For months now, I have been telling readers that I think Republicans have a real chance to defy history and hang onto their House and Senate majorities this November. They are crushing it in fundraising, Democrats are polling poorly, and even the Democrats' generic congressional ballot leads are smaller than they need to be. All of these point toward a GOP that outperforms every midterm precedent working against it.
But that’s no reason to get complacent, and there are red flags that suggest the GOP shouldn’t assume all is going to end well.
Let's be honest here: nothing about November is decided yet, and that cuts both ways. I still believe Republicans have real advantages heading into the midterms, and I am not walking that back. But confidence is not the same thing as complacency, and there are warning signs. If Democrats manage to pull off a win despite what’s working against them, President Donald Trump's legislative agenda grinds to a halt for the rest of his term.
The clearest warning sign comes from CNN's Harry Enten, who has been tracking the shift for months. Enten told CNN anchor Kate Bolduan this week that voters under 50 have turned sharply against Trump, and the numbers he laid out are startling. "We are talking about an absolutely huge shift, a 180," Enten said. "Young voters are fed up and they're taking their anger out on President Trump."
According to Enten, Kamala Harris led Trump among voters under 50 by just three points back in the fall of 2024. Trump's net approval among that same group has since collapsed to minus 41 points, a swing Enten called "a shift of 38 points away from the president of the United States." Voters 50 and older have moved against Trump too, but by less than half as much.
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That shift isn't staying confined to Trump's approval rating, either. Enten's polling shows Democrats now leading Republicans in the generic House ballot among younger voters by 17 points, up from just four points in the fall of 2024. Voters 50 and older, by contrast, have barely moved. "If you're a Republican in Congress and you think you're going to escape the unpopularity that President Trump has amongst younger voters, you got another thing coming," Enten warned. He went further, calling it "a Titanic-type of shift away from the Republican Party and to the Democratic Party," and noted that among the most motivated younger voters, Democrats now hold a stunning 46-point advantage in the House ballot, up from just two points in 2024. "These are the types of numbers that blue waves are made of," he said.
Now, that sounds bad, but it’s not the worst thing. See, here's the problem with taking that data at face value. Younger voters are consistently the least reliable segment of the electorate in midterm elections. They already turn out at lower rates than older voters in every cycle, but the drop-off between presidential and midterm turnout is far steeper among the young than among any other age group. Enten is measuring a real shift in sentiment, but sentiment isn't turnout. The voters angriest at Trump right now are also the voters most likely to stay home in November, and that gap could blunt whatever wave Democrats are hoping to ride.
None of that means Republicans can afford to sit back and assume the numbers will sort themselves out. Enten is documenting something real, and dismissing it outright would be its own form of complacency. The GOP's path to holding its majorities still runs through turning out the voters most inclined to show up, while hoping the voters most inclined to punish Trump keep doing what young voters usually do in midterms: staying home.
