End of the Trump era? Top US polling analyst shares prediction as midterms loom
‘If Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super-lame duck,’ polling analyst Nate Silver said
The November midterm elections, now just one week away, could bring down the curtain on the Trump era, a top polling analyst has said.
Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight and publisher of Silver Bulletin, made the comment during an interview with New York Times podcaster Ezra Klein released on Tuesday.
The pair discussed polls saying Republicans could face heavy losses on Election Day, as voters express frustration over the cost of living and the ongoing Iran war, and as President Donald Trump’s approval rating languishes at historic lows.
“If the election goes roughly as the polls say it will go, then in some ways it would mark the end of the Trump era, I think,” Silver said.
“He’ll still be president for two more years,” he continued. “But the minute the election, the votes, are counted…the 2028 election campaign begins, and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super-lame duck, right? You might draw an analogy to Bush after 2006.”
Republicans lost control of both the House and Senate in the 2006 midterms amid widespread dissatisfaction with Bush’s handling of the Iraq war.
If that pattern holds this year, Democrats have vowed to challenge Trump’s signature policies and investigate administration officials, potentially pursuing the impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Those efforts could hamper Trump’s ability to advance his agenda during his final two years in office.
Silver’s polling analysis newsletter, Silver Bulletin, gives Democrats over a 90 percent chance of flipping the House and upwards of a 70 percent chance of regaining control of the Senate.
Asked why Democrats are faring so well, Silver cited several factors, including the historical tendency of the president’s party to lose seats in midterm elections — even if a president is more popular than Trump.
He also credited Democrats with fielding stronger candidates than Republicans in key races. “Democrats have actually nominated in most important races pretty good candidates and were lucky enough to face weaker Republican candidates,” he said. He highlighted Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, a Republican, who has faced a string of scandals.
Still, he acknowledged that polls can be wrong. In an X post earlier this month, Silver wrote that surveys had advantaged Democrats in the past three presidential elections.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed polls he opposes as “false.” On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed that view, telling Fox News, “I think [polls are] even further off this time because more and more Republicans are unwilling to participate in these surveys.”
Voter turnout will be critical, Silver told Klein.
“I’d be shocked if Democratic turnout wasn’t high by midterm standards,” he said. “We don’t know if Republicans are going to turn out.”
This summer, Silver observed that the U.S. may be prepared to “move on” from the Republican president.
“It’s kind of striking how, apart from Iran, most of the Trump-related stories this summer have been boring and dumb (reflection pool, White House Correspondents’ Dinner) or kind of funny (FIFA), maybe we’re moving on from him being the central figure in American politics,” he wrote on X in July.