Who Is And Isn't Gonna Change Their Minds This Midterm?

We continue to hear a broad spectrum of pollsters and analysts telling us that a wave midterm election favoring Democrats is less than a month away, and most data points are clearly trending in that direction.  I caution that we never know what kind of electorate is actually gonna show up on the first Tuesday in November so my confidence level is never gonna be higher than a 5 out of 10 going into elections this year or for the foreseeable future.  I'll get to my formal Senate and gubernatorial race predictions in the weeks ahead, but before I do, I thought I'd single out a half dozen voting demographics that I predict are most likely to switch partisan allegiances next month in the largest numbers and in the smallest margins.

Most Likely To Swing Toward Democrats

#1. Hispanics

Arguably the biggest misjudgment by the Democratic Party in the last decade is that Hispanic voters were poised to behave more like black voters than Caucasian voters in the voting booth, remaining a loyal and unwavering Democratic constituency rather than integrating ideologically into the majority culture of the moment the way that most previous immigrant groups have.  As it turns out, people of Latin and Spanish descent were just as incapable of assessing the risk potential of putting a malignant narcissist in the most powerful position in the world as populations with ancestry from northern Europe.

The transformation of Hispanic voters into a swing constituency occurred more quickly than I expected, but it's hard to deny we're there now and likely will be in the cycles to come.  It was crazy to think Hispanics wouldn't become a swing constituency given the swings from left to right and back in Latin American political leadership over the decades, or for that matter, the visible integration we see between Latin and Anglo culture in pretty much every nook and cranny of the country.  Just yesterday, I walked past a homecoming party in central Iowa taking photos of one another, with three white guys who had three Latin girls on their arms.  Seeing this was a good anecdotal reminder that the left's "BIPOC" framing of the victimization pecking order was out of touch with the demographic reality.

With that said, it seems as though Trump's maximalist deportation strategy has touched a nerve with Hispanic voters, who feel personally singled out in a way that should have been obvious to them at this point two years ago.  Polling of Hispanics nationally and in Hispanic-heavy battleground states and districts seems to confirm a double-digit swing back to Democrats is likely forthcoming next month.  And yet, polling is not showing a Hispanic advantage as lopsided as we saw as recently as 2018.  A significant chunk of the 2018 Hispanic vote appears to have more decisively realigned regardless of Trump's aggression lopsidedly impacting their communities. Keep in mind that even with the elevated Hispanic margins of 2018, Beto O'Rourke, Andrew Gillum, and Bill Nelson still lost.  That puts into question how consequential it will be if Democrats merely split the difference in 2026 between their 2018 and 2024 margins among Hispanics.  Still, any good Democratic night on November 3 will require robust shifts in the Hispanic vote, and I think that, for the most part, they're gonna get it.

#2.  Young Voters

Besides the neck-snapping swing by Hispanic voters toward Trump two years ago, the other big story that Democratic operatives finally discovered a month before the 2024 Presidential election was that young voters were also swinging decisively in Trump's direction.  It was mostly young men, including young men of color, but also included a measurable share of young women.  It was broadly underestimated how dissatisfaction with the status quo among the most formative demographic of voters would manifest itself into alignment with the opposition, no matter how grotesque that opposition happened to be.

The same principle is likely to lead to a seismic snapback by these same voters two years later as most of Gen Z is even more dissatisfied with the American status quo in 2026 under Trump than the 2024 status quo under Biden.  I'm putting an asterisk here, however, in that I think the pecking order of movement by young voters toward Democrats will have a steep gradient.  Young men of color will likely show the biggest shift toward Democrats.  Young women are already heavily Democrat and will continue to be, but by even sharper margins.  White young men, however, will likely only contribute to a hypothetical Democratic midterm victory by staying home in disproportionate numbers rather than swinging toward Democrats.  

The same cultural forces that drove young white men to both Trump and to personal crisis in 2024--isolation, underachievement, and radicalization from Big Tech's algorithms--have not improved and may in fact have worsened.  Trump's message drove them to the polls in a vote of no confidence two years ago.  His failure to rectify their concerns are more likely to demoralize them out of participation than signing on for what the Democrats are peddling.

#3.  Farmers and Farm Workers

It was estimated that 85% of American farmers went for Donald Trump in 2024, choosing to believe he would not pursue his loudly and constantly stated campaign promises that would unquestionably imperil their livelihoods.  The gamble didn't work as Trump went full steam ahead with policies that has submerged the American farm economy into the worst recession since the mid-80s farm crisis.  The mid-80s farm crisis altered farmer voting behavior in neck-snapping ways.  Among other things, it led to Iowa becoming Michael Dukakis's second-best state in 1988 and turning every single legislative seat in southwestern Minnesota blue back in 1986.

We're not gonna see anything like that in 2026.  Farmers and adjacent farm-industry workers will remain overwhelmingly Republican this year, with most of them confident that bottomless federal welfare checks will insulate them from any and all self-immolating choices they make in the voting booth.  Nonetheless, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska Senate races would not all be competitive this year if Trump exhaustion among agriculture workers wasn't a real thing.  Perhaps the Republican lean of the farm vote shifts this year back to what we saw in 2014 rather than 2024.  

The rural vote has always fascinated me most on electoral county maps, and this year I look forward to seeing how counties in the American heartland compare this year to 2024 or 2022.  Will the precinct data look more like Kamala Harris's 2024 results in Nebraska or more like Dan Osborn's 2024 results in Nebraska?  If it looks more like the Dan Osborn results map as I suspect, that will make for a good night for Democrats.

 

Pivoting to the inverse, here are the voting demographics I suspect will be the most static in their alignment with the GOP this midterm.

#1.  Blue Collar and Union Workers

For generations, the Democrats kept conservative blue-collar workers in their coalition by being the most populist on economic issues while Republicans repeatedly played to type by aligning themselves with the priorities of big business.  In many ways, Trump has held serve with prioritizing business interests, but he's challenged them on the very issues that, rightly or wrongly, feel most sincere and most tangible to blue-collar workers.  And nothing that today's Democrats are saying or doing seems likely to alter this perception.

Blue-collar workers have long believed that their negotiating power in the workplace is enhanced if they're not competing with immigrants for jobs.  Because of Trump, there's far fewer immigrants competing with them for jobs.  They're not unhappy about this.  And while they may grumble about the inflation that's come in large part because of Trump's tariffs, they still see them as a net positive and believe they will work as intended in forcing domestic investment into a production economy that will benefit themselves and their kids and grandkids.  Trump is serving up the exact template of policies that blue-collar workers have waited for and believe in their souls will be what's best for them and their communities.  Even if the evidence of these policies' effectiveness is not necessarily compelling, they still believe Trump is a fighter on their behalf and haven't seen enough fallout yet to lose faith in their convictions that strident protectionism is the best policy for American workers.

#2.  Jews

I suspect Jewish voters will be the only demographic that trends decisively more Republican this year than Democratic.  Fortunately for Democrats, they're small in number and mostly concentrated in blue cities in blue states, with limited reach in battleground districts.  There are some isolated examples of where a slumping Jewish vote will be a problem for Democrats though, as we were reminded of last week when former Florida Democratic Congressman Peter Deutsch endorsed current Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz's Republican challenger because he doesn't want Democrats to control the House of Representatives due to their escalating anti-Israel posture.  Moskowitz already has his back to the wall this year with his south Florida district getting gerrymandered decisively redder.  If you consider that Deutsch is not likely on an island in being an older Jewish voter incensed by Democrats' shift against Israel, that's gonna make Moskowitz's job much harder along with David Jolly or anybody else with the unenviable task of trying to win statewide in Florida as a Democrat.

Deutsch endorsed Trump two years ago as well so he probably represents the core pro-Israel Jewish voter that the Democrats lost a few cycles ago, but millions of less hawkish Jewish voters are undoubtedly at their wit's end with the open displays of antisemitism and acts of violence against Jews taking place since October 7, 2023. Given that we're very likely to see more in the weeks before the election, the prospect of a modest Jewish voter realignment becomes more foreseeable.  The inherent liberalism of the majority of Jewish voters--along with equally virulent antisemitism coming from the political right--will likely keep the bottom from fully falling out for Democrats in the cycles ahead, but the demographic's loyalty to the Democratic Party is absolutely gonna be put to the test as the Democratic base voters increasingly consolidate their support around the Palestinians.

#3.  Evangelicals

It's ironic that Jewish voters are likely to become more Republican out of resistance to the holy war being waged against them while evangelical Christian voters will continue to align with both Israel and Republicans because of their desire to accelerate the pace of the holy war, believing it will bring about the Rapture and their own ascent to heaven.  It's the ultimate example of politics making the strangest bedfellows.

Ultimately though, for a demographic whose reputation is tireless adherence to their allegedly rigid principles, evangelicals are in reality the most moldable and transactional voters in the country.  Any given cycle, wherever the Republican Party needs them to be, they're gonna be.  If George W. Bush's Republican Party needs evangelicals to be on board with waging war against Iraq, evangelicals will be there for him.  If Donald Trump's 2016 Republican Party needs evangelicals to wash their hands of supporting war in Iraq, evangelicals will be there for him.  If Donald Trump's 2026 Republican Party needs evangelicals to do a heel turn and be back on board for waging war on Iran, evangelicals will be there for him.  If Donald Trump were to hypothetically change his position and support allowing transgender males on their daughter's sports team, I have no doubt whatsoever that evangelicals would find a way to get to the position that the leader of the Republican Party endorses.

This is why I can't see how the seemingly workable math in picking off Senate seats in South Carolina or Mississippi is ultimately able to work even in a best-case scenario.  The majority of the white vote in both states is evangelical, and if they're convinced that God himself is guiding the political party they're aligned with, then they're not gonna be movable under any circumstance.  The only question is whether evangelical turnout declines enough for Democrats to sneak a few wins on the edges, but it's highly unlikely it's gonna happen in any major statewide races.

 

Those are the macro voting trends I'm expecting to see next month.  My formal predictions for every Senate and gubernatorial races are coming in the next few weeks.