This piece is possible because paying subscribers to Strength In Numbers have supported our original, independent polling project that has gathered data every month since May 2025. If you want to get this kind of data-driven reporting in your inbox every week — plus get first access to the full poll and crosstabs each month — a paid subscription is the best way to support it.
The initial reviews of the Republicans’ midterm convention — codenamed “Trumpapalooza” — are in, and they are not pretty. Politico reported on the first day of the meeting that one on-the-ground attendee said “the vibes are very bad.” One anonymous person close to the White House said they hope people don’t pay attention at all.
In his headline slot Wednesday night, President Donald Trump pleaded with the American people to treat the midterms as a referendum on his presidency:
I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot, just one more time, because if we lose you’re going to lose your border, your tax cuts, your safety and security, your wealth — your country is going to hell. You will be going through hell just like two years ago.
If you’re puzzled by the logic of holding a national convention featuring a president with an approval rating of just 35%, you’re not alone. The idea was Trump’s. As the president said Wednesday night, “When I’m on the ticket, Republicans always do very well. We won the presidency three times we won. We won it big, and we also won everything else because whatever it is — people came and we won the Senate.”
Republican strategists say that the convention will help the GOP by increasing turnout among Republican voters who have so far this cycle been less likely to say they’ll come out this November. As put by Liam Donovan, a GOP analyst, here:
(I’m not trying to pick on Liam, his tweet was just the first one I saw this morning when I logged on to find one.)
The logic here is not obviously flawed a priori. In poll after poll this cycle, the voters who are likeliest to turn out have been giving Democrats a higher margin in the generic ballot. So it stands to reason that activating lower-turnout voters will help the Republican Party.
The problem with GOP thinking is that they leapfrog from this correct point — Republicans are at a turnout disadvantage for November — to the argument that highlighting Trump’s record will be the thing to juice turnout. This is very likely the wrong conclusion, and we have the data to understand why. The logic “more Trump -> better GOP turnout” misunderstands (1) what the marginal Republican voters who put Trump in the White House wanted in 2024, and (2) how they feel about the president now.
The data on turnout and “Trumpapalooza”
For data, I have combined all eight of this year’s monthly Strength In Numbers/Verasight polls into one mega-poll. This gives over 11,000 interviews with self-reported registered voters everything from their most important issue, state vote choice in the midterms, approval of Trump overall and on a dozen issues, and their demographics and reported vote choice in 2024.
This mega-poll allows us to break down how voters feel about the current administration’s performance on their most important issues by (a) who they voted for in 2024 and (b) their stated likelihood to vote this November. With this we can directly test the theory that low-turnout Republicans will be activated by more Trump.
This is unlikely. According to our polling, voters who are less likely to turn out to vote are actually much less approving of Trump overall and on key issues. The graph below shows reported Trump approval and disapproval overall, on deportations, on inflation, and health care by all respondents’ stated vote intention for November:
This piece is possible because paying subscribers to Strength In Numbers have supported our original, independent polling project that has gathered data every month since May 2025. If you want to get this kind of data-driven reporting in your inbox every week — plus first access to the full poll and crosstabs each month — a paid subscription is the best way to support it.
