Pollster sets out the wild cards that could upend the 2026 midterm elections
Source: Washington Examiner · Bias: Center Right
Summary
Welcome to Monday’s snow-bound edition of Washington Secrets, your guide to who’s doing the shoveling and who is being shoveled. Today we speak to one of the nation’s most accurate pollsters on the forces that will shape the midterm elections and the unknows that could throw off polls, we sift through thousands of complaints sent […]
Pollster sets out the wild cards that could upend the 2026 midterm elections
Center Right
Welcome to Monday’s snow-bound edition of Washington Secrets, your guide to who’s doing the shoveling and who is being shoveled. Today we speak to one of the nation’s most accurate pollsters on the forces that will shape the midterm elections and the unknows that could throw off polls, we sift through thousands of complaints sent […]
Billionaire technology Peter Thiel warned that AI company Anthropic could use its technological advantage to influence the 2028 presidential election in favor of Democrats.
The post Billionaire Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Warns Woke AI Company Anthropic Could Rig 2028 Election for Democrats appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A Fox News host uncorked a bizarre on-air tirade against Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, calling him a "demon in human skin."Emily Compagno appeared to lose her composure on Friday's edition of "Outnumbered" while discussing Talarico, a 37-year-old state representative now in a statistical tie with embattled Republican nominee Ken Paxton. Compagno was reacting to a conservative PAC attack ad featuring Talarico calling the American flag a "complicated" symbol for many Americans."Every single voter [in Texas] needs to understand exactly who they would vote into office, which is an anti-business, anti-commerce, anti-capitalist, anti-Texas Texan," Compagno railed.She then escalated sharply."This person is a demon in human skin, and they need to make sure he does not go anywhere — to the nation's capital, where he can actually do some real damage other than his horrible words that he keeps spewing," she said.A Talarico spokesman responded that the campaign could confirm the candidate is "in fact a human, and not a demon in human skin."The outburst lands as the race tightens into a genuine toss-up. A New York Times/Siena survey released Monday found Paxton and Talarico deadlocked at 47 percent among likely voters, with Talarico leading 58-31 among independents and 61-29 among Hispanic voters.Paxton defeated four-term Sen. John Cornyn in a May 26 primary runoff after President Donald Trump threw his backing to the state's scandal-plagued attorney general. Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 before being acquitted by the state Senate, and he has faced years of criminal securities fraud allegations and accusations of abusing his office.Trump himself has appeared unsettled by Talarico's rise. In a Truth Social post after the runoff, the president refused to use the Democrat's name, instead branding him "Alfred E. Neuman" and "the worst TEXAS candidate I have ever seen."On "Outnumbered," Compagno added that Talarico's past remarks were "patently disqualifying for any American senator."Compagno on Talarico: This person is a demon in human skin pic.twitter.com/BM5nohCvxT— Acyn (@Acyn) July 3, 2026
A political civil war is rocking the very core of the Democratic Party. On one side are upstart rebels — Jihadi-loving socialists who hate America and want to drag it down to destruction. On the other side are traditional moderate Democrats, Jihadi-loving socialists who hate America and want to drag it down to destruction, but ...
Republicans are criticizing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) after he suggested residents set their thermostats to 78 degrees to help conserve energy in the city as it braces for triple-digit temperatures this weekend. “New York: it’s hot out there, and the power grid is working overtime to keep us cool. Set your AC…
At least two Dallas police officers and members of the Egypt national soccer team’s staff were involved in a physical altercation and shouting match, according to videos.
President Donald Trump has struggled to get decent turnout at his celebration of America’s 250th birthday, which has focused on promoting Trump himself rather than American history. Between that and his increasingly desperate efforts to stop Democrats from voting in the upcoming midterm elections, many political experts believe Trump and the Republican Party could be headed toward a political wipeout.According to one of the most respected political analysts in America, Trump could actually help himself politically through the United States’ semiquincentennial — but he is squandering that opportunity.“There was perhaps a world in which President Trump might have used the looming semiquincentennial to bolster his, and his party’s, fortunes for the fall,” wrote Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ nonpartisan polling and elections newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball, in an in-depth analysis on Thursday. “Or at least tried to, perhaps by presenting himself as something other than a hard partisan figure.”Kondik contrasted Trump with another Republican politician, President Gerald Ford, who served in office during America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976. Unlike Trump’s polarizing approach, which emphasized promoting himself and bashing Democrats, Ford focused on a nonpartisan approach that was proactively positive about American history and the nation’s future. This was “exemplified by a campaign song, ‘I’m Feeling Good About America.’ (That’s also the name of our Center for Politics documentary about the 1976 campaign, free to watch on YouTube). Ford still lost [to Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter], but it ended up being a very close election,” much closer than experts had predicted during the bicentennial celebrations that summer.“It may be that Republicans find a way to dig out of their current political hole, but a sunny, optimistic president rallying the country over the course of a happy, celebratory summer doesn’t seem to be in the cards,” Kondik explained. “This president cannot even countenance helping his party achieve an easy win, as he has both denigrated and thus far declined to sign a bipartisan housing bill, a matter of national concern in an election whose major theme is ‘affordability.’”He added that “events marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence have turned into yet another partisan event, with the president apparently planning to hold what amounts to a campaign rally on the Fourth itself. The World Cup, hosted partially by the United States, has excited international visitors and provided that rarest of all things on social media: organically heartwarming content. But that’s not really a story that involves the president.”Kondik clarified that, while Trump has not helped himself politically, it does not seem that he has hurt himself either. Yet with an approval rating stubbornly stuck in the 30s, “if Democrats actually win the Senate this year—they’re still underdogs to do so—Trump’s numbers being worse than they were in 2018 [during his last midterm elections] would likely be a big explanation why.”Because polls sample different groups of voters, Kondik predicted that Trump’s numbers may fluctuate a little between now and Election Day, but that the safest bet is that they will remain where they are unless he makes drastic changes in his behavior.“As is often the case with modern presidential approval ratings, expecting little-to-no change is a better bet than expecting big change,” Kondik wrote. “Particularly as the president doesn’t change much himself.”Speaking exclusively to AlterNet about his article, Kondik elaborated on the differences between Ford and Trump in terms of celebrating a big American birthday.“It is to some degree an apples to oranges comparison, because Ford was on the ballot and Trump is not, and the country was also a lot different,” Kondik told AlterNet. “But I do think in the midst of a trying decade, Ford's positive messaging helped cut through the negativity and capitalized on good feelings about the bicentennial. But there were many other reasons Ford came back, including uncertainty about whether Carter was up to the task of being president.”When asked if Trump’s explicitly partisan approach to celebrating America’s 250th birthday will be remembered as a missed political opportunity for him, Kondik said that “if Trump is as weak as he is now or weaker at the time of the election, and Republicans have a poor showing (losing the House and losing the Senate or at least losing one or more races in red states), it'll be easy to point to Trump's standing as a driving force in those results.”He added, “If that does happen, there will have been many missed opportunities for Trump, and perhaps how he handled the Fourth would be one of those (although in all likelihood other things would have been more important, like the decision to attack Iran and the subsequent impact on gas prices...
Former special counsel Jack Smith outlined his fears and beliefs about the direction of the country in a far-reaching interview with MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace, exclusively aired Thursday on "Deadline: White House."Smith, who prosecuted the two federal cases against President Donald Trump, told Wallace that it is important this 4th of July "to celebrate the public servants ... the people I spent my career working shoulder to shoulder with.""I loved being a prosecutor, and part of it was I loved being around these sort of people, and it angers me to see them victimized, to see them demonized for doing their jobs," said Smith, adding that it is critical to "stand up for them and let them know that there are a lot of people out there who back them and who are with them" as the Trump administration publicly attacks them and fires them for political reasons."There are a lot of good career prosecutors who right now are working under incredibly difficult circumstances, and they're still trying to do the right thing," said Smith. These prosecutors, he said, "are not self-promoters" and will not "crow about their achievements" on TV — and "We need to hold them up and celebrate them because they're part of what makes this country great."Smith also had a warning about the breakdown of trust in federal courts against Justice Department prosecutors, as judges come to realize the political appointees under Trump cannot be assumed to tell the truth in major cases."If you go to court and the judges don't trust you, you can't do the basic things that you need to do to represent the American people in court," said Smith. "And we have seen judges across the country say they can't trust prosecutors anymore. And that has such a cascading effect on any sort of case."Had that ever happened under a case Smith was prosecuting, he added, "one opinion like that in my career would have been seismic. People would not know what to do ..., and that's happening every day.""And so regardless of what you think politically, they're just not effective at doing their job anymore," Smith lamented. "They've jettisoned expertise. And so we have a situation where we've got rid of people who know how to protect our national security." - YouTube youtu.be
