Nationalising the race
The Republican Party has suffered losses since Trump’s return to the presidency last year.
In 2025’s off-year races, Democrats notched a handful of victories, from Virginia to New Jersey. Wiles, a close adviser to Trump, has blamed the Republican defeats on Trump’s absence from the ballot.
“Typically, in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting in the White House. You localise the election, and you keep federal officials out of it,” Wiles explained to The Mom View.
“We’re actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot, because so many of those low-propensity voters are Trump voters.”
Her strategy is designed to harness the strong sense of loyalty Trump has engendered in the Republican Party.
The YouGov poll found conservative voters overwhelmingly approved of his job, at a rate of 82 percent. A mid-January CBS News survey found an even higher approval rating — 90 percent — among US adults who identify as Republicans.
“Since 2016, our surveys have all been off because we underestimate the Trump vote consistently,” said political scientist Lonna Rae Atkeson.
“Trump has definitely drawn more support from irregular voters, people who don’t regularly go to the polls, during presidential elections.”
But she questioned whether Trump’s endorsement would translate into increased support for down-ballot races.
“We haven’t seen that carry over well to the midterms,” said Atkeson. “So it may not turn out well for him.”
But putting Trump “on the ballot”, as Wiles suggests, also risks shifting the focus of the midterm races away from local issues.
Instead, experts like Gillespie believe that “nationalising” the midterm races could homogenise both down-ballot candidates and their policy platforms, as they seek to reflect national priorities, not local ones.
“One manifestation of polarisation in American politics is that national issues increasingly supplant local ones,” Gillespie said. “As national politics seep into state and local races, it becomes harder for federal candidates to distinguish themselves from Washington.”
