Political data expert Nate Silver gave President Donald Trump a grim forecast ahead of the November midterm elections, warning that a blue wave will ultimately end his influence on American politics.
“If the election goes roughly as the polls say it will go, then in some ways, it would mark the end of the Trump era,” Silver said on Tuesday’s episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.”
“I think he’ll still be president for two more years, but the minute the votes are counted — might take a while because of Alaska and California and states like that — the 2028 election campaign begins, and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super lame duck, right?” he told host Ezra Klein.
A number of polls and experts predict that Democrats will likely win more seats in November, effectively taking control of both the House and Senate as Republican candidates face campaign hurdles due to Trump’s sinking popularity.
However, the president already signaled that he would limit Democrats’ potential power by vetoing their major legislation. He told reporters last week, “I think the Republicans are going to win — but if there was gridlock, what happens is I veto everything, and then the Democrats come and want to make a deal.”
On Sunday, Silver predicted on his Substack that Democrats have an optimistic 76% chance of winning the Senate. Klein asked him on Tuesday, “What happened?”
Silver noted that one of the “most regular trend in American elections” is the backlash against the president’s party at midterm.
“Maybe a little bit bigger if a president’s in his second kind of lame duck term, but you know we can recite the exceptions on one hand,” Klein’s guest said.
He argued that part of the reason why Democrats are positioned to win Senate seats is that the party has “actually nominated in most important races pretty good candidates and were lucky enough to face weaker Republican candidates.”
“Democrats have the strategy now of trying to nominate independents in kind of name only in states like Nebraska,” Silver said. “I think both the candidates, Republican and Democrat, are strong in Iowa, for example, but you know, I would say that probably the candidate intangibles, you know, they might move things by five points at most.”