Inside the trust crisis shaping this year’s midterms

Shumita Basu (0:04)

This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, your 2026 midterms questions answered.

We're just two weeks away from election day. There are so many big questions about how these results might steer our politics and our culture in the next few years. Republicans are defending narrow majorities in Congress. Right now, polling shows Democrats are favored to take back the House while the Senate remains a toss-up. And voters are deeply frustrated by the rising cost of living, fueled in part by the ongoing war with Iran.

When we invited you, our listeners, to send us your big questions about the midterms, what we heard was a lot of election process anxiety.

Prudence Fenton (0:54)

I'm a concerned citizen and also a first-time candidate in Massachusetts.

Ryan (0:58)

Are there any politicians out there that aren't willing to play by a broken system of rules?

Shumita Basu (1:04)

Can you say more about that and if that's true?

SPEAKER_4 (1:06)

Why does it feel like polls have been so off?

Andrew (1:11)

Just how much can we trust the numbers?

Shumita Basu (1:14)

So we took your questions to two political analysts who are super plugged into voter sentiment. Amy Walter is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. She's widely considered one of Washington's most trusted nonpartisan election watchers. And Patrick Ruffini is a veteran Republican pollster and co-founder of the polling firm Echelon Insights. He's also the author of the book, Party of the People, inside the multiracial populist coalition, Remaking the GOP. The three of us get into everything from polling accuracy to redistricting, to what this election can tell us about the larger political moment in this country.

I wanted to ask each of you, maybe Amy, I'll start with you. I mean, how would you sum up in just a few words what you think this midterm election is really hinging on?

Amy Walter (2:06)

Well, this election clearly is about cost of living. I mean, if we just step back for a minute and look at every single poll, the very first thing that people say that is important to them, regardless of the state that they're sitting in, wherever they are on the ideological spectrum, the economy is first and foremost. When it comes down to the kind of voters that are going to drive this election, which we can dig into, I'm sure later on in the podcast, but a lot of this is going to hinge on voters who may have supported Donald Trump in the past, who right now are feeling kind of disappointed, both in the cost of stuff, especially the cost of gasoline. And they don't really feel particularly encouraged about getting out and voting. But they also aren't big fans of Democrats either. They're sort of pulled in two different directions, right?

One direction says, just sit this race out and stay on the couch to show your disappointment. The other that's pulling them is, do we show up and support Republicans in Congress because we just really don't want to see Democrats taking control?

Shumita Basu (3:20)

Patrick, what about for you? I mean, you literally wrote the book on the GOP's coalition of working class, multiracial coalition they managed to build, and that really under Donald Trump we've seen. But in past midterm years, we have seen a lot of those voters really not show up. And as Amy has just described, expecting a lot of that attitude to bleed over into the polls this year. What are you hearing and what are you expecting?

Patrick Ruffini (3:46)

Yeah. So it looks like those voters are going to be the protagonists of this election, just as they were the protagonists of the 2024 election. But that may be, as Amy said, because of their absence or outright switching. And there's a real question right now.

Would Donald Trump and the Republicans actually want many of those new 2024 voters actually showing up in big numbers? Because they're not sure Republicans at this point. And it was really the groups in 2024 that swung the most, that were the ones back then who were most directly affected by the cost of living. And that wasn't just Latino voters, wasn't just diverse voters across the spectrum, but it was lower income voters, it was lower education voters, it was voters that the more kind of economically secure you were on the spectrum, the less you swung because you weren't as directly affected by the cost of living in 2024

Fast forward to 2026 Yes, many of those voters, those voters do not approve of the job Trump is doing. Those voters have likely swung by a large number, but also big question about whether they will vote. So it's a really a three way choice for those voters. It's less about a choice between two sides. It's a choice between which side do I stick on or do I stay home?