What would a U.S. midterms win look like for Democrats and Republicans? | Hanomansing Live

So for some analysis right now on what's to come with the U.S. midterms, I want to bring in Chris Geldieri. He's a professor of politics at St. Anselm College, and we reached him in Concord, New Hampshire. Chris, good to connect with you as we approach the vote. Well, thank you for having me, Sarah. So what's on your mind as you head toward Tuesday? Well, I'm most interested to see just whether and how big this Democratic wave actually turns out to be. You know, every indication is that things continue to move in the Democrats direction. We're seeing, you know, presidential campaign travel to deep red states that haven't seen a competitive Senate election in decades in some in some places. And so I think, you know, You know, we're going to find out just how much Buyer's remorse Americans have from the 2024 election. What's a good night going to look like for the Democrats? A good night for Democrats would be winning control of the House of Representatives with a sizable margin and getting the four seats they need in the United States Senate to hold the majority there. A really good night would have them flipping something like five, six, seven seats in the Senate. And to do that, they would need to win in places like Kansas and South Carolina that have been very difficult places for Democrats for a very long time. What about the Republicans? I mean, what does it look like the best case scenario might be? The best case scenario for Republicans would be something like the night Democrats had four years ago in 2022, when Republicans did win control of the House, but only by a very small margin. And Democrats in 2022 managed to hold on to control of the Senate. And I think, you know, there is a world where Democrats, they do win the House, but not by the margins they're expecting. Maybe they flip one or two seats, but they come up short in these. Really tough races in places like Iowa and Kansas and the like. And, you know, we have something of a stalemate, but nothing like the sort of broad repudiation of Trump's second presidency that Democrats are hoping for. We were just listening to Eli Glassner talking about his report coming on The National about young voters, particularly young male voters, polls showing that they may be turning away from Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump, of course, is not on the midterm ballot. But as you say, he is in those deep red states. He is certainly out there campaigning. What do you make of that? The idea you called it buyer's remorse. But what do you make specifically of that demo? Maybe. Shifting away from supporting Trump. Yeah, I think this is fascinating. I think one thing you have to remember about young voters is they don't tend to have strong political habits. You know, they're not folks who have been voting for the same party for 20, 30, 40 years. They don't necessarily have very strong, set and concrete political attitudes, which means they're open to changing their minds. They're open to saying, wow, as we heard in the previous segment, you know, this candidate I voted for didn't deliver on the things he said he was going to do. So I'm going to vote for for somebody else. They don't have that. self-monitoring, self-reinforcing mode that you see with older folks with stronger partisan identities. So given the gap between the campaign Trump ran on in 2024 in terms of prices and foreign wars and that sort of thing, and the reality of what we've gotten from Trump in 2025 and 2026, I'm not really very surprised to hear about those young voters having second thoughts about how they're going to vote this year. Do you think Donald Trump is going to respect the results What are the results of the midterms? That's the $64 million question. We know that Trump doesn't handle defeat well, and we saw in the aftermath of 2020. just how far he's willing to go to try to hold on to power. I think what's a little different this time is that he's not personally going to lose power if this election goes badly for Republicans, but we're already seeing him trying to get his Justice Department to file lawsuits interfering in, you know, vote counting in California, demanding investigations of the Democratic candidate for Senate in Alaska. So I think, you know, it's quite possible we'll see Um, something like the legal strategy we saw after 2020, where you just saw all of these lawsuits, most of which had a very flimsy, uh, basis of support for them in an effort to hope that somewhere a court is going to give them a favorable ruling. Um, but you know, just the fact that we're having these conversations really doesn't say anything good about the state of American democracy on the eve of this election. You know, there are a lot of Canadians who are watching what's happening across the border with the midterm results, wondering if results that are perhaps not favorable to Trump might work maybe in the favor of the relationship between the two countries. What are your thoughts on that? I think it's possible. I think a lot depends on if Democrats win both houses of Congress and then what the margins are. You know, we've been hearing politicians on the Democratic side of the aisle talk about, as Barack Obama put it in 2012, maybe the fever will break after this election. And I don't know that that's necessarily what's going to happen. But I think if you have Republicans Losing elections in places they thought they could not lose elections, that might cause both some reflection on the part of the remaining Republicans in Congress, but I think it'll also be a significant diminishment of Trump's standing with his party. I think you might see folks in Congress be more willing to oppose him on things like tariffs and relationships with Canada. So I think a lot just depends on what happens and how big the margins are. Chris Galdieri, as always, great to get your thoughts. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.