Pollster Scott Rasmussen warned Wednesday that if economic confidence remains at its current levels, the Republican Party may be on track for a shellacking in November’s midterm elections.
Rasmussen, widely considered Republican-leaning, said during the Napolitan News Service’s Morning Briefing that the GOP would lose control of both houses of Congress if voters’ pessimism about their personal finances does not improve, adding that “the window is rapidly closing” for mitigation. He also emphasized that much of this low economic coincidence is due to how President Donald Trump’s unpopular war in Iran is causing fuel prices to skyrocket.
“If the numbers that we’re seeing today were the same in November, the Democrats would not only win the House, they would almost certainly win control of the Senate,” Rasmussen said during Wednesday’s Morning Briefing. “Now, any improvement from this baseline begins to give the Republicans a better chance of holding the Senate, but right now they’re starting in a pretty deep hole, and it’s going to take a while to dig out of it.”
“People caught up in the world of politics and campaigns tend to underestimate the impact of the economy on elections,” Rasmussen told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “But, as James Carville colorfully reminded us decades ago, the economy sets the baseline for all elections. And, the way people feel about their personal finances is the single best measure of that baseline.”
“If gas prices begin heading back down in the not-too-distant future, it is likely that economic confidence will recover enough by Election Day for the GOP to keep the Senate,” the pollster added. “That is still the most likely outcome. It is what I would predict at the moment.”
Less than a quarter, 24%, of U.S. registered voters said that their personal finances are improving — a decrease of five percentage points in the past two weeks, Napolitan News Service poll conducted by Rasmussen and released Wednesday. Meanwhile, 39% of the survey’s respondents said that their personal finances have gotten worse, an increase of eight points in the past two weeks.
“If gas prices remain high and that extreme pessimism continues, it will exert a serious drag on Republicans all across the country. GOP hopes of picking up a seat in Georgia or Michigan would disappear,” Rasmussen told the DCNF. “Republican seats in Maine, North Carolina, Alaska, and Ohio could be at risk. And, if the environment is that negative, there is always room for an unexpected sleeper race.”
Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats to retake the upper chamber in November. They face an uphill climb to do so, given that all Republican-held Senate seats save for Sen. Susan Collins’ seat in Maine are in states Trump won in the 2024 election.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the races in Maine and North Carolina as tossups and the seats in Alaska and Ohio as “Lean Republican.” However, it lists two Democratic-held seats — Sen. Jon Ossoff’s seat in Georgia and an open seat in Michigan — as tossups, meaning if Republicans manage to flip one or both, Democrats would have to win another seat in an upset. The high-profile Senate race in Texas, which Cook rates as “Likely Republican,” is viewed as a long-shot pickup opportunity for Democrats.
“It’s really hard to overstate how bad the latest numbers are,” Rasmussen said during his Morning Briefing. “To understand this, you need to remember that one of the big reasons President Trump was elected was to make the economy work for all Americans, and the group that we define as mainstream Americans, by the way, are even more pessimistic than the overall sample.”
“The worst numbers we have seen since Trump was elected,” the pollster continued. “Obviously, part of this is tied to the situation in Iran and the increase in gas prices. The reality is, most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. When the price of gas goes up, they have less money for groceries, less money for entertainment. They feel the pinch right away.”
Rasmussen emphasized that “Republicans need people to start feeling better about their finances quickly” and “the window is rapidly closing” for them to do so.
“When bad news comes in, people’s confidence falls almost immediately. When good news returns it takes a while. For example, if the fighting ended tomorrow, and if the price of gas went back to where it was just before the fighting began, it would take about six months, normally, before the American people began to get their confidence back to where it had been,” he explained. “But if you think about that, six months from now is mid-September.”
“They need to get a situation stabilized to begin moving the trend in that direction quickly, or else it’s going to be a really ugly election night,” he added.
Rasmussen conducted the Napolitan News Service survey of 1,000 registered voters online from March 16 to 17, with field work conducted by RMG Research, Inc. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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