The Outsider Perspective Issue 462 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Except for Holiday Inn Express alarm clocks. The hotel chain is serving up a new morning wake-up to guests: scent-based alarm clocks. It’s an international thing right now, but it could come stateside.

The New York Post reports, “Guests will be able to pick the wake-up scent of their choice, with options including Coffee, Bacon and Blueberry Muffin in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Nashi Pear in Japan, and Mango in Singapore and Thailand.”

The clock is designed to double as a diffuser, releasing the scents of one of your favorite foods when it goes off. The hotel chain hopes the scents make people happier when they wake up.

I’d just be hangry as soon as I woke up. We’ll see what the hotel learns with the limited test run outside the United States.

This week, I’m going to take a way too early look at the midterms. I’m working to set expectations now and review the key metrics to measure and track over the next few weeks, leading up to these off-year elections, and for next year – Links to follow.

Quick Hits:

An illegal immigrant busted running the school system. If you haven’t followed the shocking story out of Iowa, I’d recommend following it. The story of Ian Andre Roberts, a man with deportation orders and a fictional past, is stunning. He was commanding $400,000 a year with criminal charges, weapons, and more as Democrats elevated him every step of the way. None of the universities he claims to have degrees from have confirmed a word he’s said, nor have any other employers. He’s also been the subject of rumors swirling around his personal life, which have led to settlements. It took an ICE crackdown to end his charade.
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Where you can find me this week

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Democratic Fatalism Rules America’s Problems – Conservative Institute

Democrats Shut Down The Government And Their Brain – Conservative Institute

Trump Holds All The Shutdown Cards – Conservative Institute

A Way Too Early Look At Midterms

A year from now we’ll be staring down the barrel of midterms in the country. Once we’re past these off-year elections, the process for those races will begin in earnest, with some states having filing deadlines starting in January for primaries. I like taking these early looks to establish: 1) how to analyze where we’re headed, and 2) what will matter.

Although the government shutdown is a fascinating story, I’ve written two columns about it this week, I don’t see it mattering much in the midterms. As a general rule of thumb, in midterm years, you’d expect the party out of power in the White House to do well.

As such, I’d expect Democrats to be the odds-on favorite to retake the House. I’d place those odds above 80% right now. The Senate is a trickier thing to forecast, because we don’t know the candidates just yet. The fight over redistricting will also play into this, but it will have less impact than people think.

Here’s what matters in a midterm election for analysis purposes:

What is the president’s approval rating?
Where is the public leaning on the generic ballot?

For those who are new, here’s a brief explanation of what they are and why they’re essential.

Presidential approval rating

This is the percentage of Americans who say they approve of the way the sitting president is doing their job. Pollsters usually report it as a simple approve/disapprove number. Because presidential popularity often influences how people perceive the president’s party, the approval rating can indicate whether voters intend to reward or punish that party in the next election.

Historically, presidents with approval ratings below about 45% heading into midterms see their party lose seats, while higher approval ratings help blunt those losses.

Generic congressional ballot

Pollsters ask voters which party they would support in a hypothetical election for Congress — usually phrased as, “If the election for Congress were held today, would you vote for the Democrat or the Republican?” This question doesn’t name candidates; it measures overall partisan mood.

A sustained lead for one party on the generic ballot often foreshadows which party will control the House. It can signal the national climate for down-ballot races.

Weaving these two components together.

A president’s approval rating sets a ceiling for his party. Ideally, you want the party to outperform the president to give them an edge. But more frequently, it’s common for the party to either meet or underperform the president’s approval rating.

If you know the president’s approval rating and the generic ballot trend, you can get a reasonably accurate read on the direction the country is swinging in an election year. That’s why, in 2024, Biden’s low approval rating still mattered in that race, because Harris and other Democrats were trying to escape Biden’s dead weight (they couldn’t do that).

Where are we right now?

As usual, I stick with RealClearPolitics for the numbers. Nate Silver also has good charts. But I’m not a fan of how he accounts for the house effects of pollsters. I prefer RealClearPolitics’ dumb polling average approach, where everyone gets tossed in and averaged together.

It’s like forecasting a hurricane and looking at all the spaghetti model paths. Each poll tells a unique path. However, if you average everything out, you get that crucial black line, which usually gives you the most accurate view of where things are headed.

As of October 2, 2025 (when I’m writing):

Trump’s approval rating is 44.9% versus 53% disapproving.
Historically, Trump is running ahead of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama at this point in their presidencies.
Democrats hold a 2.8-point lead in the generic ballot, with 45.9% support compared to 43.1% for Republicans.

That tells us a few things. First, Republicans are not running as far behind right now as they were in 2018. In the 2018 elections, Democrats maintained a pretty consistent 7-8 point lead in the generic ballot.

Trump’s approval rating in his second term is higher than in his first, and running ahead of Bush and Obama is a good sign. Notably, both Bush and Obama faced blowback in the midterms of 2006 (which led to Pelosi becoming the House Speaker for the first time) and 2014 (when Mitch McConnell took over the Senate, allowing the GOP to block Merrick Garland as a potential Scalia replacement).

What’s concerning is that Republicans are slightly underperforming Trump by nearly two points. Trump’s approval rating is hovering around the 45% mark, which is historically the lowest point a president wants to be at heading into a midterm election.

On the flip side, for Democrats, if you’re barely managing a 2-3 points generic ballot lead, this is not where you want to be. We’re seeing the dynamics of this play out in the New Jersey gubernatorial race.

In that state, Democrats are trying to win a 3rd straight statewide race, and this should be a straightforward race. However, the Democrat, Sherrill, is struggling mightily under a cloud of scandal.

In that race, the Republican is sitting at 43.3%, which is basically the same as the generic ballot for all Republicans nationwide. RealClearPolitics shows Democrats with a 4.7-point lead in the race, which is extremely narrow for a New Jersey race, considering Republicans have typically led lately. If Republicans can reach Trump’s approval rating, this race becomes a margin-of-error contest.

As we head into the final stretch for the 2025 races, national attention will be paid to NJ and VA. The shutdown will have an impact on the VA, to some extent. I expect Democrats to win both races. The margins involved in both races will inform us how accurate these generic ballot polls are doing, as well as tell us about the possible makeup of a midterm election year.

These numbers are why Trump is promoting a midterm year convention. He wants to put his stamp on the midterms and encourage his base to get out and vote. There’s a concern among Republicans that Trump’s base only votes for him, while Republicans won’t ride the coattails.

The convention is a novel idea that could nationalize the race and boost Republican sentiment. But even with that, Trump’s approval rating, combined with the generic ballot, are the two most powerful and predictive components we have for the races.

We’re getting a good sense of where things are right now. Trump hasn’t experienced a dramatic drop-off like Biden did in 2021 after the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Based on current information, I expect Democrats to retake the House with a narrow margin, making Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker of the House. The Senate is a toss-up. It’ll he hard for Democrats to retake it. If you’re Republicans, these numbers aren’t great, but you can work with them. If you’re Democrats, this isn’t a situation you want. Democrats need these margins to widen.

Quick Hits:

Where you can find me this week

A Way Too Early Look At Midterms

Links of the week

X/Twitter Thread(s) of the week

Satire of the week

Thanks for reading!