With a month to go, Republicans’ midterm prospects are ‘catastrophically bad’

“People thought it was dire in 2016 when polls showed Trump was going to lose,” he said. “You can’t trust these polls. We see time and again the polling being off.”

Terrill argues the party’s strategy from 2024 of rallying the base and Trump supporters is a winner. “This is not the Republican Party, it’s the Trump party. He is able to get out the GOP base in a way no other elected official can … The goal right now is to find those voters.”

But Amy Walter says it’s these people – Americans who voted for Trump last time, don’t like Democrats and are “really angry” about the way things are heading – who could sink the Republicans in November.

“What attracted them to Trump was three things: he was an outsider, he was a businessman and he wasn’t a typical politician who would tell you one thing and then do another,” she said at the IIF event on Thursday.

“He was not going to get us into forever wars, like all those other warmongering Republicans, and he was going to stick it to the man, stick it to the system.”

But the Iran war, though simmering rather than boiling, has now stretched on for seven months with no lasting resolution in sight. The national average price of unleaded is just under $US4.50 a gallon – expensive for the US – and diesel is about the dearest it has ever been. The cost of groceries has remained high or worsened.

These factors have combined to turn off many Trump voters. “It’s not just that it had a direct impact on their lives,” Walter said. “It also put [Trump] into the category of being the one thing they never thought he’d be, which is a typical politician.”

Trump argues the Iran war was necessary to prevent the regime developing a nuclear weapon, and that petrol prices will fall once the conflict is over. At the same time, he insists the high cost of living is the fault of the Democrats and Joe Biden, and that “prices are coming down, RAPIDLY” under his leadership.

“I would give us an A+ on the government, on economics, on everything,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “Look at inflation. I inherited the worst inflation in history under Biden and now it’s great, it’s really good.”

However, inflation is still running at 3.4 per cent. The Federal Reserve just lifted interest rates for the first time in three years, pumping up the cost of a mortgage. And polls suggest that, despite what Trump says, most voters do not believe he is prioritising the cost of living.

“He’s focused on a lot of things,” said Walter, “but this isn’t it.”

Matt Terrill acknowledges these are issues for voters but says Americans understand that inflation was worse under Biden. And he says Republicans have a good story to tell – jobs are strong, the border is secure, median household income is up. Gas prices are not the be-all and end-all.

“Sometimes in politics it’s not always about being better than your opponent but having your opponent be worse than you – or, in this case, crazy,” Terrill said.

He predicts most Americans will baulk at the left-wing candidates who have won many Democratic primaries – El-Sayed in Michigan, for example – and stick with the devil they know. “I actually think Republicans are going to do far better than people are predicting.”

It is clear that Trump does not regard himself as a vote loser. In the Oval Office on Monday, the president told Hinson – the Senate candidate in an unexpectedly tight race in Iowa – that he intended to visit the state for a rally. He noted, correctly, that he won Iowa each time he ran. “I think I’m more popular now than I was then,” he added.

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