Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics warns the 2026 midterms could favor Democrats, with the president’s 42.7% approval—especially 66% disapproval among independents—and economic concerns (40% approval, 36-37% on inflation) hurting Republicans despite a 50%-42% generic ballot edge. In Texas, Paxton leads Cornyn by 12 points in some polls, while Crockett dominates Tallarico 56-44%, though Bevan notes Tallarico’s electability; Democrats eye flipping the state with Trump off-ballot and 14-point enthusiasm gains nationally, complicated by Tallarico’s pulled Colbert interview and fundraising claims. Poll skepticism from a Kentucky caller underscores volatility, hinting at late shifts—suggesting voter dissatisfaction may override party loyalty. [Automatically generated summary]
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Joining us this morning to talk about the campaign 2026 is Tom Bevin.
He's the co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics.
Tom Bevin, I want to begin with Real Clear Politics polling the average when you look at the president's approval rating.
55.6% disapproving on average, 42.7% approving.
How would you describe these numbers?
They are not great.
You know, Trump sort of broke the mold on approval ratings because when he came into office, you know, Democrats have hated him since the moment he took office.
And so it used to be the Mendoza line, if you will.
The line where presidents were considered in trouble is if they were under 50%.
And that makes sense.
If a majority of people disapprove of how the president is handling things, they are not likely to re-elect him or her or his or her party.
Trump sort of broke that mold a little bit, but he hasn't broken all of history.
And so what I mean by that is, you know, 42.7 is not bad for him personally.
Historically, it's a bad number, but it is certainly a lot of Republicans would like to see him heading into a midterm election.
They would much rather see him about, you know, 45% or higher.
And that's where he started when he took office.
But since after his first year, he has, if you look at our average, you can see the sort of alligator mouth open up where his approval rating is declining and his disapproval rating is increasing.
Should the president and the party be concerned about these numbers?
Real yougov.com poll that showed the president's approval among independents, 66 disapproving, 66% disapproving, 25% approving.
Should they be concerned about those numbers?
Absolutely.
I mean, again, as I said, you know, you got to look at the partisan splits on here.
Democrats, they hate Trump.
They disapprove of everything he does.
Even when he does things that they agree with politically, they don't give him credit for it.
So his approval rating among Democrats and Republicans are the opposite.
It's a very tribal, we're in a very tribal environment.
So they've largely stuck with him to a very strong degree, high 80s, low 90s in a lot of these polls.
It's independents who are typically the less ideological type voters who do fluctuate.
And they have expressed their disapproval with the way the president is handling.
And it's, you know, if you look beyond his approval rating overall, as you mentioned, 42.7 in our average, when you look at the economy, it's about 40%.
When you look at inflation in particular, it's about 36 or 37%.
So the numbers actually get worse the more you dial in on the issues that the American public are saying are most important to them in November.
And I think that's what has to have Republicans most concerned.
For these midterm elections coming up.
Correct.
YouGov also did this poll where they asked folks generically, who do you plan to vote for in November?
50% said Democrats, 42% said Republicans.
Tom Bevin, your thoughts?
Yeah, so the generic congressional ballot is a question that all pollsters ask.
They ask it almost in a virtual identical way.
If the election were held today, who would you rather vote for, the Democrat or the Republican?
Now, it's one of the measures that we use.
It's obviously based on a fallacy.
The election is not being held today.
It's being held seven months from now.
And it's also not a reflection of how people feel about their individual congressperson, right?
But it does give us a sense of how voters are feeling about the two respective parties.
And right now, Democrats are faring much better than Republicans in terms of who the public thinks they would like to see in office.
That's a reflection of two things.
It's a reflection of, I think, one, Republicans control all the levers of power in Washington.
And so if voters are dissatisfied with any part of the economy or anything else, there's only one party to basically hold responsible for that.
And the other thing is, you know, the Republican Party, if there's a silver lining for them, it is that they are still viewed more favorably when pollsters ask the question, do you have a favorable or unfavorable, favorable opinion of the parties themselves?
Democrats still trail Republicans.
So the Democratic brand is still sort of in the toilet, historically speaking, and yet they're performing about five to seven points better than Republicans on that generic ballot question.
And so it's a situation where I think voters are dissatisfied with what's going on.
They don't necessarily like the Democrats, but right now they prefer to have them in power because Republicans, in their minds, haven't been getting the job done.
Well, I'd like to invite our viewers to call in and answer that question as well.
If the election was held today, how would you vote and why?
Also, what are the top issues for you in this midterm election?
Here's how you can join this conversation this morning.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
Tom Bevin is our guest.
He's the co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics.
Mr. Bevin, is Real Clear Politics have a conservative or a liberal bend?
Well, that's a pretty subjective question.
We get emails all the time saying that we're too conservative, and we get emails from conservatives who say we're too liberal.
One of the things that we do is, and it's pretty evident if you go to our website and you look at what we put on the front page of Real Clear Politics, is we try to have a variety of opinions from across the ideological spectrum.
We try to provide the best arguments from the left and the right, which is something that is increasingly rare in this, as I mentioned, sort of tribal partisan environment.
Texas Democratic Primary Race00:06:37
And the idea is to let our readers read and decide for themselves who they agree with, who they disagree with on various issues.
When it comes to the polling, the numbers are the numbers.
I mean, we don't put any special sauce in the numbers like some of our competitors do.
There's no black box.
We just take a simple average and the numbers are the numbers.
So in all of those ways, we put it out there for our readers and our viewers and let them decide for themselves what they think.
We have a marquee primary coming up here at Tom Bevan on March 3rd, Tuesday.
We're just days away from it.
The Texas Senate primary contest on both the Republican and the Democratic side.
There are the Republican candidates on our screen.
Senator John Cornyn, the incumbent Attorney General, Ken Paxton, challenging Cornyn, as well as Representative Wesley Hunt.
President Trump heads to Texas today to talk about energy and the economy.
News reports are that all three will be on the stage.
Do you think the lack of endorsement by the president is having an impact on this race?
You know, that's tough.
I mean, Trump's endorsement does matter, particularly in primaries.
And so I think he could have helped either of these candidates.
His endorsement would have mattered.
The fact that he's sort of staying out of it, look, we just had a poll up this morning that should packs it up 12 points.
He's led in basically every poll that's been taken in the month of January and February.
And so it's looking like, I mean, I guess the Republicans' only hope is that, you know, it's forced to a runoff and all of Wesley Hunt's voters would migrate over to John Cornyn and sort of save his bacon.
We'll see whether that plays out, but there's no question that the Republicans, I think, are worried that Paxton is not a strong general election candidate.
And if Democrats on the other side nominate James Tallarico, that that might actually put Texas in play to the extent where, you know, Republicans will have to spend a lot of time and money defending it, which is not something that they would like to do.
And it's not something that they would traditionally have to do.
Talk about this poll that you just cited, up 12 points.
Ken Paxton, where does it come from?
It's called Chisholm.
It's an organization.
And we do not include in our Real Clear Politics averages, we don't include any polls that are by the campaigns or sponsored by any PACs that have an agenda.
They're all publicly released polls.
And we try and vet the polls to make sure that they're, sometimes you'll have people that are popping up out of nowhere and conducting polls in the heat of a primary, push polls and things to try and influence the coverage of this race.
And so, look, this is along the same lines of other polls that we've had in this race that show Paxon up anywhere from eight to 10 points.
12 is, I think, a bit on the outside.
But nevertheless, I mean, I think it's pretty clear that he has some momentum here.
Cornyn just released some ads that are hitting him on the fact that he had an affair.
They're pretty nasty ads, and we'll see how those might have any sort of impact here in the final days of this primary race.
On the Democratic side, you have Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett challenging state rep James Tallarico.
And a recent poll, Texas Tribune conducted shows Crockett up 56 to 44 percent.
This was done in February, at the end of February, just recently.
What do you make of those numbers and the chances of either one of these, these candidates in the general election, flipping this seat?
Yeah.
So, you know, primaries are hard to poll because it is a sort of, you know, base electorate.
And we did have a, they're notoriously difficult to pull if you have events that happen.
And we did have an event with Tallarico's interview with Stephen Colbert that got pulled off the air.
And then he turned around and raised a ton of money off of that and said that, you know, Donald Trump was trying to silence him.
And this is the campaign that he doesn't want anyone to know about.
And it seemed to give him sort of anecdotally a burst and a little bit of momentum.
And then you had this Texas Tribune poll come out and show that, well, in fact, they show Crockett up double digits.
So it's hard to tell what's going on in this race, whether Tallarico actually has some.
And again, the poll that I just mentioned has Tallarico up double digits.
So there's a lot of sort of fluidity in this race as Democratic primary voters in Texas are trying to decide who they want to represent them in the general election.
I think the consensus is that Tallarico is the most electable of the two candidates and that Crockett would be a tougher sell to a general electorate in Texas.
But as I said, I think Democrats have had this dream of turning Texas blue for a long time.
They came close with Beto Rourke running against Ted Cruz.
He got to within three points with, again, he raised tons of money, had tons of media exposure.
Texas remains a Republican state.
But if there was ever a situation where Democrats could get this done, 2026 provides, I think, almost a perfect storm because you have Donald Trump who is not officially on the ballot.
And so the MAGA base, the folks who turn out because they want to vote for Donald Trump, they might be less interested in voting in this race.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is animating Democrats.
I mean, they have a huge enthusiasm gap.
There was just a Washington poll that came out yesterday that showed them up, I think, 14 points on Republicans nationally in terms of their enthusiasm for voting in November.
And so they're animating the Democrats.
And so, again, if you get Tallarico, who might be more palatable in a general election versus a Ken Paxon, who might be a little bit too far to the right, although it's hard to imagine someone being too far to the right in Texas, it's still a pretty Republican state.
But you mentioned those independents.
They could be decisive in a race.
I mean, if they did, it could be very close and probably too close for Republicans.
I still have to think it's an uphill battle for Democrats, but it's not out of the question by any stretch.
Well, C-SPAN will begin its coverage of that March 3rd primary, 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday night.
And we will focus on the primaries in the state of Texas, the Republicans and the Democrats that we've just talked about in that marquee Senate race.
Gary in Newport, Kentucky, Republican, you are up first in this conversation.
Time to Swing00:00:43
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning.
And away we go, right?
Here we go with the polls.
Time and time again, we've proven that these polls aren't worth taking.
And I think about September or October, it's going to become an event's going to happen or somebody's going to do something to change this election and swing it one way or the other.
And it happens every year.
It happens time and time again.
And, you know, these polls, I mean, I guess they are, you know.