Welcome to Washington: Is the Trump Coalition Dead?

The multiracial, working-class coalition that helped power President Trump’s 2024 victory is set to turn viciously against his party this year, as Hispanic voters and those who make less than $100,000 a year are abandoning the GOP. If those trends are not reversed, Republicans will be in for their most bruising midterm election in decades. Welcome to Washington, where Congress has little on its plate for the remainder of the year, freeing up lawmakers to begin campaign season early. Once the government funding deal for the Department of Homeland Security is completed — in the next two weeks — the president’s legislative agenda will essentially be over, given there is little appetite for his $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks and the Republicans cannot come to an agreement on any kind of health care reform. In 2024, Mr. Trump became the first non-incumbent Republican president to win the popular vote in nearly 40 years thanks to the improbable coalition he assembled. Middle class and working class Americans who long backed Democrats flipped to support him. Hispanics moved toward the GOP in significant numbers. Young voters similarly swung significantly to the right. Today, that coalition is clearly on life support. On Saturday, Republicans lost a special election for a state senate seat in Texas in a stunning upset. Democrats won the seat by 15 points in a district Mr. Trump had won by 17 points in 2024. The district is more diverse than the nation as a whole, with 51 percent of district residents being white and 49 percent being non-white, according to the most recent analysis by the Texas Legislative Council. Most importantly, the Hispanic-American population in the district is nearly 50 percent higher compared to the entire United States, which has a Hispanic population of about 20 percent. The state senate district which Democrats flipped on Saturday is 29 percent Hispanic. The district is also slightly less educated than the nation as a whole, with 35 percent of residents having graduated college compared to 38 percent of Americans nationally. The new state senator-elect, Taylor Rehmet, ran an unabashedly populist campaign as an Air Force veteran and union leader. He proposed statewide rent stabilization, repealing “anti-union laws,” and ending “voucher schemes” in Texas’s education system. Mr. Trump seems to have already recognized the danger his party faces in November. Asked about the Texas results, the president told reporters on Sunday that the election could be chalked up to the history of sitting president’s parties losing special elections. “Things like that happen,” the president told reporters. “I’m not on the ballot, so you don’t know whether or not it’s transferable.” He says history shows that presidents — Democrats or Republicans — will suffer embarrassing setbacks in the two years after first taking office. His fellow Republicans, however, are warning that the Texas result should be a flashing red warning sign for their party. “The results from [the state senate race] are a wake-up call for Republicans across Texas. Our voters cannot take anything for granted,” Texas’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, wrote on X after the results were announced. Governor Ron DeSantis offered a similar analysis. A “swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed. Republicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the midterms,” Mr. DeSantis wrote on X on Sunday. It isn’t just this one result in Texas that should have Republicans worried. New polling results conducted by the Argument, shows that the very people who took a chance on Mr. Trump a little more than a year ago are already jumping ship. That polling shows a significant shift away from Mr. Trump among every income group, but the most dramatic revulsion comes from those making less than $100,000 annually. Among those who make less than $25,000 a year, Mr. Trump is now 20 points underwater despite winning the cohort by two points in 2024. Americans who make between $25,000 and $50,000 a year also backed the president by two points, though he is now 15 points underwater with the group. For those who make between $50,000 and $100,000 a year Mr. Trump is now 13 points underwater, even though they supported him by a one-point margin in 2024.

Welcome to Washington: Is the Trump Coalition Dead?

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