Despite the apparent attempt on President Trump’s life during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, April 26, the incident will likely have long-term effect on the polarized political situation in the United States. The declining economy and the war in Iran could have a much greater impact, leading to a major electoral defeat for the Republican party in the midterm elections in November.
As gas prices hover at $4.00 a gallon nationwide, up 35% from February on the eve of the Iran War, and oil is selling at $100 a barrel on the international market, Trump’s popular support has plummeted.
The fact that there seems to be no immediate resolution of the war in the Persian Gulf has also severely undermined his backing, even among formerly loyal conservative opinion makers that helped elect him to the presidency twice.
Most political observers predict that the Republicans will lose control of the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate on November 3, 2026, ten days after the second round of the Brazilian elections.
Polls indicate that increasing number of voters are abandoning the president. A recent CNBC-All America Economic Survey indicates that only 39% of the population supports the president’s handling of the economy, with 60% disapproving of his performance, the lowest in his two terms in office. Moreover, a total of 77% of those surveyed blame Trump for the high gas prices.
Attitudes on the war in Iran reflect a similar trend with 32% approving how Trump is handling the war while 68% disapprove, although 65% of Republicans still think he is doing a good job.
However, if the war drags on in the Middle East, he is likely to lose the backing of “America First” Republicans and independent voters opposed to the U.S. involvement foreign war. Opposition among Democrats to the war is at an unprecedented 96% with 82% of independent voters who are not affiliated with a political party also opposed to the Iran war. independents 82%.
The New York Times average of polls has Trump’s overall approval rate at 39% with 59% unsatisfied with his job performance. These is dismal news for the president.
Of note is the shift of support away from Trump among voters who backed him in the 2024 elections. Among Latino voters, Trump currently has an unfavourability rate of 66%, an 11% drop, largely due to his policy on the deportation of undocumented workers and his lack of focusing on addressing a weakening economy.
A similar trend is taking place among youth, according to a Yale Youth poll, as well as among Black male voters. In early 2025 some political pundits insisted that Trump has fostered an historical shift in these voters toward the Republicans, but that trend has totally evaporated.
“I will be impeached”: Trump is Afraid.
Trump is already worried about a sweeping victory for the Democratic Party in the House and a possible razor-thin majority in the Senate. In a policy retreat of House Republicans held in January 2026, Trump told his fellow party members: “You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
At this point it is unlikely that more than a handful of Republican Senators would jump ship in 2027 to garner the two-thirds vote required to remove the president from office after a third impeachment trial.
Still, Democratic leaders have promised to initiate widespread congressional investigations on a range of issues ranging from Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein to the corrupt dealings of the Trump family, should they gain control of the House in November.
Aware of his vulnerable position, Trump is going on the offensive. Much like Jair Bolsonaro who questioned the Brazilian electoral process in 2022, Trump has predicted that if Republicans lose in the mid-term elections, it will be due to electoral fraud.
Trump’s ongoing and repeated insistence that he won the 2020 election against Joe Biden has created doubt among his supporters about the reliability of the U.S. electoral process. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 46% of the respondents believe that there is widespread voter fraud from non-citizens.
In fact, the distrust comes largely from Republicans (82%) while only 18% of Democratics and 38% of independents believe that claim promoted by Trump. The president has also insisted that mail-in ballots are also the source of rampant election fraud.
However, as the New York Times has recently pointed out, there is no truth to these claims, which have been debunked by all reliable experts on voting practices in the United States.
Critics consider that Republican legislative initiatives, including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility or the “Safe America” Act, that demand additional measures to secure fair elections, are largely designed to suppress participation among those who tend to vote Democrat. Republicans have failed to pass the bill in the Senate.
Gerrymandering: Redesigning the Playing Field to Win
Trump’s other strategy to manipulate the electoral outcome has been to convince state legislators to redraw electoral districts to give Republicans an advantage. In the United States, elections are largely run by state and local governments.
Traditionally, after the U.S. government conducts a national census at the beginning of every decade, state legislatures draw the boundaries of electoral districts where representatives of different political parties run against each other in local, state or federal elections.
As detailed in a previous column, since the early nineteenth century politicians from the two main political parties have engaged in a process known as gerrymandering, whereby the party in power in the state legislature draws the electoral map to guarantee that a majority of residents in that district will likely vote for its candidates.
In 2025, believing he “deserved” to have five more seats in Congress from Texas, Trump successfully pressured the state legislature to redraw the electoral maps to favor Republican victories by moving concentrations of Democrat-leaning votes into districts so that they would be outnumbered by his supporters.
In response the Democratic Party-controlled California legislature called for a referendum to draw district maps favoring their party, winning the vote by 64.4% to 35.6% in a special election. Voters approved a plan that will likely give Democrats five more seats in Congress. This began the battle for redrawing maps in several other states, whose constitutions permit the procedure.
Last week Virginia was the most recent state to enter the fray. By a narrow margin, voters approved district maps that could add five more Democrat seats to that state’s delegation in Congress. At this point in the tit-for-tat competition, Democrats have managed to gain a slight edge over their adversary.
However, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has promised to get his state legislature to approve new electoral maps to give his party a few additional “safe” seats in Congress.
Some political analysts argue that the Republican’s efforts may have backfired since they drew new maps in Texas dispersing the weight of Democratic leaning voters into several majority Republican districts based on 2024 Republican confidence that Latinos and youth had moved to their party. Since these groups are now trending Democrat based on recent polls, Republicans may lose some of the new districts that they created to favor their party.
At the same time, Trump is starting to lose key support among previously loyal conservative podcast hosts, news commentators, and journalist over the war in Iran.
Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who broadcast false news about alleged voter machines in the 2020 elections, has recently apologized to his supporters for campaigning for Trump in 2024. Similarly, journalist Megyn Kelly, a previously loyal supporter of the White House is now blasting the president for the war. Podcaster Joe Rogan, who has millions of young white male followers, has blasted Trump’s conduct of the war with Iran. Even right wing conspiracy propagandist Alex Jones has been blasted by Trump for criticizing his Middle East war policies.
With the elections for all members of Congress and one third of the Senate six months away and his popularity dropping dramatically, Trump’s critics fear that he will resort to more desperate measures, as he did in 2020 when he mobilized his supporters to invade the U.S. Capitol building to prevent the certification of the presidential electoral results.
It is still too early to predict exactly what steps he will take. However, there is no doubt that he is not prepared to face a resounding defeat on November 3, 2026. Still, if his popularity continued to decline, the economy doesn’t improve, and the war in Iran drags on, Trump runs the risk of seeing his power slip away in his last two years in office.
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