Transcript: Trump Polls Turn Brutal as Allies Panic: “Worse than 2006”

As Republicans start fearing they’re heading into George W. Bush 2006 territory, a leading forecaster explains how Trump’s low approval is expanding the map for Democrats in hidden ways.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 9 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Today we’re checking in on the state of play in the battle for the House of Representatives. New reporting indicates that Republicans have entered into a triage stage, meaning they’re giving up on some seats as all but lost, while urgently sending reinforcements to other ones that should be safe. These leaks are growing more humiliating for Trump, as they’re depicting a political environment that’s sharply deteriorating even as Trump keeps insisting his own numbers are better than ever. On top of that, the polling averages and the forecasts continue to trend toward Democrats.

To make sense of it all, we’re talking to Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the forecasting site Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Kyle, great to have you on.

Kyle Kondik: Hey, Greg.

Sargent: So the Fifty Plus One polling averages have Democrats up a clean eight points in the generic House ballot matchup. They have Trump’s approval down below 35 percent, a key threshold. Nate Silver’s website just declared this: “Democrats are in an excellent position to retake the House, and are also favored to retake the Senate.” Kyle, taking the Senate out of this, do you agree with Nate on the House there?

Kondik: Yeah, I do. You know, we’ll see where the ultimate seat gain lands, but things look very good for Democrats in the House. I mean, really, I think Democrats have been favored in the House the whole cycle. Redistricting added a curveball into all of that, although I think even at their worst point, the Democrats were still favored in the House.

And a lot of us were kind of waiting to see what happened after Labor Day in terms of the polling. And the numbers, if anything, have gotten better for Democrats since then. And you know, maybe you see some rebound for Republicans a little bit, but the picture looks pretty bleak for them in the House, and increasingly maybe in the Senate too.

Although I guess I personally don’t see a clear favorite in the Senate. I know that some of the sort of poll-based forecasts do. I’m not quite ready to go there yet, but it’s undeniable the numbers have been getting better.

Sargent: Well, let’s talk about Sabato’s Crystal Ball, your site, and how it right now ranks things. You guys have 16 Republican-held House seats as toss-ups, versus only four Democratic-held ones being toss-ups. You guys have another eight GOP-held seats as leans Democratic. So that’s at least 24 GOP-held seats that are quite gettable for Dems right now. Can you talk about that pool of seats and explain what that big picture means?

Kondik: Yeah. Look, I think, you know, again, particularly after Labor Day, we’ve been kind of steadily moving races toward the Democrats, sort of as we pick up on, you know, micro-level factors, but also in acknowledgment of what the macro, the big-picture factors are.

And I feel like our moves have generally been vindicated by some of the reporting. You know, Tom Kean in New Jersey Seven appears to be an underdog. He’s an underdog in our ratings. That’s just one of them. Another one is Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, which is Don Bacon’s seat. That’s one of few Harris-district Republican seats that the Republicans held in 2024. Don Bacon is retiring. That looks increasingly like a relatively safe Democratic pickup.

So again, there’s just been a lot of movement, to the point where I think for much of the cycle we were thinking maybe the Democrats are in the 220s. It is easier to imagine them getting into 230s now, I think.

I don’t think that’s exactly where we’re going to land. I’d probably be right around 230 at this point, best guess. But that’s only kind of trended upward for me over the course of the cycle.

Sargent: Well, I will say 230 is actually pretty striking, given that during the whole battle over redistricting, the mid-cycle redistricting efforts, the gerrymandering that Republicans did, it was........

© New Republic