The Political Endgame: The GOP Plans to Nationalize the 2026 Elections

While on Trey Gowdy’s Fox News show, President Donald Trump urged American voters:

I see it all the time, that when Trump’s on the ballot, they (the Republicans) win. When he’s out of the ballot, the people don’t go to vote, and I’m asking the people … to get out and vote. Pretend I’m on the ballot.

And there you have it. The president wants to “nationalize” the 2026 midterm elections.

This is very unusual. Normally, during a midterm election, it is the opposition party that seeks to nationalize the ballot and pound incumbent senators and Congressmen of the president’s party as willing and evil henchmen of the president, especially if the president is polling poorly. 

Today, President Trump is at 40 percent approval at the RCP average. Granted, as we discussed before, it is quite possible that the summer polls are exaggerating Democrat polling numbers, especially by oversampling lefty, highly educated, white voters. 

The “Kickoff” for the GOP nationalization campaign is going to be the Trumpalooza Midterm Convention, on September 9^th and 10^th, in Dallas, TX. The schedule for the convention has been released, with the president appearing both nights and delivering the closing keynote, while Vice President JD Vance will give a speech the first night. The convention will address many issues over the two nights, including tax relief, the benefits of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Trump administration’s efforts to combat fraud, healthcare affordability, illegal immigration, crime, trade and other issues. There will be a grand total of 109 speakers. Some of the speakers will be candidates running for office, but others will be entertainers and sports figures.

Remember, this convention is a totally new kind of political animal, as the three prior Democrat midterm conventions were more about Democrat partisans making radical left-wing statements on the issues, which often contradicted the more popular unified message the Democrat leadership wanted to promote. This convention is a top-down controlled, message-directed event, which also serves as a fundraiser.

Interestingly enough, the GOP has scheduled the convention to go head-to-head with the two opening games of the NFL season (lucky for me, the Eagles aren’t playing). This could cause a problem in attracting the attention of male voters, who tend to be predominantly Republican. But:

• The organizers say they're well aware of the competition from the NFL. But they argue they'd be fighting for eyeballs even without football, given how dramatically Americans' media habits have changed.
• So they're planning a faster-paced, social media-focused convention designed to produce moments that can break through online, whether or not voters are watching live.

Republicans are pitching the major television networks to cover the convention, and they have invited social media influencers to attend.

Post-Convention, the GOP, especially the MAGA Super PAC, plans to run midterm election ads talking up the economy and the Trump record, which “will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests.” MAGA and the other GOP organizations will also fund individual races, with both negative and positive commercials. And the GOP has a lot more money than the Democrats do. There may also be some attacks on Joe Biden, which does point out the uniqueness of this situation, because Trump has had his two terms divided by a Democrat administration, which he can legitimately claim interrupted his policies. 

President Trump is also considering frequent political rallies.

In a way, it does seem like the GOP is following in the footsteps of the two earlier midterm elections that resulted in the president’s party gaining seats – 1998 and 2002. In both of these elections, the results were nationalized in favor of the incumbent president’s party. In 1998, the Democrats campaigned on the unpopular Republican push to impeach President Clinton, and in 2002 the GOP campaigned on the need for a united front to combat the War on Terror. Both were also in an environment similar to today because there wasn’t much House exposure for the president’s party. But the big difference was in the sitting president’s popularity, as both Clinton and Bush had positive approval ratings in the 60s.

But will the president’s plan work? 

Many presidents during midterms have sought to raise their own personal ratings, usually without success. However, today the parties face a very different environment, where party voters are unusually wedded to their own party. And the GOP is currently facing a deficit in base voter interest, with Democrats far more excited to vote than Republicans. This is especially true about traditional GOP voters – the non-MAGA factions – who seem to require further incentive to vote. Presumably, this is the point of the GOP campaign. Also, the Democrats have some big weaknesses, as they are susceptible to attacks based on impeachment, and the crazed nature of their DSA/leftist dominated base. 

Which is actually quite similar, again, to 1998. That year, Bill Clinton strongly made the case that the Republicans were right-wing grinches who planned to cut the budget to the bone, starve orphans and seniors, discriminate against blacks and women, and only he stood in their way. The only way to stop the dastardly GOP, he argued, was for the voters to block the GOP plan to impeach him. 

I guess “we’ll (Just Have to) See What Happens.”

Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote. It's common sense, yet Democrats are spreading lies about the impact of such a measure. 

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