Heading into the midterms, 'no US president in recent times has been as unpopular as Donald Trump'

Well, excitement, fear, and just plain curiosity about what unpredictable twists the voting might bring are the dominant emotions about the final 24-hour stretch until midterm elections in the United States. With Americans casting ballots tomorrow in what's been framed as amongst the most consequential midterms in decades, Republicans and Democrats made their final pitches to voters on Sunday. Donald Trump holding rallies in Florida, Iowa, and Kansas. Here's the U.S. president. State after state, the Democrat Party has dominated the most extreme and dangerous radicals in American history. I've never seen anything like it. You've never seen anything like it. What they're doing to our country, what they want to do, but they won't succeed because we're stopping them at the pass. Now, Donald Trump there sounding quite optimistic, but his packed schedule was perhaps a sign of some degree of nervousness. The final New York Times-Siena poll released on Sunday evening suggesting not only that the House of Representatives is likely to turn blue, but also that Democratic candidates are leading in all seven Senate seats that have been perceived as the most competitive. For more, then, we'll cross now to Richard Johnson, senior lecturer in U.S. politics at Queen Mary University of London. Thank you very much for joining us today, Richard. So we heard the U.S. president there saying that he has done 30 rallies in recent days. Do you think that this whirlwind will make a difference or is he just preaching to the choir of his most hardened supporters at this point? Well, Donald Trump has damaged goods at this point in his presidency. No US president in recent times has been as unpopular just before a midterm election as Donald Trump is right now. And so the idea that Trump is going to distribute his magic fairy dust in the red states and turn out the Trump voters, I think is for the birds, to be honest with you. Trump is in these states that he won by double digits just two years ago. So now. His approval rating is sub-double digits, and so the extent to which Trump, you know, I think Trump is still thinking that he can do what he did in the presidential elections, where he did make a difference, I think, in some of those states, and he did drag Republicans with him because he was able to mobilize his core supporters. We've seen key elements of the Trump coalition. I'm either determined to stay home or even switching over to the Democrats. Latino voters is one of the most significant ones that we're seeing in the polling. And this is an electorate where in a state like Texas, Trump won 55 percent of the Latino vote in the last presidential election. And now James Tallarico is is polling 60 plus percent with Latino. There's a huge shift. And a very consequential one, not just for the Senate seat, but also for those many of those Republican House seats in a state like Texas, which flipped from the Democrats to the Republicans under Trump's surprisingly good showing with Latinos, which may now come back to a year ago. People might not have expected that to happen. So I do want to get to demographics, a demographic breakdown, Richard, later on. But before we get there, what do you think are some of the biggest takeaways from the latest polling at this stage? Again, I know that polling, you know, it's not an exact science. There are estimates, predictions. But what do you think Republicans and Democrats should be paying the most attention to, given the latest numbers that we've seen? Well, if you look at that New York Times-Siena poll, you can see over the last few months that in most of those key seven swing Senate states that you alluded to earlier, they are moving in the Democrats' direction. If you take a state like... Iowa, the Democrats were behind in September and in June. They're just on the other side now. They're a plus one in Iowa. You take a state like Maine, where Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican senator, was. fighting for her political life. She was ahead in the CNN New York Times poll in September by three points. She is now down six points in Maine. But there are a couple of interesting exceptions to this. So one is Alaska, where the Democrats were further ahead a couple of months ago, but now that race is tightening up. And there's been some controversy in Alaska about the Democrats seemingly by, according to New York Times reporting, recruiting someone with the same name as the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan. And that may have put some people off voting for the Democratic nominee, Mary Patola, the former House member there. So we'll have to see. Ultimately, I think these states generally are moving together. But there are important exceptions, and Alaska is one that I'll be keeping my eye on as we come to the final stretch. Now, this brings me to an obvious next question, Richard, be it a blue wave, a blue tsunami, a blue ripple. Most polling is predicting a very positive outcome for Democrats in particular. One of the major questions and surrounding this polling is whether or not it can be trusted. This, of course, due to some pretty major errors in the last U.S. presidential election, amongst others. So what do you think are the major areas where the polling that we've seen can go wrong about tomorrow's voting? Look, if the polling is correct, this is a major blue wave. And actually, not just thinking about the polling, but thinking of momentum, where that movement is happening. There could even be some states that we're not counting in those seven swing states that could... Tip into the Democrats' direction. I'm keeping an eye on states like South Carolina and Mississippi. Long shots, I think. But the momentum is there with the Democratic candidates. And can those Democratic candidates make the final closing argument in the last couple of days? We shall see. But, as you correctly say, Erin, the question is, are the polls accurate? And in the last few midterm elections, the polls have been off. And systematically off in the Democrats' favor. In other words, overestimating the Democrats' support. Now, the average that they have been is about four points in the Democrats' direction. And if you take those... Some of those key swing states and you subtract four from the Democrats column. Well, they flip back to the Republicans. But what I would just say on that is pollsters are very aware of these errors and many pollsters have been. Trying very hard to correct for that, they believe that there's been a systematic underweighting of white, blue-collar, working-class voters who tend to be more Trump, and so they've been giving greater weight to the people who fit that demographic category, who have been answering the polls, the polling average. Model modelers have also been taking into account more carefully which polls they put into their models. It's ultimately going. We don't know if that's made the difference, but we do know that pollsters are trying to correct. Now, the problem with polling is when you correct for one thing, maybe another problem comes up in the cycle. So we don't know if there's another issue. So, look, I wouldn't say bet the house on the polls. Some of the best instruments that we have and all of the fundamentals of selection are also pointing in the Democrats' direction. So that gives me greater confidence that the polls are probably accurate. Now, this has been a very, pulling aside, a long two years in terms of decisive events playing into how people are likely to vote tomorrow. I'm talking about tariffs, the war in Iran, the Epstein files, ice crackdowns, which have resulted in several deaths, corruption, burned relations with close allies, just to name a few. What do you think was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, for voters that led to this perception that Democrats are likely to sweep at least the House, if not the Senate as well? A couple of things. So I would say first, the fundamentals of the economy are not strong, particularly with cost of living. Americans who are very reliant on their cars and their vehicles to get around, to work. These voters have been hit by higher fuel costs. Also, there are certain parts of the Trump coalition, those who work in agriculture or tied to agriculture, who have been hit in different ways by the consequences of various trade wars, including the US trade war with China. For example, China's tariffs with regard to soybeans has been a problem in states like Iowa, which has become an unexpected swing state in this Senate contest. But I also think that the MAGA electorate, the Trump coalition, is feeling somewhat demobilized, feeling demotivated, because in part of some of the things that Trump has done as president, not least the Iran war. You know, Trump, when he first ran for president over a decade ago, he... He tried to present himself as not like a George W. Bush Republican, not like the neocons, not someone who was going in for foreign wars. And then this intervention in Iran has pretty much played according to what you might see as more like the George W. Bush Republican playbook. And I think for certain elements of the MAGA coalition, that became a sense that Trump maybe has... lost his populist credentials in some way. Again, I'm thinking like a state like Iowa. Iowa's quite a populist state. If you listen to the Democratic candidate in Iowa, they sound like a populist. Trump is no longer really an outsider. He is very much an insider. And I do think that perhaps there are some voters out there on the right of American politics who just feel at the moment he's not the the voice that's challenging what they would see as the establishment or the... Deep state or the foreign policy establishment or what have you. Now, there's a bit of irony to kind of piggyback off of what you said there, Richard, and the fact that if there is a major cohort of independent or even Republican voters that end up choosing Democrats tomorrow, that change is not at all reflected in the positioning of Republican lawmakers. In other words, voters appear to be turning away from Trump in much higher numbers than Republican representatives. Trump only has two years left. Why do you think at this stage, and given what the polls have been saying pretty consistently, why are so many GOP officials Still refusing to break ties with Trump, even if that means securing their own seats. Well, for the last decade, Republican elected officials have been conditioned to think that really they have to go with Donald Trump for the sake of their political survival. And it's not like there haven't been examples in the past of Republicans who have tried to break away, have criticised the president, criticised his agenda, and pretty much every single one of them has lost their job, has lost a primary, has lost an election, has been given the cold shoulder, has been isolated. But we're now coming to... To the late stage of the Donald Trump presidency, the lame duck stage. And I do think that after the midterm elections, there will be some change. I mean, even in the lame duck period of Congress, this period between voting on Tuesday and January when the new Congress sets in, I think you'll start to see some Republicans already rebel against the president more than they have. They're on their way out, and they have nothing to lose by standing against him. I'm really interested in what Trump might want to try to do in terms of changing his cabinet. There's been some discussion, will he get rid of Pete Hexeth? Well, if he gets rid of Pete Hexeth, he needs the Senate to confirm the replacement. And even if he tries to do that in the lame duck period, is a John Cornyn who... Lost the primary to Ken Paxton in Texas. Is he really going to go along with Donald Trump on this? So I think the days where Donald Trump had kind of almost almost complete control of the Republicans in Congress, I think those are almost coming. Those are very close. That that period is very soon coming to an end. Certainly leaves space for a lot of surprises and unknowns in the coming days and weeks ahead. Richard Johnson will have to keep it there for now. Senior lecturer in U.S. politics at Queen Mary University of London. Thank you very much.