James Carville anticipates President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement will suffer a huge blow if the GOP flops hard in the midterms next week.
“I bet you ... if Republicans have the kind of Election Day that we think they will, we don’t know, but if they do — the MAGA number’s going to go way down,” said the longtime Democratic strategist on his “Politics War Room” podcast.
Carville’s prediction arrived after Doug Sosnik, an ex-senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton, flagged recent NBC News/Decision Desk polling showing 56% of self-identified Republicans say they consider themselves “traditional” Republicans as opposed to 44% who say they consider themselves MAGA.
That’s a near flip from back in April 2025, when 43% said they considered themselves “traditional” Republicans and 55% said they considered themselves MAGA.
Sosnik noted that Trump has a “particular problem” with non-MAGA Republicans, adding that he has a “hard time seeing Laura Bush Republicans” in Texas voting for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his U.S. Senate race against Democrat James Talarico.
Talarico had a +1.5-point lead over his opponent on Monday as early voting continued in the state, per an average of recent polls by RealClearPolitics.
Carville said one thing MAGA Republicans like Trump for is his ability to “piss off” commentators like Sosnik and Carville as well as faculty members at Harvard University and, when he gets “beat in their minds,” it could sour them.
“I expect MAGA numbers are going to go down,” Carville reiterated.
“Even people who define [themselves as MAGA], because they don’t like much of the agenda, they like that he can make people that they hate miserable.”
Watch more of the “Politics War Room” podcast in the video below.