Terrible News for Republicans Going For The Long Haul

Illustration by The New York Times

By Kristen Soltis AndersonNate Silver and John Guida

Ms. Anderson is a contributing Times Opinion writer. Mr. Silver is the author of “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.” Mr. Guida is an editor in Times Opinion.

The New York Times

"I have to add, after Republicans have given Trump a blanc check against the constitutions and in the laws  he breaks. All of them should be in the same plate  to be devoured by the electorate.Adam

The year has barely started and already American politics has been thrown into a frenzy. What are voters thinking? In a written online conversation, the Times Opinion editor John Guida hosted Kristen Soltis Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer and Republican pollster, and Nate Silver, the author of “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything” and the newsletter Silver Bulletin, to discuss the deadly ICE shooting in Minneapolis last week and a feeling of chaos in the country right now.

John Guida: Twenty twenty-six is off to a rather disorienting start, with Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the awful ICE shooting in Minneapolis and its aftermath (now including the resignation of prosecutors who were asked to investigate the victim’s wife), the criminal investigation of Jerome Powell. Can you make any sense of all this?

Nate Silver: The one of these that seems to have the most traction from a public opinion standpoint is the killing of Renee Good. In terms of what people are talking about on social media, that continues to resonate.

Kristen Soltis Anderson: Nate is right that the Renee Good story has broken through in a way other stories have not. Polling is showing anywhere from 69 percent to 82 percent of Americans say they have seen video clips from the confrontation and shooting. If immigration has been an issue that has generally been a stronger one for Republicans and Trump in recent years, and even if there’s generally a consensus that getting illegal immigration under control is an important thing, this story has the potential to reshape how people think about the “how” — how the government is going about doing the things Trump promised to do, sometimes with significant consequences. 

Guida: Do you see that shifting?

Anderson: Even before the shooting of Good, some fans of Donald Trump were raising some questions about the how. In the focus groups I moderate for The Times, when I get to speak to ardent fans of the president, it is notable how this does come up as an area where it feels like it’s gone too far for some. Back during the summer, I did a focus group of Latino Trump 2024 voters, and many of them appreciated Trump’s promise to enforce immigration laws and to get the border under control, but also voiced some concerns about things going too far. Then, just this past week (before the shooting in Minneapolis), in a group of Republican voters who largely approved of the president’s performance, two people (out of 11) expressed dissatisfaction with the aggressiveness of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Silver: Yeah, it combines a few different elements. There’s sort of a white-and-gold versus blue-and-black dress element, where people are looking at the same video and coming to completely different conclusions. There’s obviously also a lot of precedent for concern about police officers, or in this case, ICE officers, killing civilians. This incident took place less than a mile away from where George Floyd was killed.

But also, frankly, it’s an issue where Democrats feel like they can go on offense on immigration, and that’s been borne out to some degree in the polling. A Quinnipiac poll out on Tuesday afternoon found Americans opposed 57 to 40 to how ICE is enforcing immigration laws. The splits on whether the shooting of Good was justified are about the same. We can discuss whether this sort of polling is missing the forest for the trees. But Good is a sympathetic victim.

Guida: Any sense of what it would mean for Democrats to go “on offense” on this issue and in this context?

Silver: I don’t necessarily know that the goal is some piece of legislation. Maybe something like “a pathway to citizenship, but real border enforcement and humane enforcement of existing laws” polls pretty well. But I don’t think there’s any sort of grand compromise on immigration coming. One of the advantages of being the party out of power is that you can sort of just go on vibes, trying to move public opinion toward your side in the long term. 

Anderson: For what it’s worth, even Donald Trump himself sometimes indicates he’s open to an immigration policy that cuts against type, so to speak. Just a few days ago he said he’d be open to “comprehensive immigration policy.”

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Silver: Immigration is still Trump’s least bad issue, approval-rating-wise. And voters generally trust the G.O.P. more than Democrats on immigration in the abstract. Furthermore, it’s a measure where Trump can point to some sort of success — crossings of the southern border have decreased a lot, fulfilling a promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail. However, if Democrats can take what was one of Trump’s best issues and turn it into a wash, that’s a pretty big win by comparison.

Anderson: As horrifying as the situation in Minnesota was, and as much as it has broken through, if you’re a Republican, persistent worries about cost of living — not immigration or even immigration enforcement — are the thing your own constituents are more likely to hold you personally responsible for fixing.

Guida: Let’s get into that. Next week will mark a year since the start of President Trump’s second term and an audacious effort to remake American institutions and politics. Nate, at your site, his approval rating is sagging around 42 percent. But if immigration has been one of his strengths and that shrinks, where is he heading into Year 2 and beyond politically? And where does that leave the G.O.P., Kristen, to your point?

Anderson: As we heard in that focus group I mentioned before, a lot of Trump’s voters feel they got exactly what they were promised. They got a more secure border, they got someone willing to blow up institutions or defy international consensus. Some of them are glad they got tariffs, though that’s a bit more of a mixed bag. I don’t find a lot of people who voted for Trump who wish they could go back in time and switch to Kamala Harris. 

At the same time, there has been a clear dip in Trump’s job approval, driven by declining confidence in his ability to handle the economy. What used to be his strong suit is now his weak spot, and his efforts to repair the damage keep getting derailed by distractions that are often of his own making.

Silver: I still think Democrats probably focus too little on the economy and what everyone’s now calling affordability. If you look at the big drop in Trump’s approval ratings, there’s one around Liberation Day when there’s a bunch of tariff-related anxiety. Then there’s another in the second half of the shutdown when the administration starts threatening food stamps — not early on in the shutdown where the stakes were more abstract. Democrats are consistently accusing Trump of using X as a distraction from Y (where Y is often the Epstein story), but they seem pretty distractible, too.

That said, public opinion is much more on their side in the case of Minneapolis than it was in, say, the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. And I don’t think the White House helped by trying to label Good a domestic terrorist. It wasn’t credible. It might have been more politically effective to concede that something tragic had happened and that it would need to be investigated thoroughly.

Guida: On Tuesday President Trump visited Michigan to speak about measures to address high prices as well as to insist that affordability is a “fake word by Democrats.” At times the president has been criticized for entering a sort of George H.W. Bush/Joe Biden phase of his second term — like his predecessors, he often seems more motivated and engaged in foreign affairs and out of touch with the issue that most motivates voters. Is that a fair criticism?

Silver: What’s interesting is that you have the sort of opposite economy from Biden, where the labor market was doing well, but other indicators, particularly inflation, were flashing red. In 2025, job growth was extremely flat, but the tariffs didn’t have as large an impact on consumer prices as most economists were expecting. And it was a very strong year for the stock market, partly because of optimism about A.I. However, people are gloomier about the economy than they were late in Biden’s term. 

Guida: Kristen, earlier you mentioned Trump’s distractions. One quality of Trump 2.0 is its relentless demand on attention. You have written about a sort of action bonus in voters’ eyes — the support for politicians who try to do something, even if it doesn’t work, over those who are seen as ineffective. But is there a trap here for Trump of too much activity — or at least too many unpopular things — provoking a backlash and detracting rather than adding to how voters see him? Nate, should the president focus more on the economy?

Silver: I’m not sure that “focus” matters much in terms of public opinion. To some extent, in fact, public opinion is what political scientists call “thermostatic,” which means that voters tend to turn the dial in the opposite direction of whoever is in power, especially when the president is already unpopular. If Trump tried to use the bully pulpit, it might backfire.

Anderson: I don’t think voters will punish Trump for doing too much unless they think he believes the economy does not require him to do anything. This is why his comments about the economy being A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus or that ill-advised prime-time address before Christmas were problematic. It’s not that he’s too focused on other things; it’s that he is sending a message that he thinks the economy is fine.

Silver: And the general sense of the world being chaotic? I’m not sure that necessarily helps Trump, either. It works better when you’re the opposition party — that Biden wasn’t able to provide the “return to normalcy” his presidency seemed to promise. And sometimes the White House steps on its own tail. Before the Renee Good shooting, the big story in Minnesota was a public welfare benefits scandal. It’s a real scandal, even if some of the reporting on it was overzealous. It played into a lot of Republican narratives about immigration and waste in government. Tim Walz even reversed himself and decided he wouldn’t run for a third term. But nobody is talking about it now (and its leading prosecutors resigned in the wake of the ICE shooting).

Guida: Gallup recently reported that a record high of 45 percent of U.S. adults identify as independents. Young people in particular reject both parties. Gallup also notes that it breaks a three-year stretch when Republicans held an edge in party affiliation. Now, if you count independents who lean toward a party, it is 47 percent Democratic and 42 percent Republican. How do you interpret this? Is it a Trump thing? Are people just sick of politics and intense polarization? 

Anderson: I imagine some is the thermostatic effect Nate referenced earlier. The pendulum swings. To me, the thing that stuck out the most was the very small percentage of young people who identify as Republicans. I’ve been writing about this for years. Republicans got a brief reprieve when Democrats ran a very, very old Joe Biden during a very, very tough economy for young people, and that combined with some backlash to overzealous progressivism among Gen Z got overstated into Republicans having won over a new generation. Behold how short-lived it was! Only 21 percent of millennials and 17 percent of Gen Z identifying as Republicans is bad, bad news for the G.O.P. over the long haul.

Silver: You also have a phenomenon where the Democratic brand is very unpopular, especially among younger voters who don’t have any institutional loyalty to it. So young liberals often identify as “independent” when you first ask them, but are independents who “lean Democratic” if a pollster pushes them to pick one of the two parties. That means these party ID polls are sensitive to question wording and methodology.

Guida: So a year into Trump 2.0, it seems the dreams of a new G.O.P. coalition — adding Latino and Black voters as well as young voters — seem diminished. In the fall, Kristen, you reminded everyone that nothing lasts in politics.

Anderson: I don’t think the dream is dead at all, but I think everyone ought to remember that you don’t just win a voter and they’re yours forever. You have to keep working at it, keep having an agenda and a message that appeals to them, keep showing up. When the economy feels bad, more voters are up for grabs, and last time around Republicans grabbed them. Being the party in charge while the economy still feels bad means those voters may be back up for grabs yet again.

Silver: Mostly yes, with the caveat that these groups tend to be hard to poll. Every time there’s an election, people complain about the accuracy of polling, and then they seem to totally forget about that outside of elections, even though non-election polling is actually harder to verify since there’s no objective benchmark to measure it against. 

 

But the basic story would seem to be LIFO: last-in, first-out. Groups like younger Latinos and younger Black men moved strongly toward Trump last year. But they may be the first to move right back out of that coalition. Or they may have liked Trump for whatever reason, but have no long-term loyalty to the G.O.P.

Guida: We are roughly 10 months out from the midterms. From a start-of-2026 perch, what is the outlook for November?

Silver: Democrats ought to be considered reasonably heavy favorites to win the House. They basically were able to fight redistricting to a draw. The congressional ballot doesn’t show a huge Democratic advantage yet, but it’s already probably big enough for them to take the House, and it will probably grow once pollsters switch over to surveying likely voters, because Democrats are very likely to have an enthusiasm advantage.

Anderson: Republicans, for the moment, should be nervous about the midterms, comforted only by the fact that it is today’s Democratic Party they get to run against.

Silver: The G.O.P. still has the edge in the Senate, since Democrats just mathematically have to penetrate into some quite-red states to flip it this year. But they’re getting basically all the recruits they want, including Mary Peltola in Alaska. That’s somewhat offset by contentious primaries in Texas and Maine. But Democrats probably have a better chance of winning the Senate than Republicans have of holding the House, which I wouldn’t have expected a year ago. 

Guida: Some 2028 speculation. Any thoughts about the standing of Marco Rubio versus JD Vance in the G.O.P.? Rubio was the leading defender of the Venezuela operation. Vance has been an outspoken defender of the ICE operation after the Minneapolis shooting. Any thoughts about their roles, and particularly the roles through the lens of 2028 speculation?

Silver: I’ve seen some people start to make the comparison between JD Vance and Kamala Harris, in the sense that he’s often tasked with doing a lot of cleanup on Aisle 2 and associating himself with some of Trump’s less popular positions. Personally, I find Rubio’s political appeal easier to see, but then again, I remember convincing myself he was poised for a breakout in the 2016 primary when he only wound up winning Minnesota, Puerto Rico and D.C.

Anderson: As a side note, I have been greatly enjoying the memes about Marco Rubio taking on nearly every job under the sun. I think Vance remains very, very secure right now as the obvious heir to Trump. And while I think Vance and Rubio may have different approaches to foreign policy, Vance’s skepticism of foreign adventures (but support for ones that don’t cost us a lot in blood and treasure) is well aligned with the next generation of Republicans. Rubio would be formidable, and has very deftly evolved from Republican savior of 2013 to Trump’s trusted right hand on key issues, but Vance is liked by enough of the G.O.P. base that, to me, he is a clear leader right now for the 2028 nomination.

Guida: A final nonpolitics question: You are both football fans, and we are in the midst of the N.F.L. playoffs. Any Super Bowl predictions?

Anderson: I will pick Josh Allen to lead the Bills to victory, because I believe he is capable of literally anything. 

Silver: Well, we have a model, ELWAY, and it likes the Seahawks over the Broncos in the Super Bowl. Given its namesake, you might accuse it of having a pro-Denver bias, however.