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Data guru startled as ‘ballooning’ numbers show GOP ‘on track to lose’



Republicans are on the wrong track for holding onto their congressional majorities, according to a new data analysis.

CNN's Harry Enten crunched the numbers on a series of new polling that found Americans are concerned about the direction the country is headed, and the data analyst said they seem to be in the mood for a change in leadership heading into next year's midterm elections.

"I like going traveling, we all do," Enten said. "Look, you know what it was, the NBC News poll came out this weekend, and I saw this wrong track number, and it just kind of jumped out to me because it was 66 percent, and one of the things I always like to look at is, you know, Donald Trump historically has done better than his polling suggested. But these right track-wrong track numbers have generally tracked with what actually the country is feeling. We see 66 percent there, more than three in five Americans who say the country is on the wrong track. Ipsos, 61 percent, MU, Marquette University Law School, 64 percent, Gallup, 74 percent of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the state of the nation."

"You see it on your screen right there, and all of these numbers, all of these numbers that I could find were the highest percentage who said that the country was on the wrong track since Donald Trump took office," Enten added. "It's not just Trump's poll numbers, it's disapproval that's going higher and higher and higher. It's the wrong track numbers that are going higher and higher, as well."

That's quite a turnaround from the start of Trump's second term, Enten said.

"Yeah, it's a huge change – it's a huge change," he said. "Think that the country is on the wrong track or the right track, you go back to April, May – look, the clear majority of Americans thought that the country was on the wrong track, at 58 percent, but you see 38 percent, a 20-point difference here. Look at that: What we've seen is a ballooning of this, a ballooning. Now you take the average of the polls, right, and now we're talking well north on average."

"Two and three Americans say that the country is on the wrong track now," Enten added. "Less than three in 10 Americans say that the country is on the right track, and when we look at this back in the going into the 2024 election, right, the election in which the Democratic Party was pushed out of power, this number looks a whole heck of a lot. This right track number looks a whole heck of a lot what it looked like going into 2024 election. This 66 percent looks a whole heck of a lot like that number going into the 2024 election."

That's an ominous sign for Republicans heading into next year's election, he said.

"President's party didn't lose House seats, midterms since 1978, percentage said the country was on the wrong track, 46 percent in 2002, 38 percent in 1998," Enten said. "The 66 percent now, the 66 percent, a lot of numbers on the screen right now who say the country is on the wrong track? This doesn't look anything like those midterms where the president's party didn't lose. The Republican Party is on track to lose the House of Representatives if the wrong track numbers look anything like they do right now."


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LIVE: Trump delivers address to the nation | NBC News

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‘More anxious’: Republicans in panic mode after Trump’s lackluster address backfires



Republicans were shocked by President Donald Trump's finger-pointing and have questioned what's next after his lackluster primetime speech.

White House insiders and GOP lawmakers were reacting to responses to Trump's speech, CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes told viewers Thursday.

"Look, they're all watching everything closely, and they've seen how it's been reviewed. I will say one thing. The White House worked together as a team, as they often do the inner circle to craft this speech. And they needed a speech in which President Trump would stay on message, that was short, that addressed the economy," Holmes said.

Trump blamed former President Joe Biden, a common move he's made in the past — something his team has begged him to stop doing — and tried to say the economy was better than before.

"Now, whether or not you think his message was true, we obviously know that there were numbers that were inflated or just plain wrong. Or if you think that he went off topic, airing his grievances, he did talk about the economy more than we've ever we've seen him in the last several months," Holmes said. "And that is what the White House was intending to do, to try and get the message across that he is aware that things are not in the place that they need to be, and that they are working on it as an administration."

That message did not land well, she said. And Republicans outside the White House had a different response to what the White House had aimed for, "which is try and alleviate people's fears."

Instead, it only ramped up people's worries, especially ahead of the midterms.

"Republicans came out of that speech more anxious that the messaging around the economy was not where it should be going into 2026, and that the party as a whole was not really solidified in that messaging about the economy, especially when it came to all of this blame on the previous administration," Holmes said.

Trump's former campaign advisers have claimed that the president has previously made gains in convincing people he has an understanding of improving the economy. But now things have changed.

"The other thing they said was that it was a lot easier to run when President Trump himself wasn't in power. When you are running against something, you were saying, you can change something," she added. "Now he is facing the same exact circumstances that President Biden was facing at the time, and handling it the exact same way, which, of course, is raising a lot of questions as to where Republicans are going to go from here."