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Posted on 08/29/2025 12:43:59 PM PDT by DFG
Yesterday, President Trump announced that he and his various campaign groups, including his Super PACs, have raised an unprecedented $1.5 billion dollars for the coming 2026 mid-term elections.
This is all part of his campaign strategy to hold both the U.S. House and Senate. Of course, the former chamber, where the GOP currently has a 220 to 215 edge, is the one that is really in danger of flipping. Remember, this strategy includes: 1) push GOP redistricting; 2) minimize retirements; 3) spend big; 4) take primary challengers off the table; 5) raise gobs more money; 6) ramp up recruiting; and 7) push certain salient issues.
Trump has also set a numerical goal for the GOP in the House – picking up 100 more seats! He believes that the re-redistrictings, plus stopping the use of mail-in ballots, will lead to a yuuuuuge victory.
Thanks to Wikipedia, we have a list of the elections for House seats since 1856. (One normally should be wary of Wikipedia, but this list seems to be correct.) Only twice has one party picked up 100 plus seats – in 1894, when the out-party GOP won because of the Panic of 1893, and in 1932, when the out-party Democrats won because of the Great Depression. (Also, twice, in 1874 and in 1890, the out-party won close to 100 seats because of scandal and economic issues.)
Re-redistrictings are not going to be able to produce a 100-seat gain for the Republicans. And it is impossible to know how a change in mail-in ballot laws – if it could be accomplished – will impact the elections:
How many illegal ballots are cast in every election cycle? No one knows. Liberals assure us that the number is close to zero. But how could we know that? The hallmark of a successful fraud is that it is not discovered. And in most places, little effort is made to detect voter fraud, even when that is possible. Nevertheless, there are a large number of successful prosecutions of illegal voters.
Perhaps we should look at the ‘100-seat pick up’ as Donald Trump making an aspirational goal. Remember, as my old Santorum 2000 colleague Salena Zito has written, we should take Donald Trump “seriously but not literally.”
The President really just wants to hold onto power in the House. And let’s not forget that all the GOP needs to do is to avoid losing three or more seats in the House. That’s it.
So, how is their grand strategy to maintain the majority in the House going?
The re-redistrictings are coming along. Texas has passed its plan, which has shifted five seats toward the Republicans, assuming the GOP gains with Hispanic voters continue. Ohio will happen, too. Also, Florida, Indiana, and Missouri are still strongly considering it. The Democrats are trying in California, but that is far from guaranteed. Assuming all occur, however, the starting point for the elections will leave the Republicans with roughly a 220 to 207 advantage, with 8 toss-ups. There might be other possibilities as well, especially if the Supreme Court revisits Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. So, the re-redistricting is probably going to be a net benefit for Republicans.
There has been no further word on redoing the census, however.
The fundraising part, as mentioned above, is going gangbusters for the GOP. The RNC, in particular, has a yuge edge over the DNC, the latter of which is still paying off Kamala Harris’ debts.
The President and the GOP are also constantly and aggressively moving to embarrass Democrats on the "80/20" issues, which Ed Morrisey at our sister site, Hot Air, calls the “cornering strategy.” The Democrats, because of their hatred of Trump and their messianic ideology, just can’t stop politically dying on these unpopular hills. Most recently, the Trump administration has made news with its popular crime-fighting actions, especially the federal takeover of Washington, D.C., which is lowering crime. Also, by threatening federal funding when Democrats promote "trans issues," as recently happened in Virginia. The administration is also still trying to deport the gang-banging, illegal alien criminal "Maryland Man," now to Uganda, and presumably will try again to remove the terror-supporting, crazed Arab antisemitic to somewhere else, soon. Then, there are the administration's high-profile efforts to combat antisemitism on college campuses and elsewhere.
And in a "member berry" to the 1988 George H. W. Bush campaign, President Trump signed an executive order on flag burning, which, contrary to the conventional wisdom, is not unconstitutional or illegal.
Oh, how well I remember that 1988 presidential campaign, the first national campaign I followed in any great depth. The Democrats were still complaining about the Bush campaign and its "despicable" use of ‘wedge issues’ like flag burning all the way into the 00s.
And there are other factors of importance to consider:
Donald Trump’s approval rating is pretty much hovering where it has been during the second term, now at 45.3 percent approval to 51.5 percent disapproval, with the same mix of good and bad polls in the RCP.
The economy still seems to be growing – “The Gross National Product has just been revised upward… and it’s a robust number.”
The realignment is proceeding at pace, and on the whole, things look better for the GOP than the Democrats. For example, as the New York Times ruefully reports, “(o)f the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot. That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.”
The House is evenly divided, and has a boom or bust cycle, and the exact numbers that are won by the parties are often determined by the over- or under-exposure of the respective parties in the House. The Democrats won 41 seats in the House in 2018, then lost 14 and 9 seats in successive elections in 2020 and 2022, losing control during the latter year, only to pick up two seats in the 2024 elections (after endless, and almost surely tainted, counting in California). So, in the grand scheme of things, the GOP is not in big danger in 2026.
We know that both parties understand that control of the U.S. House is up for grabs in 2026. We know this because both are thinking outside the box – see the possible mid-term conventions being floated – and preparing for a tough and long campaign.
"We'll (Just Have to) See What Happens."
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A 100-seat gain? In my dreams, but in my thoughts, we’ll be lucky to hold the majority because so many people vote Democrat NO MATTER WHAT.
We would be lucky to pick up one more seat.
The seats are mostly gerrymandered.
We may be up 5 in Texas. But then we'll lose 5 in California.
So we'll pick up a seat somewhere else.
But there's a possible that we will lose our majority in the House because we know that the Democrats are angry so they'll show up and vote no matter what.
The midterm elections in a president's second term historically are the biggest losses for his party. If we can buck that trend and just hold the House and Senate, I'd be thrilled.
And if that is what a Republican opposition was doing, you'd say they're all talk, no action, and not accomplishing anything. All of which can be said about Congressional Democrats.
Republicans have a small margin in the Senate and an even smaller proportionate margin in the house. I honestly think Trump has done very well to get the things he's gotten. He has much smaller margins than he did at the beginning of his first term, and has managed to get things like border security that simply went nowhere before.
100 seats? No.
When its very close, they have to run on issues, plus money.
Democrats are losing on both fronts.
Stop mail in ballots and they will win.
Paul Ryan refused to work with him.
Considering Trump won ninety per cent of the counties, an electoral landslide and the popular vote and the House ONLY picked came out with a five seat majority, I’d say a 10 seat majority would be good.
All politics is local.
And namby-pambys seem to be the only candidates the Republican wing of the uniparty can get to put their hat in the ring.
Trump is just doing his thing and jerking their chain by saying that. I would be ecstatic with 218-217, anything to keep Hakeem Skyhook from getting the gavel.
Doesn’t matter as long as the Republicans don’t field quality candidates that reflect the wishes of the base.
It’s hard to convince people on our side to step into the arena.
It really would be. I definitely don’t want the democrats to have day in day out investigations on everything. We must keep majority!
All politics is still local.
And it seems our side isn’t motivated to vote unless Trump is on the ballot.
100 seats? Unlikely, but I’ll settle for 50.
“All politics is still local.”
Like very high serious crime/murder rates in Democrats run cities and President Trump bringing serious crime/murders come crushing down in DC when he took over tackling crime in DC?
The real need is the Senate.
Misleading because land cannot vote.
And the results are known that evening.
The California map was made by the Legislature. That is illegal as the commission alone has the power. They put the cart before the horse. Don’t think it will happen....but we’ll see.
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