The Republicans are erasing Trump. The president is now Mr 2.4 per cent

Updated October 20, 2026 — 10:56am,first published 10:40am

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Of the $US1 billion spent by the Republican campaign apparatus since September 1 of this year, just $US11 million of that had gone towards ads promoting the candidate’s relationship with Donald Trump.

Candidates themselves are telling us exactly what they think their voters want to hear. The president’s unpopularity is changing the Republican Party.

In battleground seats, 41 of 62 Republican House and Senate candidates have distanced themselves from Trump in some way recently.

Trump held a midterm convention in Dallas last month where he expected all the battleground Senate candidates to speak or appear, but a third avoided the event.

In most midterm elections, the party that holds the White House hides away from the president. Midterms typically bring a shift to the opposition – such is the nature of America’s everlasting dissatisfaction with anyone in power.

‘A referendum on the president’: What’s at stake in these US midterms?

But in Trump’s first midterm as president in 2018, candidates bucked the historical trend, with 27 per cent of their advertising demonstrating their loyalty to the party’s unquestioned leader. This time, there has been a clear shift – that figure has crawled to just 2.4 per cent.

For much of the past decade, one of the core facts of American politics was that Trump himself was the source of the Republican Party’s power, even in challenging national environments.

He still holds unilateral control........

© Brisbane Times