn't really take any action on the issue that people cared the most about. Again, we can debate as to what he could have done, but he did not address the problem. And he. He actively exacerbated it through what happened with gas prices. And did you see that the voters who backed Republicans two years ago simply stayed home, or did some actively move toward Democrats because we did have a high turnout? Yeah, all the above, I think. I mean, I think there's evidence that there were Republican voters who stayed home. Also, it's obvious that some of the groups that swung the most toward Trump in 2024, specifically voters of color in general, Latino voters in particular, and younger people, they swung very heavily back toward the Democrats in 2026. There's some limited evidence. We're going to need more analysis of this. But this was something that showed up in some of the early vote analysis that came out before the election, that young Republicans in particular were very demobilized. And you could see it in, like, Georgia, where You know, the younger black voters were actually turning out.