Trump calls the polls ‘fake.’ His rants prove they’re right

Donald Trump remains in denial when it comes to his epic polling collapse.In surveys from both independent and Democratic-aligned outlets, the president’s party is in trouble weeks out from Election Day. In multiple polls taken since mid-September, Trump’s personal approval rating hovers anywhere from 34 percent to 42 percent, an alarmingly low number for his allies were he at the top of the ballot and a serious problem for Republicans who don’t have the president’s name driving voters this year, as the president has frequently noted.But Trump himself isn’t looking at those numbers, or at least he claims not to be. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, he complained that polls “have ALWAYS underestimated MAGA” and pointed to his approval rating in the Trumpworld pollster McLaughlin & Associates as evidence that Republicans could still pull off a midterm win.“You won the election in 2024 with 49.8 percent of the popular vote and the latest McLaughlin Poll, taken this month, has your job approval at 49% — the exact same as your vote share. No other political figure has ever had this level of consistency in his ratings. Through the Iran War and gas price rises and falls, your job approval is the same. It never changes. And 49% is enough to win,” Trump posted, quoting political strategist Dick Morris.Donald Trump holds a rally in Ohio, site of a key Senate race in November (Reuters)The quoted figure does not appear to be correct, though only off by one percentage point. A McLaughlin & Associates poll released in late September and commissioned by Newsmax found Trump’s combined approval rating at 48 percent, with an important caveat that 13 percent of that figure consists of voters who say they disapprove of the president but approve of his policies. Of those who approve of both, the figure is 35 percent. And on the congressional ballot, Republicans are trailing, 48 percent to 43 percent.In short, the president’s hope for victory in the midterms is tied to two shaky assumptions: The first being that Trump loyalist voters will turn out for Republicans in 2026 like they turned out for him in presidential election years; and second, that his numbers are accurate in a poll which differs from the RealClearPolitics polling average by 10 percentage points.And on some level, the reality of the situation is breaking through to Trump. Even as he remains fixated on polls showing him an alternative picture, the White House is beset by Republicans on all sides who are openly fretting that the party is heading for disaster. The president’s remarks last week in Oklahoma proves as much.“We’re worried about Michigan. We’re worried about Texas. We’re worried about a few states,” he admitted to voters in deep-red Oklahoma. “You know the press plays the fake polls all the time. Sometimes they want to demean you in the polls, sometimes they want to make you like you’re invincible ... or sometimes they want to give you phony polls so they’ll say, ‘he can’t win!’ They’ve done ‘em both way, I’ve suffered both.”Trump said last week that he was 'worried about Texas', where Ken Paxton is trailing James Talarico in Senate race polling (AFP/Getty)Neither of his assumptions are finding any ground with political analysts and polling experts, who have moved the Senate firmly into Democratic territory. A forecast from FiftyPlusOne puts the Democrats at seven in ten odds of taking the Senate with the median polling environment giving Democrats a 52-seat majority. A Sabato’s Crystal Ball forecast affiliated with the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia takes a more conservative view, but still tips the advantage in Democrats’ favor with five seats rated as toss-ups. Race to the White House gives Democrats a 72 percent chance of winning the upper chamber.These forecasts are aggregates of individual surveys, and those surveys continue to trend against Republicans — with a month to go. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll of Texas shows James Talarico pulling away from his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, despite Trump’s deployment of the bells and whistles at his September GOP midterm convention in Dallas to highlight Paxton’s bid and rally the party’s support following a divisive primary.Those explanations aren’t satisfying Republican midterm candidates, either. Paxton, in two separate instances of being caught on leaked audio, has been heard admitting that the president’s midterm convention damaged his campaign and complaining that he has little to no control over his messaging as D.C. consultants are supposedly running the show.The latest NYT/Siena poll shows Mary Peltola up 7 percentage points over the Republican incumbent in Alaska’s Senate race (Getty)He’s far from the only one. Republicans across the country have been caught removing references to Donald Trump from their websites and campaign literature, and fretting about their chances."You've got real momentum on the Democrat side, and if we don't watch out, you know, everybody all of a sudden now is just awakened to the fact that we may lose in the midterm," Sen. Jim Justice, a Republican, told Huffpost in September.In Alaska, the same NYT/Siena survey put Mary Peltola up 7 points over the incumbent, Dan Sullivan, who despite what Trump says cannot attribute all of his polling problems to the other Dan Sullivan whom Democrats recruited to run on the ballot to confuse voters. If those two seats flip, alongside seats in Ohio and North Carolina that have looked dire for Republicans for months, the Democrats won’t have to pin all of their hopes on Maine, where Susan Collins still clings to a competitive base of support like a rock barnacle. In Michigan, where Republicans were hoping to pick up a seat vacated by a Democratic incumbent, Abdul El-Sayed is building a persistent lead against Mike Rogers, and will soon have three massive Democratic heavy-hitters backing his campaign — Barack Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani are all slated to make appearances for him in the coming days/weeks.Trump can continue citing GOP pollsters until November, but his allies aren’t buying it. The Republicans whose actual futures are tied to these races are looking at the bigger picture, and despite all of the president’s bluster there’s evidence that their acknowledgment of reality is forcing the White House to see it too.