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As the past is often prologue, much of the GOP is thinking today about the pounding the party took in 2006, the last time a Republican president led his party into the midterms for the second time. Older Republicans try not to let 1986 enter their heads. (The GOP lost eight Senate seats that year.)
A truth bolt about polling from The Washington Post on Friday gave some hope to the mainstream, especially in states that voted for President Trump in 2024. The Post revealed that its pollsters had made 85,000 calls and sent 50,000 text messages in Kansas seeking to measure support for Senator Roger Marshall, who is being challenged by Democrat Adam Hamilton.
While 32% of Kansas Democrats answered the calls and the texts from pollsters, only 12% of the GOP voters did. The Post conceded that these numbers provide “good reason to suspect the poll overestimates Democratic candidates’ support.”
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That concession about the reality of polling in 2026 should give every analyst pause before citing “the polls.”
There isn’t great public data on which either party can rely, but there is history. For the GOP, the year most analogous to 2026 is 2006, and that’s scary. (The electorate is so different from 1986 that if it rhymes at all, it’s a reach.)
In 2006, Republicans under President George W. Bush took a “thumpin’” — W’s term for the beat down of the GOP that year — so it is rational to consider the results from 20 years ago as a clear and present danger signal for Republicans.
There are, however, some significant differences between this year and 2006, when the GOP lost a net six Senate seats and 30 House seats.
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GDP in Q3 of 2006 was reported at just 1.6% in October of that year. (It was revised up to 2% later.) It is more than twice that this year, clocking in October at a very healthy 3.4%. Republicans can rightly point to an economy in rapid takeoff mode and voters feel that, especially the newly employed.
Inflation in 2006 was at 2.1%, and it’s at 3.7% now. Gas was $2.25 a gallon then and $4.20 today. (National average in both cases.) Those numbers hurt the GOP candidates across the country.
As do housing costs. In October 2006, the average U.S. interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was approximately 6.36%. It’s 7.25% today. Younger voters looking to buy their first home or “move-up” don’t know that the era of 3%-4% 30-year mortgage rates was an aberration. They just know they missed that window.
The rational voter knows the hike in the cost of gas and the inflation is because President Trump is taking on the fanatics atop the Islamic Republic of Iran, our country’s sworn enemy of 47 years. Every president since Bill Clinton has warned the ayatollahs that force was on the table if it did not cease its nuclear program, which it has refused to do even after the one night of strikes that obliterated the program in 2025, the strike deemed “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
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But, the rogue regime didn’t get the message and immediately began rebuilding its shattered nuke program while continuing its support of terrorists around the region. Iran is responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 Americans since the Islamic revolution of 1979, and is the greatest state sponsor of terror on the planet. If that regime can be cowed or collapsed, it will be President Trump’s greatest accomplishment.
The biggest difference from 20 years ago, and one reason for Republicans to believe 2026 may not be a repeat of 2006? Twenty years ago, the U.S. had been at war for five years in Afghanistan and three in Iraq. October 2006 saw more than 100 U.S. military service memebrs killed in Iraq and 10 in Afghanistan. Contemporary reporting described it as one of the deadliest months of the war.
The U.S. and its warriors and its military families were paying a very high price in 2006, and it did not seem that we were winning. The U.S. is decisively winning in the present conflict in Iran though it has not yet decisively won the battle. Only partisans of the left deny the blockade is bringing Iran to its knees. Twenty-three service members have paid the ultimate price since February. The cancer in the region for 47 years is being ripped out and the cost is high.
Those are the statistical comparisons for two Republican presidents in their sixth year in office, though, of course, President Trump’s terms are non-consecutive. The good news for the GOP in the comparison is that President Bush’s second term got off to a terrible start in 2005 with the controversy over Terri Schiavo, Hurricane Katrina and the failed effort to reform Social Security.
President Trump’s first 22 months back saw the wide open border shuttered and kept sealed, a massive tax hike averted, additional tax cuts made for tips and overtime and long overdue hikes in defense spending. Crime is down as the feds crack down and the war on police is over. DEI is DOA, and Dems continue to pursue policies considered extreme by the mainstream, including transgender craziness in sports for kids and objections to voter ID.
Then there is “candidate quality” then and now. Democratic Senate winners in 2006 included James Webb (USMC war hero), a young Sherrod Brown in a still blue Ohio and John Tester, who was authentically Montana.
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This year they are running DSA’s Troy Jackson in Maine, extremist Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and scandal-plagued Mary Peltola in Alaska. Not sure what to call James Talarico, but he’s a very different candidate than, say, Bob Casey Jr., who beat Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania in 2006. (Sherrod Brown is 20 years older and trying a comeback from being fired by Ohio voters two years ago. Brown is looking and sounding like Joe Biden in 2022, and voters know it is a six-year term.)
On the spending front: Total midterm spending was roughly $2.8 billion in 2006. The numbers are not in yet for this cycle, but the estimates are that approximately $4 billion will be spent and that the GOP has a significant advantage.
President Bush made 16 campaign appearances in October 2006. President Trump hit 30 or more.
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GOPers should prep for another 2006, but should not be surprised if the results are not that bad. Senators Collins, Husted, Marshall and Sullivan have run great races. Challengers Mike Rogers in Michigan and Michele Tafoya in Minnesota are five-star candidates running against zero-star Ds.
Redistricting is the last wrinkle. A “big blue wave” could wash out the gains the redistricting push brought, but then again, voters are much more aware of political issues today than ever before.
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“Trust the people” was Churchill’s phrase, which he got from his father. So we all should.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
