If you reached this Balkingpoints article by direct external link, stop by the front page for a rotating satellite view of the earth at night
source: MS Now / March 25, 2026
These are just snapshots yet they tell a definitive story, about the unpopularity of Donald Trump. The latest are from this week, 2 Florida Legislature special elections. Trump carried these districts in 2024 by 9 and 11 points. They both flipped blue on Tuesday.
If Republicans were seen opposing his nonsense & chaos act, it might be different. Instead they are in lock step, allowing it to stand and independents aren’t having it. That’s how you win a district you lost decisively 2 years ago. Those voters have & are, shifting.
GOP’s have just 7 months to turn this around before facing voters in the 2026 midterms. This article link – from a right wing publication no less – goes into some further detail about the trend.
This on the heels of the VA and NJ governor elections last November, in which the Republican also fared poorly. Independents had left the tent by year’s end, then Trump sent thousands of ICE agents to Minneapolis in what looked nothing short of a military occupation. It’s a US city and no president does that. 2 Americans were killed while exercising their civil right of dissent.
Corporate-owned major media outlets typed up the stated justification – “child care fraud”. Sign up to enforce immigration laws apparently, and get turned into the fraud police…
The point is that if you think swing voters / independents are hunky dory with that, you badly misread them. Now a military assault on Iran out of nowhere, lives lost as a result, and gasoline skyrocketing.
Just 7 months, Republicans. What might be the plan from here…
Reuters / March 20-23
CNN today. Student of USA politics since Nixon / McGovern as a kid. I’ve never seen an approaching midterms, where there was this much working against the incumbent party. Perfect-storm territory for a blue landslide in November.
Republicans are not unaware of it. I doubt they’ve had positive internal polling since Trump imposed tariffs last April – despite admonitions from even the Wall Street Journal, which called them “dumb”. But R’s seem frozen on the tracks as the freight train approaches.
When poll numbers are this tilted, nobody supports you except for a hard-core base. You’ve lost independents, almost entirely ;
Remember that NJ Governor election last November? That the GOP’er lost by double digits after News Media Inc had spent weeks insisting that Trump had a strong base of support in NJ. Gov. Mikie Sherrill vacated a U.S. House seat, which was won tonight by Analilia Mejia, again decisively. Per CNN ;
“Vice President Kamala Harris won the district by 9 points in the 2024 presidential election, while Sherrill carried it by 15 points in her gubernatorial campaign last year”
See the trend in this district since 2024? What is happening is that independents are in exodus if they voted GOP that year. Trump has emptied the tent with his monumental incompetence since then. They are either sitting out now, or if angry are coming in to the Dem tent.
“Hathaway largely avoided talking about Trump on the campaign trail.” 😄
GOP House Rep Lawler, town hall 4/12 😄
This is both comical, and a great reading of the national mood. You’ll notice how this is a sparse crowd in an auditorium. His voters who are likely retired or otherwise have little to do that day, and come out for these PR events.
When a Republican gets booed like this, on Fox News they almost invariably claim it’s liberal plants paid by George Soros, etc. But no liberal could bear to sit through GOP propaganda as it’s peddled in these. These are his voters. Lawler has to come up with a way to address Iran, thanks to Trump’s folly, and they aren’t having it.
He thinks he will tackle gas prices, and finesse it with minimizations and they will fall for it. Well, they fell for voting for someone in lock step with Trump, but they didn’t fall for this. Overall point: if this voter might not to come out for you in November, you’re done. These people are his base.
This one from Quinnipiac, shows how badly uninformed, in denial or both, Republicans can be. According to it 53% of them think Trump is not at all at fault for higher gas prices. But this could not be more 2 + 2 ;
– Gasoline is at about $2.60 per gallon in February. Trump launches strikes against Iran late in that month, it closes the Strait of Hormuz in response – and literally the next day gasoline is at $3.19, skyrocketing and is now over $4 per gallon. Because 20% of the world oil supply goes through Hormuz, and Iran cut that off. It’s really not hard to figure out.
On Fox News, they are trying to shift blame to the Keystone Pipeline that Biden cancelled in 2021. 5 years ago. How was gas at $2.60 then, 8 weeks ago… 😄
And that relies on it’s viewer not connecting dots. Do they think that oil is sitting unsold in Canada? A quick Google confirms that it is on the market, right now. It goes by truck and rail, just not by pipeline which would have been more efficient shipping. That’s all. It’s not missing.
Importantly, 73% of independents blame Trump either some or a lot. Disaster for midterm Republicans, whom could stop the war with Iran but instead are doing nothing.
CNN yesterday ;
Lastly, proving degrees get awarded to not-that-bright people… 😄
AP poll / April 16-20 ;
As much as real-time, day to day opposition to bad policy is important, the dynamic across these polls reflects the contention I’ve made since the 2024 election: Dems don’t have to do much of anything, except wait for incompetent Republicans to prove yet again that they do not know how to effectively govern.
Democrats realize their strongest electoral power – every time – after the electorate decides GOP’s should get the keys to the car. It never works out, as it is not this time. Because they have a flawed, simpleton world-view that all government needs to do is make things as easy as possible on wealth – cut it’s taxes and it’s regulations – and everyone will prosper in the wake of the economic boom that the simpleton theory causes to happen.
So yet again we’re seeing different outcomes than they advertised. I’ve never seen the incumbent party in this much trouble before an upcoming midterms. Nobody supports Trumpism any longer, except his base voter. Even some of them – at least influencers like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson – are backpedaling at the ineptitude. Independents, who you need to carry most of the time to win, are just about gone for Republicans this cycle.
Short of dismissing Trump for Vance, there may be little else GOP’s can do to get that voter back. Damage is done at this point on tariffs, and on preemptive wars and on expensive gasoline. Not to mention a stalled jobs market with few businesses hiring.
US consumer sentiment slumps to record low in April
“A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Friday showed a clear majority of Americans blamed Trump for surging gasoline prices, which are weighing on his Republican Party ahead of November’s congressional midterm elections.”
Yep. The University of Michigan Survey of Consumers goes back to 1946, so even Jimmy Carter was not polling this poorly. And he lost in 1980 to Ronald Reagan because of it.