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A new poll shows Donald Trump’s presence on the campaign trail is motivating Democrats to vote out Republicans far more than Republicans to keep their own party in power. CNBC’s final All-America survey headed into the midterms finds that corruption has become voters’ top concern, even edging out high grocery and gas prices. Rural Texas Republicans furious about data centers could be chiefly responsible for Democrats winning the state’s marquee races for Senate and governor in November. And a Texas lawyer who donated more than $600,000 to Republican Ken Paxton in the primary is now throwing his support behind Democrat James Talarico.
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Donald Trump has been urging voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot this November. But a new poll from Politico suggests strategy is blowing up in his face in real time.
The poll, which was conducted by the London-based firm PF Global, found that approximately half of Democratic midterm voters say they’re casting their ballots primarily to oppose the president. Simultaneously only 38 percent of likely Republican voters say they’re voting mainly out of support for Trump. A plurality of Republican respondents, 48 percent, say they’re mostly motivated to vote in support of local candidates.
Typical Republican voters also don’t care if their candidates have blind loyalty to the president. Half of GOP respondents told pollsters they’re fine with their individual candidates criticizing Trump if that’s what they need to do in order to win. Majorities even urged the president to allow candidates to break with him over issues like affordability, the AI industry and the Iran war. Even self-described MAGA voters said as much.
Veteran Republican strategist Doug Heye told Politico that Trump is “100 percent motivating Democrats more than Republicans,” and observed that terms like “diesel” and “Iran” are now being discussed in everyday political conversations.
Trump’s endorsement may actually be helping a Democratic candidate more than the Republican getting the endorsement. Close to 70 percent of Democratic midterm voters say a Trump endorsement makes them less likely to back a candidate, while only 55 percent of Republicans said it makes them more likely to do so. That’s a significant reason why candidates like Iowa’s GOP Senate nominee, Ashley Hinson. have skipped out on Trump rallies and kept the White House at arm’s length.
Americans have seen this show before. Before the 1866 midterms, Andrew Johnson tried to rally voters with his “Swing Around the Circle” tour. but voters were so repelled by the president that they elected the opposition to veto-proof majorities, setting the stage for his impeachment in 1868. When a president makes a midterm election all about himself, he’d better make sure voters actually like him.
While we’re on the topic of voter anger, CNBC’s final All-America Economic Survey before the November 3 midterms found that voters are most motivated to show up to the polls because of government corruption, edging out affordability as the top issue in the 2026 election cycle.
Out of 1,000 registered voters in the survey, 36 percent of respondents — a plurality — said corruption was one of the most important issues facing America today. Grocery prices came in second at 34 percent. #3 was a tie between protecting democracy and gas prices, with 23 percent of respondents selecting each issue. The poll was conducted by both Democratic firm Hart Research Associates and Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies.
This poll’s findings aren’t too far off from other recent polls. A survey from the Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos found that roughly two-thirds of American voters believe Trump is using the power of his office to make himself wealthier. That’s a 10 percent jump from a September 2025 survey.
Democrats have spent months linking the high cost of living to what they characterize as the administration’s relentless, over-the-top self-dealing schemes. Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia recently observed on social media that Americans have spent more than $100 billion more on fuel alone since Trump launched his ill-advised war with Iran in February.
Their message seems to be hitting home with voters. Americans who said corruption was their number-one issue broke for Democrats by a 17-point margin when asked which party would tackle it more effectively. And an eyebrow-raising 93 percent of respondents said elected officials — including the president — shouldn’t be allowed to either own or trade stocks in companies that have been awarded federal contracts.
The authors of our Constitution were so worried about public officials cashing in on their positions that they wrote the Emoluments Clause into Article One, which prevents anyone holding a federal office from accepting gifts or money from foreign governments without getting Congress’ permission. They correctly understood that while a republic can survive bad policy decisions, it can’t survive a government that’s for sale to the highest bidder. Thankfully, voters appear to have not forgotten our founding principles.
In Texas, voters’ frustration with corrupt politicians is showing up even in far-flung rural areas. The Texas Tribune is reporting that rural Republican voters — who have been the sole reason for the GOP’s dominance in the Lone Star State — are in open revolt over their elected leaders allowing for the unbridled development of massive data centers and power lines across the once-tranquil Texas countryside.
Joie Miller is a lifelong Republican voter in Grimes County, Texas, where Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is building a gargantuan chip factory that he said will be 50 times larger than the Pentagon. After a nonstop parade trucks started driving past her in-laws’ home causing endless noise day and night, Miller told the Tribune she’s voting for Democrats for the first time in her life. She told the outlet that the GOP “doesn’t seem to care about us right now.”
She’s not alone. Both Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico and gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa are polling above 30 percent in rural Texas, smashing previous expectations. A late-September poll from Fox News showed Talarico at 42 percent from rural voters. For comparison, no statewide Democratic candidate in Texas has gotten more than 25% percent of the rural vote since Barack Obama was president.
Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who once pledged he would make Texas the “epicenter of AI development,” has since done a complete one-eighty, and paused all new data center development. But longtime Republican voter Michael Ellis, who lives less than a mile away from a new data center in rural Navarro County, told the Tribune that the governor actually “didn’t fix anything.” The latest polls show Hinojosa and Abbott are neck-and-neck.
Ninety years ago, FDR’s Rural Electrification Act built power lines across rural Texas so families could finally turn on lights. That act resulted in a generation of loyalty to Democrats. Now, power lines are going up again, but instead of farmers, the sole beneficiaries of this new infrastructure are server farms owned by billionaires. And all the residents who live nearby get the nonstop noise from trucks, endless droning from data centers and a bill. Texas voters seem to understand which party is standing up for them and which one is selling them out.
James Talarico’s burgeoning Senate campaign got yet another big boost this week from an unlikely source. Attorney Thomas J. Henry, who is one of the most widely known personal injury lawyers in Texas whose face is on billboards across the state, publicly endorsed Talarico in a video he posted to social media.
This is a massive pivot for Henry, who pur more than $600,000 behind Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton during his bitter primary fight against longtime incumbent Senator John Cornyn. Henry said he mainly supported Paxton because he felt Cornyn had been in the Senate for too long and that he wasn’t a fan of career politicians.
After he met with Talarico in person, Henry said he found the Democratic state representative’s approach to Texas issues “balanced, straightforward and honest.” He also pointed out that Paxton still hadn’t accepted Talarico’s invitation to debate him publicly. Henry announced his endorsement a day after Neil Bush – who is the brother of former President George W. Bush — announced that he cast his ballot for Talarico.
The last time Democrats won a Senate race in Texas was during the Reagan administration. Despite that long gap, election forecaster Decision Desk HQ now shows Talarico with a 57% chance of beating Paxton on November 3.
After President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964, he reportedly told an aide that night he’d just handed the South to Republicans for an entire generation. In Texas, that generation stretched to roughly four decades. Political coalitions aren’t permanent, but are simply built on who will deliver for residents. When both a prominent lawyer and a member of the Bush family are both publicly voting for a Democrat, you’re watching the ground actively shift under the feet of a party that assumed Texas was permanently in their corner.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. Before you go, please click the ❤️ and tap the restack button so we can get these stories in front of the people who really need them. Have a great weekend.
