He spoke admiringly of a senator’s posterior. He baselessly accused a Muslim candidate of being a terrorist. He boasted about his renovations of the White House. He quipped that his own supporters couldn’t afford a hamburger at his Mar-a-Lago club. Every now and then, he spoke about the cost of living, and other everyday concerns of voters.

Donald Trump has held dozens of campaign rallies before next week’s US midterm elections. The 80-year-old remains convinced that he can prove the doubters wrong again and help Republicans retain control of the US Congress. But it was five words he uttered at this summer’s Republican convention in Dallas that could seal his party’s fate: “Pretend I’m on the ticket.”

That plea was music to the ears of Democrats. It helped ensure that the midterms will deliver a national verdict on Trump’s second term in the White House. And opinion polls suggest that the judgment will be damning, piercing his aura of invincibility, reshaping the final two years of his presidency and setting the stage for a fierce battle to succeed him.

“Donald Trump nationalised these races, and now they’ll lose seats because of it,” said Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee. “He made himself the referendum. Individual candidates wanted to run their individual races but he told them: ‘Put me on the ballot.’ He has political instincts for himself, but no political instincts for the party.”

Pain is the norm for White House incumbents when the midterms roll around. In 1994, Bill Clinton suffered a 54-seat setback in the House of Representatives; in 2010, Barack Obama lost 63; in 2018, Trump himself lost 40. He seems unlikely to defy history this time. Trump goes into the elections with the lowest approval rating of any president before the midterms since Harry Truman’s Democrats were crushed 80 years ago.

The coalition that in 2024 powered Trump to the greatest comeback in modern political history has suffered blow after blow: his failure to fully release the Jeffrey Epstein files detailing ties of the elite to the child sex offender; the growth of datacentres in rural communities; an eight-month-old war in Iran that he promised would be over in weeks; a relentless rise in the cost of fuel and food.

The anger over Trump’s broken promises has been compounded by a whiff of corruption, and the perception that he is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family. He accepted a plane from Qatar to use as Air Force One, decorated the Oval Office in gold, demolished the White House East Wing to make way for a $400m ballroom and is planning a triumphal arch in Washington. His personal fortune meanwhile has surged – from $2.3bn in 2024 to $6.5bn, according to Forbes.

‘Much more macro than Maga’

With Republicans clinging to a paper-thin 218–214 margin in the House and 53–47 lead in the Senate, opinion polls indicate a rising “blue wave”. A recent Reuters/Ipsos survey gave Democrats an 11-point lead, 47% to 36%, on the generic congressional ballot, while Trump’s approval rating stood at 32%. Voters will also choose governors in 36 states and three US territories, and decide thousands of state legislative contests.

Tens of millions of early votes have already been cast, with habitual Republican turnout lagging behind Democratic participation in critical battlegrounds. So dire is the environment for Republicans that conservative Super Pacs backed by billionaire Elon Musk, who has poured $366m into saving Republican candidates, are being forced to dump emergency funds into strongholds like Kansas, Iowa and Texas.

Trump won the presidency in 2024 after promising to curb inflation and lower prices; instead, the opposite has happened. Across the country, voters are confronting an affordability crisis exacerbated by two defining choices of Trump’s second term: a sweeping regime of foreign tariffs and the fateful decision to launch airstrikes on Iran in February.

Chris Matthews, a political commentator and former presidential speechwriter and congressional aide, said: “He’s losing on cost of living and affordability. Older people on limited incomes are focusing on what it costs to live each month. It’s much more macro than Maga. No matter what he does for Maga people, the power of macroeconomics is much stronger and people are going to vote against him.”

The economic fallout of the Iran war, which Trump frequently downplays as a “little detour”, has reverberated across global energy markets. Diesel prices have soared, sending shock waves through agriculture and freight transport from the Central valley of California to the grain belts of Iowa and Ohio.

Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former official in the Clinton White House, points out that voters can directly attribute their economic misery to the president. “There’s a very clear line between his actions and the things people don’t like,” she said.

“It’s going to be the tariffs and it’s going to be the war: both self-inflicted wounds. He didn’t have to raise tariffs; that was his theory of the world, which turned out to be wrong. Bombing nuclear sites in Iran was one thing, but going to all-out war turned out to be a mistake. Voters connect his actions to things they don’t like.”

This frustration is fuelling an energetic mobilisation among Democratic candidates, particularly women running in districts that once seemed out of reach. Jessica Mackler, the president of Emilys List, which is backing 247 female candidates this cycle, notes that voters feel the economic system is actively stacked against them.

“Voters understand that the corruption coming out of Washington is directly linked to why they can’t get ahead, and why they find it so hard to make ends meet,” Mackler said. “Cost of living is a huge driver but voters are desperate for new leadership who have lived their pain and understand it.”

A ‘devastating referendum’ on Trump

For months, Republican strategists urged their candidates in tight suburban races to keep national politics at arm’s length, and focus on local accomplishments, perhaps hoping that Trump might quietly concentrate on his day job in Washington. Instead, the president has embarked on a whirlwind tour across the country, denouncing Democrats as “communists” while touting a strong economy, secure border and historic drop in violent crime.

But Steele, a co-host of the MS Now network’s the Weeknight, argues that core conservative voters feel increasingly betrayed by a president who promised to avoid foreign entanglements and bring down costs. “Donald Trump lied to his tribe … He said he wouldn’t engage us in foreign wars; we’re now turning the corner into a year of a war he started and people are saying: ‘I can’t even afford to put gas in my car.’”

Perhaps no development in the 2026 midterms is more alarming to Republican strategists than the dramatic erosion of support among Latino voters. In 2024, Trump made historic inroads with Latino men, sparking triumphant declarations of a permanent multiethnic, working-class coalition.

Yet no sooner had he taken the oath of office than he unleashed an aggressive, high-visibility deportation campaign featuring heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in cities and agricultural hubs.

Larry Jacobs, founder and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Donald Trump launched his radical deportation strategy and it has powerfully alienated the fastest-growing part of the electorate.

“A year ago, Republicans thought they had established a new Hispanic coalition that would guarantee five new seats in Texas alone. They may lose all of them. Economics is a driving factor, but opposition to Trump’s deportation policies has contributed massively to the magnitude of the defections.”

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, notes that the Latino shift is visible across public polling and state-level data, saying: “Whether it’s a 15-point shift or a 30-point shift, it’s a big deal. Unless every piece of evidence we have is wrong, Latino voters are having serious buyers’ remorse.”

This dynamic is evident in Texas, where no Democrat has won statewide office since 1994. James Talarico, a 37-year-old state representative and former public school teacher who preaches a gospel of social justice, is taking on Republican state attorney general Ken Paxton in the most expensive Senate race in history.

Paxton, a staunch Trump ally, has been bogged down by years of corruption allegations, personal scandal and securities fraud charges. Despite $300m in outside Republican spending, led by Musk, Talarico has a narrow lead in most polls.

Jacobs views Texas as a bellwether for the post-Trump Republican party. “If Paxton loses, it’s going to send a very powerful signal to future Republican leaders about how they handle immigration,” he said. “It proves that attacking the fastest-growing part of the electorate is political suicide. Texas is a devastating referendum on Donald Trump.”

A test for Democrats

While Democrats appear heavily favoured to pick up the four net seats required to capture the House of Representatives, their path to taking the Senate is a steeper climb. Yet because of Trump’s dismal approval ratings and the economic shock of the Iran war, the Senate battlefield has expanded into states that voted for Trump by double digits in 2024.

In Ohio, former Democratic senator Sherrod Brown is mounting a comeback bid against incumbent Republican Jon Husted. Brown, a grizzled populist with deep ties to organised labour, has capitalised on working-class anger over fuel prices and plant closures, as well as local opposition to datacentres. In a peculiar recurring feature of his rallies in the state, Trump has frequently veered off-script to praise Husted’s physique. (“His ass was like a big piece of muscle,” according to the president.)

In Michigan, Republican Mike Rogers is up against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a 41-year-old doctor and former Detroit health director bidding to become the first Muslim senator in the US. Republicans have aggressively targeted El-Sayed over past foreign policy statements, while pro-Israel Super Pacs have poured millions of dollars into the state to defeat him. Trump has launched Islamophobic tirades, calling El-Sayed a “jihadist”.

Olsen said: “El-Sayed is the biggest test for progressives. If he wins stateside in an industrial heartland state like Michigan, progressives will argue they have the upper hand heading into 2028.”

However, Kamarck cautions against over-interpreting progressive strength. She insisted: “The progressives are a minuscule portion of the Democratic party. This is an overblown story. The moderates are winning the vast majority of these races across the country.”

In Maine, veteran Republican senator Susan Collins is fighting for her political life against Democrat Troy Jackson, a lumberjack and former president of the state senate. Collins has attempted to distance herself from Trump, appearing on the trail with independent former senator Joe Manchin, but Democrats have relentlessly hammered her votes for conservative supreme court justices and other Trump priorities.

In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola is mounting a challenge to Republican senator Dan Sullivan. The contest has become embroiled in a legal dispute after the justice department sought to block certification of a possible Peltola victory. Her allies reportedly helped recruit a decoy candidate with the name Dan Sullivan to confuse voters. Peltola’s campaign denies involvement.

‘He’ll do anything’

Election integrity remains a broader national concern. Trump’s repeated, unsubstantiated claims of election fraud have prompted Democrats and voting-rights organisations to prepare legal teams and observers for disputes or federal interference. The administration says federal election monitors will follow the law, and has denied plans to send troops or immigration agents to polling stations.

Tara Setmayer, a co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, a women-led political action committee, said: “I am extremely worried. We have seen what Donald Trump has done when he had guardrails; now he has none. He has power and people who are aligned with him in the attack on our election integrity in positions of power.

“This is a great concern to me because Trump is looking at the sun setting on his presidency and we all know that he is deathly afraid of being out of power. He’ll do anything to stay in power, even if that means creating another constitutional crisis to try to stop Congress from being seated. We cannot suffer from a lack of imagination of what these people are capable of.”

A Democratic victory in either chamber will effectively stall Trump’s domestic legislative agenda, leaving his administration to rely on executive orders. Hakeem Jeffries, who would likely become the first Black speaker of the House, has pledged to immediately unleash subpoena power to investigate administration corruption, foreign policy decisions in Iran, and the personal financial enrichment of the Trump family.

Jacobs said: “It’s going to be a fistfight. I’m not expecting major legislation to pass. I think there will be extensive investigations of Donald Trump and his cabinet, and that’s what we’re going to get for two years.”

Steele believes that a Democratic House will immediately assert control over federal purse strings. “Congress will freeze money on projects like tearing down the East Wing for Trump’s ballroom, and they’ll reassert oversight over the Kennedy Center,” he said, referring to the national arts complex and living memorial to the 35th president. “Trump is effectively a lame duck now. The rest of the country knows his time is coming to an end.”

Indeed, before the last vote is counted, attention will likely turn to the presidential contest in 2028. For Republicans, a crushing midterm loss could accelerate the race to a post-Trump future. JD Vance is currently positioned as the heir apparent to the Maga movement, but figures such as the senator Ted Cruz of Texas and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, could also be in contention.

Steele commented: “Republicans need to recognise that the future of the party does not rest solely with the Maga base. It rests with winning back the suburban, moderate and Hispanic voters this administration has isolated.”

Under pressure from a restive base, Democrats will also be preparing for a sprawling contest to decide the future direction of their party – and how it can turn the page on the Trump era. The next Democratic presidential candidate is equally uncertain, with outgoing California governor Gavin Newsom, Georgia senator Jon Ossoff, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and even former vice-president and 2020 nominee Kamala Harris among those regularly mentioned.

Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank in Stanford, California, said: “Voters are tired. When you combine high prices, the endless argument and the constant noise of Donald Trump, people want a change from the status quo.”

“On November 3, the voters are going to speak – and Donald Trump is not going to like what they have to say,” he predicted.