What's at stake for President Trump in the midterms?

All right, so we know it today. Voters across the country will decide control of the U.S. House and Senate. Democrats must flip four seats in the Senate and three seats in the House to wrestle control of the chambers from Republicans. And the battle for control is playing out mostly in states and districts that President Trump previously won, and not just won, but by wide margins. Joining us now is U of I Professor Brian J. Gaines. Professor Gaines, thanks for being here. Good morning, glad to be here. We know that you specialize in elections, electoral rules, public opinion, those are all things that are gonna be important today. So let's talk a little bit about this. What is at stake for President Trump? We'll start with if the Democrats take the House and next if the Democrats take the Senate. It will be a gargantuan surprise if the Democrats do not take the House. The Republicans have had a very small majority, and it's shown how tricky it is to manage the control of the House with under 10 seats. I suspect the Democrats will have something between 10 and 20, maybe even upwards of 20. So I would think the Democrats have the House and if pollsters are gonna have a lot of explaining to do if that doesn't turn out to be the case. The Senate is much harder to call and I think we won't necessarily know by this evening. Some of the states that are suspenseful are pretty slow in counting. Alaska is very likely to be slow, Maine might be slow. They both use the transferable vote ranked choice voting and so sometimes the counting on that is much slower. So I think the first result I'm going to be watching for closely is South Carolina, a very red state. If Graham, the sister of Lindsey Graham, the deceased former incumbent, doesn't win that one, then I think we'll know that the Democrats are having a really, really big night. If she does win and wins a little more comfortably than the polls are showing, we might decide the polls maybe overestimated the Democratic strength, and then states like Iowa that might or might not be in the balance might turn out to be comfortable Republican wins, even though right now they look like toss-ups. I want to talk about Senate races and one in particular that's a little close to home. And I'm talking about Michigan. You have the progressive physician and former Detroit health director Abdel El-Sayed. He's running as a Democrat and he's running against a Trump-backed former congressman Mike Rogers. What's really interesting about this is that the Democratic Representative Haley Stevens, who lost to El-Sayed, decided to go ahead and back Rogers. What do you think will happen in this case? This is one I tell my students, don't bet on politics, no matter how tempting it is. I don't have any money on this, but it's a very hard one to call. The betting markets, people who do put their money where their mouth is, and the polls still say it's got this wrapped up. They think he's going to win it, even with the late endorsement. I'm not certain about that, but I do think that Stevens waited possibly too long. There's a lot of early voting. A lot of the people who maybe were persuadable have already voted. And right after a very close primary, he just edged her out to get the Democratic nomination. If she had immediately said, I just can't in good conscience back him, I'm going to, you know, with much regret back the Republican, probably would have had more force. People don't like changing their minds repeatedly. And she waited so long that some of the. People who maybe have misgivings about his foreign policy stance and are nervous about whether he's too hostile to Israel, if they've already decided I'm going to vote for him anyway, I just can't go with the Republican, it's probably too late to talk them out of it. So I think in the end, if he wins it, people will be saying if she really wanted to swing the vote, she should have made that decision sooner. Let's move to Texas. Boy, what a hot race there. If Texas flips blue, at least in that particular Senate race, I mean, I mean, you have Ted Cruz and he essentially will. Cancel out the vote of that Democrat if that's the case, but talk a little bit about that race and how it could turn out. I think it's symbolically an important race for the Democrats. It's such a big state, and it has been a very red state. It's the state that, when people say California is a sure thing for the Democrats, well, Texas is almost as big, growing faster, and it's kind of the Republicans' big elephant to go against the gargantuan donkey that is California. And if the Democrats crack through, it's going to be a big morale booster. And again, the polls and the betting markets think that... That it's going to be a Democratic triumph. We've heard this before with kind of Beto O'Rourke was supposed to win and didn't. I think it'll be close either way, but I won't be shocked if in fact, Paxton proves to be such a damaged candidate that he can even lose a red state like Texas and that this is one of the victories that the Democrats savor most in late tonight or tomorrow. And are you saying that based on some Some of the controversy surrounding Paxton. Yeah, I think that the incumbent, John Cornyn, is a kind of a bland Rotary Club speaker type, and he probably would have carried Texas to the normal vote that favors Republicans, I think would have brought him to victory. But Ken Paxton is a much more controversial figure with lots of scandal, and there are Republicans who just can't see clear to voting for him. So I think this is something of an own goal, if I can bring football or soccer terminology in, And that the Republicans. Probably should have stuck with the Bland candidate if they're really concerned about keeping the Senate. But the primary voters went with a Maverick and a bit of a wild card. One state we hadn't really talked about a lot up until recently, Alaska. Usually Alaska is pretty quiet overall. But this is an interesting one because now you have two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. One, obviously two different initials. What do we expect to to happen in this particular race. I don't think we're going to know who won it right away. Anyway. Alaska's kind of slow in counting the vote, and they have a good excuse. Voting is decentralized in American elections. They have to bring them in by light aircraft from remote places. But the ranked-choice voting element is the complication here. The whole point of trying to—I'll call it a conspiracy. It wasn't just a campaign. The conspiracy to confuse voters with an extra Dan Sullivan clearly was orchestrated by the Democratic Party. Mary Peltola is saying she didn't know about it. But I think very few will buy that. My suspicion is that Alaskans will really resent this. There's a stronger sense that people put the state ahead of party there and that some of the people who might have been ready to vote for her and feel it's time for a change will not buy that she didn't know anything about this and that it might, whereas I think the late endorsement by Stevens probably won't end up changing Michigan. I think that this late-breaking story might actually flip Alaska back to the Republican side where we would have expected it to be in a normal year. But I don't think we're gonna know the result by the time we go to bed tonight. I wanna go back to that point because obviously we know that a federal judge came out and dismissed the Trump's administration's lawsuit over this very issue. If she wins, do you foresee there still being some type of legal action or attempt thereof? Probably not. All right, this is... It's a dirty trick, I think, in the usual parlance. It's a fairly clear dirty trick. Thank you, Patrick. The New York Times did a pretty good job of investigative journalism with the documentary proof that people behind this were trying explicitly to confuse voters, and they had a pretty open contempt for voters, thinking we'll trick them with this. Thank But I don't think it's going to rise to the level of illegality, and I don't think it's going to be anything that would allow the... A legal challenge to assuming that Peltola wins, even if it's provable you that she knew about it, I don't think that she was directly involved. very I doubt if she's guilty of any illegal behavior. But I think that, again, some number of Alaskan voters will regard it as a step too far. much. And it's a pretty big story, so I think there aren't going to be very many people who show up not having heard. The other question is how many people understand ranked choice voting well enough that they know what to do about it if they want. Which Sullivan do they want? If they're not sure which is the right Sullivan, how do they fill out the ballot? We just have to wait and see. That's wild. I'm going to throw a monkey wrench at you here. I feel like tomorrow, this is obviously going to be old news, all of this. And we're going to start talking about the 2028 presidential election. So how does this election frame that up for us? Well, that's one of the only interesting things locally. There's not a lot of suspense in Illinois, but I think Governor Pritzker is hoping for a big win, not just because it's fun to win by more, but I think he's really hoping to improve his national profile. He's going to be visiting Nevada and South Carolina and being out of state a little bit more in the near future because I think when he looks in the mirror, he sees a president looking back at him. So it starts with a big win. I don't think very many people expect him not to win, but I think he'd like it to be as big as possible. It's hard to get very much news coverage with other more interesting, closer gubernatorial elections at the same time. People will be watching Ohio more closely and Kansas. But, you know, I think... He's not the only one. It's a pretty wide open Democratic field. The Republican field right now, people mostly think it's going to be Rubio or Vance, but we're often surprised. A lot of people didn't see Donald Trump coming. So it could be that two years' time we're talking about candidates that right now hardly anyone is thinking of as presidential aspirants. Well, we'll be watching. You mentioned that gubernatorial race. Pritzker did beat Darren Bailey by nearly 13 points in 2022. So we'll see what happens this time around. Thank you so much. You were a wealth of knowledge, Professor. Always glad to chat and I'll be watching the rest of the day and probably back to talk about elections another time. All right. Sounds good. It's a date. We want to remind you that the polls close at seven o'clock tonight. We have the countdown there on your screen. You still have eight hours, eight and a half hours to get out and vote if you haven't already. And if you need to know your polling site, just log online and you can find it pretty easily. Yes, you can. And you can also watch the results as they come in live right here at your election headquarters on Fox Chicago. Our coverage starts at six tonight. Make sure you tap in with us. All right.