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You never want to count your Senate seats before they’re hatched, but if the polls are anything close to correct, Democrats have a shot at pulling off victories next month in places that would’ve been unthinkable as recently as two years ago — states like Nebraska, Kansas, and South Carolina.
One of the major reasons for that, Greg Sargent of the New Republic told us, is that the independent voters who decide midterm elections are off the Trump train.
“It’s a big, undercovered story. His numbers with independents are just absolutely terrible,” he said.
“The New York Times, for instance, has 68 percent of independents disapproving of Donald Trump’s performance as president,” Sargent continued. “Incredibly, 60 percent of independents disapprove strongly. I genuinely don’t know if any president has equaled that in the past. I suspect probably not.”
“That level of collapse with independents should be a big story and I don’t understand why there aren’t more news analyses pointing this out. I mean, this is the center of the electorate completely turning on Trump. Independents are critical in midterm elections. So that collapse is potentially going to be extremely significant to what happens this fall.”
Today, as a bonus for subscribers, we’re running an interview we recently did with Sargent about the issues driving Trump’s collapse, how it might play out in specific states, and what it means for American politics going forward.
“If you look at what the data itself is showing us, it sure looks like we’re in the process of seeing a fairly major repudiation of Trump and the deeper ideologies that he represents,” Sargent argues.
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Without further ado, here’s our interview with Sargent, lightly edited for length and clarity.
