100 days out from the midterms, can the GOP overcome gas prices, Iran War? The latest

**Christy Strawser** (0:01)
The day's biggest stories, the people behind the headlines, the conversations you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Christy Strawser. You're listening to Audacy's On Deadline. If it seems like pundits have been talking about the midterm elections for 100 years, take note, they're actually less than 100 days away now.
Here's Dave Cohen in New Orleans with the latest.

**Dave Cohen** (0:22)
So now what happens? Do the Republicans hold on to the House and Senate if gas prices are still skyrocketing and the war isn't over?
We decided to talk about that this morning with Justin Buechler, Associate Professor of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University. So this wasn't the plan, was it? The president really, really hoped that he'd have the war with Iran over, all of the treaties and deals signed and gas prices coming down, so that by the time voters went to the polls in about 100 days to cast their ballots in the midterm elections, he'd be feeling really good about his administration and Republicans, right?

**Justin Buechler** (0:59)
Well, as the saying goes, hope is not a plan, so here we are.

**Dave Cohen** (1:05)
So what does this mean right now for the Republicans and their chances of holding on to the House and Senate in the midterms?

**Justin Buechler** (1:13)
So remember that the basic underlying dynamic in a midterm election is that the party that holds the White House almost always loses seats. So we call this a surge in decline. So there are very few exceptions to this. In, for example, 2002, the Republicans actually picked up some seats, but George W. Bush's approval rating was still really high after 9-11.
There was 1998 when the Republicans impeached President Clinton, it was a very unpopular impeachment, and then the Republicans ousted Newt Gingrich, a speaker because that went very wrong for them.
But this is a pretty strong pattern in history. So going into this election, things were already not looking good for the Republicans. And if you look at the House of Representatives right now, it is a very narrow majority for the Republicans, which means that the odds of the House flipping to the Democrats, going into this, the odds are really high that the House flips to the Democrats. The Senate is much closer, the Senate is much harder to predict. So remember that you have 100 seats in the Senate, in the Senate and in any given year, only a third of the Senate is up for grabs. So the Senate is much harder to predict. We don't really know what's going to happen with the Senate, but the odds that the House flipped are really high.

**Dave Cohen** (2:41)
So, Professor Buchler, tell me this. What, if anything, can the president, the Republicans do to alter history, as it were, and be one of the very few examples of when a midterm election goes the way of the party controlling the White House?

**Justin Buechler** (2:56)
Honestly, not much. I mean, one of the fallacies is the idea that these kinds of things are in the control of the president. So for example, in 2002, the reason that the Republicans picked up some seats was that George W. Bush's approval rating was extraordinarily high, but that was a function of the aftermath of September 11th. So-

**Dave Cohen** (3:21)
And President Trump's not enjoying an extraordinarily high approval rating?

**Justin Buechler** (3:26)
No, he is really not. He has a very low approval rating. And the reason that President Bush's approval rating was that high was a rally around the flag effect from the worst terrorist attack in the history of the country, which was not his doing. So that's not the kind of thing that's in the president's control.
Similarly, when the Democrats bucked the trend in 1998, the Republicans impeached him for something that most of the country did not consider impeachable. So that was not in his control. That was the public's reaction to the other party doing something that the country didn't approve of. So that was not in his control either. So if you look at those two examples, they're not things that were in the president's control. So if you ask, is there something that President Trump can do not based on historical precedent? These are not the kinds of things that are in the president's control. Now, if you ask, are there things that he might have done to mitigate the damage? Yes, because the Republicans are in a worse position than they might have been historically given his low approval ratings. And his low approval ratings are at least to some degree a function of his own actions, his own choices, and to a large degree his personality. But his personality is kind of baked in. He has a core of support that absolutely loves him. A lot of the country doesn't like him.