Politics

Senate stares down an all-nighter to approve a ‘Plan B’ budget Trump spurned

Published

2 years ago

February 21, 2025

Senate Republicans are embarking Thursday afternoon on an amendment free-for-all expected to keep lawmakers voting through the night — all to green-light a fiscal blueprint President Donald Trump doesn’t favor. The budget measure the Senate is on track to adopt at the end of an arduous “vote-a-rama” sets a framework for a party-line package of energy policy…
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Politics

Poll: Republican voters want their party to talk more about the economy

Published

29 minutes ago

November 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans don’t think their party is focused enough on their biggest issue.

The economy — and specifically the cost of living — is far and away voters’ top concern, and new results from The POLITICO Poll reveal a warning sign for the GOP just hours before polls close: There’s a stark disconnect between what Republican midterm voters want their party to focus on and what they say the party actually is focusing on.

Nearly half of Americans — 47% — say cost of living and affordability are among the issues that matter most when they are deciding how to vote. That includes a 44% plurality of Republican midterm voters and 54% of Democratic midterm voters. The economy and jobs ranked second.

But when asked which issues matter most to their party, a 39% plurality of Republican voters cited immigration and deportations as a top priority for the GOP. Just 23% said the party’s top priority was cost of living and affordability — a 21-point gap from the share who said it was a top voting concern.

Nearly two-thirds of Republican voters also say they want to hear more about the economy and cost of living from their party.

It’s a clear signal that voters wanted the GOP to stay focused on affordability, even as some Republicans and President Donald Trump continued to lean into culture war attacks — from transgender athletes in women’s sports to calling Texas’ Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico “tofu Talarico.”

In recent speeches, Trump has often prioritized other topics — including cultural issues, the Reflecting Pool and, yes, GOP candidates’ rear ends — over the economy.

If Democrats win the midterms, “you will have a 1929 style economic depression,” Trump told a crowd in Daytona Beach, Florida this Friday. He added immediately after: “Because when you hear men in women’s sports, when you hear transgender, when you hear about — you know, open borders and all — everything they have is crazy.”

Meanwhile, there isn’t the same dissonance on Democrats’ side: A plurality of Democratic voters pointed to cost of living and affordability as a top priority for their party, the poll found.

The findings expose a potential messaging vulnerability for Republicans heading into Election Day: Even among voters planning to support the party, there is a perception that GOP leaders are not devoting enough attention to the cost of living concerns weighing most heavily on Americans. Trump’s own agenda — his tariffs and his decision to involve the U.S. in a war with Iran — has roiled the country and key races that could determine balance of power in Congress.

“Well, I don’t think it’s good for Republicans,” Republican strategist Jeff Burton said of the poll results. “But it makes sense, because most of the Republicans’ campaign message hasn’t evolved around that and what affordability and cost of living really is. And it’s hard to tout it when every street corner has gas prices $2 or more than they were just a few months ago.”

The survey, conducted by PF Global the weekend before the election, underscores the messaging challenge that has dogged Republican candidates throughout the cycle.

Candidates in races up and down the ballot have zeroed in on economic talking points: Campaigns and outside groups have spent more than $800 million on ads focusing on affordability, including roughly $401 million from Democratic-aligned groups and $311 million from Republican-aligned groups, according to a POLITICO analysis of primarily TV ad data from the tracking firm AdImpact.

Still, the GOP has struggled to effectively convince voters that it is doing enough to fix an issue voters also hold them responsible for.

Some Republican strategists think that disconnect comes down to one person: Trump.

“I mean, look at what he’s doing today,” said longtime Arizona Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin on the eve of the election. ”He’s going in front of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. He’s drawing attention back to his monument exhibition.”

“It’s phenomenal how off message he is, and how that has burdened the party with his narrative, which doesn’t come close to talking about what Americans care about,” Coughlin continued. “I mean, he’s pretty much said time and time again, he doesn’t care. You know, he thinks affordability is a hoax.”

At the end of last week, Trump made three campaign stops in Florida, South Carolina and Ohio. Across all of those speeches, he spent just over 10% of his time talking about the economy and the cost of living, according to a Blue Light News analysis.

That’s significantly less than the amount of time he spent talking about culture war issues and other topics unrelated to the affordability crisis. He spent more minutes advocating for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to resign and zeroing in on the Dan Sullivan ballot controversy in Alaska than he did talking about prices and inflation, for example.

Guns, transgender issues, and renaming landmarks took up more of his focus than taxes, tariffs, and drug prices combined.

“President Trump has delivered on his promise to provide relief to hardworking families, securing more than $82 billion in individual tax relief from No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, the Enhanced Senior Deduction, and No Tax on Car Loan Interest,” White House spokesperson Matthew Middleton said in a statement.

RNC spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said “Democrats’ far-left policies will decimate” Republicans’ progress and that Trump “has criss crossed the nation to drive voters to the polls to support our Republican candidates who will build on these achievements over the next two years.”

The Blue Light News Poll suggests there is relatively little appetite among Republican midterm voters for more discussion of some of the cultural issues that have featured prominently in Trump’s political messaging.

Just 10% of Republican midterm voters said they want to hear more about “wokeness and DEI” from the party, when asked to select two issues from a list of options. And only 6% of Republican midterm voters and 5% of Democratic midterm voters identified race, DEI and “wokeness” as among their top voting concerns.

By contrast, 64% of Republican midterm voters said they want to hear more about the economy and cost of living and 42% said the same about immigration and border security.

The results also underscore just how thoroughly the economy has dominated this election cycle, relegating issues that played prominent roles in past elections — including abortion rights and transgender issues — to the sidelines.

“If Republican voters actually feel that their number one issue isn’t being addressed, then that is definitely going to affect turnout,” said Burton, the GOP strategist. “And the worry could be that, ‘okay, they turn out, but do they actually vote Democrat or split their ticket?’”

Politics

The affordability election that teaches Democrats nothing

Published

7 hours ago

November 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans have a trust problem on affordability, and Democrats are poised to inherit it.

If Democrats do as well tonight as polls suggest, everyone knows the two reasons why: affordability and President Donald Trump. For a year now, The Blue Light News Poll has consistently found that half of Americans rank the cost of living as one of their top three issues — and in a series of surveys this month, most Democratic voters say their vote is more about Trump than the candidates on the ballot.

But our polling also reveals the challenges for a Democratically-controlled Congress. Democrats have opened up a strong advantage on affordability, but voters who are demanding action may quickly turn on a party that finds itself torn between competing priorities.

Much of the Democratic coalition is approaching the midterms as a referendum on Trump, meaning a victory tonight would offer few clear lessons about what should come next.

Democratic voters’ two biggest demands — drive down the cost of living and stop Trump — can also conflict, especially when it comes time to govern. Asked to choose between passing bipartisan legislation to reduce the cost of living or avoid giving the Trump administration any wins, Democrats are not united. Twenty-nine percent would prefer to sacrifice progress on affordability to help their 2028 chances.

Here is what a year of The Blue Light News Poll tells us about the electorate heading into the midterms — and what comes next.

Other issues have risen and fallen, but the cost of living has remained in a tier of its own. Even as global instability rose in the spring, roughly half of Americans still ranked the cost of living among the country’s top three issues. The central test of the midterms has barely changed.

Republicans’ problem isn’t just that voters are focused on cost of living – it’s that they increasingly trust Democrats to bring it down. Over the last year, Democrats have solidified support from their own base and made small gains among voters who went for Trump or sat out in 2024. That alone was enough to widen their advantage from 2 points to 17 points.

Over half of voters supporting a Democratic candidate say their vote is more about Trump and his performance than the candidates themselves. That sentiment is particularly pronounced among progressives and those who have felt the squeeze of rising grocery and gas prices.This reveals a risk for Democrats. Learning how to beat Trump is less valuable than learning how to run candidates with popular platforms of their own — particularly with only two years left before he is no longer the president.

Over the past year, we tested Democratic voters on a series of trade-offs between standing on principle and risking control of the House or the fight against Trump. They agreed on one thing: Lying to win is a bridge too far. Beyond that, Democratic voters are often split between principle and pragmatism. A narrow victory could sharpen the party’s progressive-moderate divide, but the larger question for a Democratic Congress would be how hard to fight Trump’s agenda.

Before the 2024 presidential election, PF Global’s polling showed a dynamic that might sound familiar. Trump voters believed nearly every part of American life was getting worse. Now, under a Republican administration, their outlook has brightened — while Harris voters have grown markedly gloomier. The reversal shows how quickly partisan control shapes public perception. If Democrats retake Congress, they may gain not only the power to address voters’ problems, but the burden of solving them.

Seb Wride is the head of polling at PF Global, the London-based firm that runs The Blue Light News Poll.

Politics

‘We forgot what it’s like to be populist’: Republicans see Trump’s 2024 crumbling

Published

7 hours ago

November 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans’ 2024 coalition is cracking in real time.

President Donald Trump roared back into office two years ago after making major gains with young voters and Americans of color. Now those key groups appear to be moving away from him amid an unpopular Iran war and his lagging approval ratings, according to new results from the Blue Light News Poll conducted by PF Global.

Roughly 9% of Trump 2024 voters plan to cast their ballot for a Democrat this year, compared with just over 2% of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ voters who now plan to back Republicans.

Underlying that shift is a lack of enthusiasm from two groups central to Trump’s win: Latinos and young people.

At the end of last year, 56% of Hispanic Trump voters identified as MAGA Republicans. As of this October, just 37% still do, revealing a frustration with the label that denotes some of the president’s most loyal supporters.

At the end of last year, 50% of young Trump voters ages 20 to 29 said they were certain to vote. As of this October, just 38% say this.

It’s an alarming sign for the party heading into election night, as Republicans race to save deep-red seats across the map and juice turnout among the MAGA base to avoid unthinkable losses.

The scramble on the campaign trail reveals the extent of the concern. Speaker Mike Johnson is making one final campaign swing through South Texas on Tuesday, where Republicans have been racing to assuage Hispanic voters’ concerns over mass deportations and the economy. GOP officials are fretting about the impact of lingering inflation and high prices on working-class voters of all races, including young men they’re scared to death won’t show up to the polls in strong enough numbers.

They’re also pouring millions of last-minute dollars into a series of southern states with large Black populations whose voters appear to be surging to the polls in record numbers — like Mississippi, South Carolina and even Louisiana — to shore them up.

“The coalition that we built under Trump doesn’t fucking exist anymore,” said Gina Swoboda, a longtime Trump ally and former chair of the Arizona Republican Party.

The White House has been trying to stem the bleeding within the Trump coalition of voters: The president has barnstormed a series of largely red states and is holding a flurry of tele-rallies in the final days.

“Two years ago, Trump and other Republicans had a play with those voters because they were frustrated with Biden and Harris; two years later, things might be less bad than they were two years ago — but they’re still concerned,” said Scott Walker, the Republican former governor of Wisconsin and 2016 presidential candidate who now leads the conservative Young America’s Foundation.

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said Trump has “crisscrossed the country” campaigning for Republicans and drawing a contrast with “the radical-left Democrats.”

“President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party,” Bis added.

Natalie Baldassarre, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement that the “Trump administration has delivered on its promises to the American people” and the president “has barnstormed the nation to tout these achievements.”

GOP Latino voters start to shed the ‘MAGA’ label

The durability of Republicans’ 2024 coalition is a crucial test for the party’s future. Republicans’ inroads with young, Latino and Black voters propelled the party into a trifecta of power in Washington, and keeping those gains will be key to the GOP’s bid to hold onto power. A regression in support from those groups could send Republicans back to the drawing board as they craft a winning formula for the 2028 presidential election.

Top Republicans are incredibly worried about losing their grip on Hispanic voters, as they try to stave off a bloodbath in South Texas, losses across key Florida House seats and more.

There’s been a 19-point drop between last November and this October of Hispanic Trump voters who identify as MAGA, part of Trump’s core base, according to the poll. While two-thirds of these voters still intend to vote for Republicans in the midterm election, their dissatisfaction with Trump’s agenda is clear.

The survey found that Hispanic Trump voters are more likely than non-Hispanic Trump voters to have voted for Democrats in the past decade — and think the Trump administration’s mass deportations are too aggressive.

Just one election season ago, Trump romped to victory in South Texas over Hispanic voters’ concerns about the border and the economy; Texas Republicans redrew the congressional map last year to make seats in South Texas even more favorable.

But the Trump administration’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement, championed by senior White House official Stephen Miller, has sent Hispanics swinging back, according to four Hill Republicans, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. It’s harmed what once seemed like prime opportunities to unseat Democratic Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, while endangering GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz in a newly redrawn district the president won by 18 points in 2024. A group of Hispanic GOP lawmakers have continued to raise concerns directly to Johnson and senior White House officials.

“Would I feel better if gas were $2.50 instead of $3.30? Yeah. But good luck convincing a guy things are getting better while ICE is picking up his uncle,” said one Texas Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

The White House in response provided statements from Texas GOP Reps. Pat Fallon, Brandon Gill, Ronny Jackson and Lance Gooden defending Miller.

“Hispanic Americans will continue to see that the Republican Party is fighting for the issues that matter most to their families, and Stephen Miller is absolutely leading the charge,” Jackson said.

Senior Hill Republicans have been trying to salvage the imperiled South Texas House seats in a flurry of visits over the past few weeks. But they privately believe they reached the point days ago where no amount of money would stave off the impending disaster.

“It’s the economy,” said Daniel Garza, the president of the Koch-backed LIBRE initiative and a Texas-based Republican strategist. Republicans’ vote share of Latino voters has increased steadily over the last decade, Garza noted, which is a long-term win for the party. But he says independent Latino voters have grown disillusioned since Trump’s return to office, especially on the economy. “I think they had higher expectations,” he added.

Young Republicans aren’t certain they’ll vote

One year ago, half of young Trump voters were certain they’d vote in this year’s election.

But this past spring, that number dropped sharply: the percentage of young people who’d backed Trump who were certain they’d vote dropped by 11 points.

As early as March, shortly after the war in Iran began, young GOP supporters began to voice their frustrations that the president had broken a core campaign promise. Other Republicans predicted that if the war lasted longer than a few weeks, its consequences would come back to bite the party at the ballot box.

That chorus included influential voices like podcaster Joe Rogan, who has significant influence over young men. He had hosted both Trump and Vice President JD Vance on his show in the lead up to the 2024 election.

Some Republicans are concerned that the big-tent team they formed just two years ago has been irreparably splintered — and their lack of a strong affordability message is to blame.

“We forgot that we’re a populist party,” said one Republican operative in Florida who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the state of the GOP coalition. Areas like South Florida, and Miami-Dade County in particular, were central to Trump’s diverse, big-tent party: the president flipped the longtime Democratic county for the GOP for the first time since 1988 in 2024.

“We went from being a very populist, scrappy kind of kumbaya party to this kind of almost elitist Republican Party,” they added.

But even as Democrats see the prospect of significant wins and a crumbling GOP coalition, some warn they, too, haven’t found a winning message they can build on in future cycles.

“It’s like being in a relationship: You break up with someone and you have a little distance, and then you start romanticizing them,” said Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist and veteran of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaigns. “I think [Democrats] all have recognized, very much in the summer, just to move out of the way. Because we’re watching voters being like, ‘I want out of this relationship with Trump.’”