‘Absolutely awful result’: Enten on what went wrong for Republicans in 2025 election

After what happened during the election, some Dems are saying that they have the momentum and that Tuesday's election shows voters have turned on President Trump. So what might this mean for next year's midterms? Because a lot of people are shifting to that now.

CNN's Harry Enten here with us. I need to make sure I give you your due chief data.

Thank you.

Harry Enten. What did Tuesday's elections tell you about how important Trump will be for down-ballot Republicans?

Yeah, I think there are a lot of Republicans who saw those polls that, you know, showed Donald Trump low nationally, and they didn't necessarily believe him. But for Democrats, those polls are real, and they are spectacular. And the reason I say that is because take a look here. Voted for the Democratic nominee among Trump disapprovers. I got 2017, Trump's first term, and 2025 in New Jersey and Virginia.

In 2017, among the Trump disapprovers, the Democratic nominee's got 82% in New Jersey, 87% in Virginia. Come over to this side of the screen. If there is any idea that Republicans are going to be able to outrun

Donald Trump's low approval ratings. This says, nuh-uh. They're gonna be like impalas getting chased down in the African desert by a big lion. Look at this. 93% of Trump disapprovers voted for the Democratic nominee in New Jersey, and 92% voted for them in the great Commonwealth of Virginia.

The bottom line is this. What those results on Tuesday night showed us is that Donald Trump is absolutely a drag on Republican candidates in New Jersey and Virginia, likely nationwide. If you are in a state where Donald Trump is underwater,

you are in big, big trouble.

What does this mean nationally, though? Because that is what people are really going to be concentrating on now when we look forward to 2026 in the midterm.

Yeah, okay, so the big question is, what does it mean nationally, as you said, Sarah? Well, I mean, at this particular point, Donald Trump is at term two lows nationally in terms of his net approval rating. Look at this. These are polls that are out this week. Look at this.

CNN, he was 26 points underwater. CBS, 18 points underwater. ABC, 18 points underwater. My goodness gracious, he's down there with the Titanic, and this is what is turning in for the Republican Party. That result on Tuesday night was a Titanic proportion, just absolutely awful result.

New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, in terms of those judgeships, those Supreme Court judgeships, essentially retaining those judges. All the Democratic-aligned candidates won. Democrats won their first statewide races

that weren't federal in Georgia for the first time in a generation. What we are talking about at this particular point is Donald Trump is absolutely a drag. I spoke about it on Monday. That's what we thought was going to happen,

and that is exactly what did happen. Donald Trump, at this point, is an absolute drag on these Republican candidates. We saw it on Tuesday night, and nationally, I expect that result to hold because at this point Donald Trump is at his term two lows.

You're talking about the Titanic. Democrats before this, right, were on the Titanic. Their approval rating is lower than Republicans. What does that all mean?

Okay, what does that all mean, right? I think there are a lot of Republicans saying, okay, Donald Trump ain't that popular, but the Democrats aren't popular either. And those Democratic low favorable ratings,

those will save us.

Well, we had a test of that on Tuesday night. So what do we see here? Okay, vote for the Democratic nominee, view neither party favorably. Here's the margin. Look at this in New Jersey.

If you viewed neither party favorably In New Jersey, Mikey Schumer won that vote by 66 points. How about in Virginia? Abigail Spanberger won that vote by 56 points. It doesn't necessarily matter, it turns out, that the Democrats are viewed that unfavorably. Because amongst those who like neither party,

the Democrats ran away with it. You know, I started off with a running analogy talking about the African desert. These folks are like Usain Bolt, despite the fact that Donald Trump is, despite the fact that Democrats have viewed unfavorably.

Democrats are like Usain Bolt because Donald Trump is like rocket fuel and they're able to run away from the pack. And I think Usain Bolt would leave both of us in the dust.

You are also like rocket fuel and you can just run on out of here after that good segment. See ya, Harry. See ya. I don't think it was good for Republicans.

I don't think it was good. I'm not sure it was good for anybody. But we had an interesting evening and we learned a lot. I thought we'd have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it

and also about the shutdown and how that relates to last night.

Our panel is back. David Chalian, I don't remember ever hearing Donald Trump even come close to eating crow. I'm not saying he ate crow, but he came closer than I've ever heard in that soundbite.

Or at least he thought the Republican senators he was talking to should be eating some crow. If he was not willing to step up to eat any, he clearly realized his party does have a problem here on the shutdown. And he was tying that, you know, in the days before the election, he's been urging them to change the filibuster rules.

And he's been seeing this shutdown as a real political problem. There is no doubt that that was an overlay of what happened, but so too has been the last 10 months of Trump's second term. That also is a major overlay of what was happening and voters responding. And we ask, Dan, and we say, like, was Trump a factor in your vote in New Jersey and Virginia? Now, for roughly half of voters in those states, they say, no, he wasn't a factor. But when he was a factor, it was two to one in opposition.

He drove a lot of the Democratic turnout that we saw yesterday.

Yeah, Dan, I mean, your point about the way the president is accepting or deflecting blame, I think one of the biggest differences between Trump and other presidents is that he is more than happy to blame his own party, as long as it's not him, right?

It's not, he, that's why what he said about the shutdown was so remarkable, where Democrats had a great night. If anything, they've been handed the opportunity to dig in farther on that. They've been essentially told, keep fighting. The president could have dug in as well,

but what I was hearing from sources, Republicans were like, this is gonna mean that people are gonna start to give. They're gonna start to figure out a way out of this.

Okay, so maybe the right way to say it is that he didn't eat crow, but he served it

to them for breakfast.

There you go.

Zolan, nice to see you.

Nice to see you as well. This isn't just about the governor's races or the mayor's race in New York or even Prop 50 in California. This went so wide and so deep, way, way, way, way down ballots. Virginia, the blue wave went to the state house. In Georgia, two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission were flipped. Three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices were retained.

In Connecticut, Democrats scored big municipal races and they flipped Republican seats.

Right, it was down ballot. And in those big races we were talking about, particularly for the mayoral race in New York, you also saw a record turnout that we haven't seen in decades. This was especially somewhat surprising to me

just when I look at the conversations that I had with voters during the last presidential cycle, particularly younger voters, you would pick up on a certain, almost malaise, like a sense of almost people giving up on the democratic system,

giving up or questioning whether their vote actually amounted to something. Now, I mean, look, in many cases, like the tough part now begins for these people that have run these campaigns, but I think you can still have a takeaway of whether it was the frustration with Donald Trump, the broad coalition building, or a

focused message on affordability rather than the existential topics that people may not be able to digest. People resonated and they went to the ballot box. They were actually moved and motivated to cast their vote, and that was something that based off the last election, I think particularly for the Democratic Party,

was a concern.

I'm glad you mentioned young voters, and I wanna drill down even more on the demographic and talk about male voters, ages 18 to 29, and look at the way that they came out according to our exit poll, David. Mike Sherrill, 57%.

Spanberger in New Jersey, excuse me, Spanberger, yeah, Spanberger in Virginia, was a long night, 56%. Mamdani, 68%, and then compare it to 2024 nationwide, 58% for Donald Trump.

Yeah, and again, you know, nationwide is not these bluer places, right? So there's some of that. But I mean, Mamdani courted this cohort of young men. I think he won them by 40 points against Andrew Cuomo, again, inside that very blue territory. But it is still revealing. This is young men, Latinos, these are demographic groups that Donald Trump made gains in and powered him to really,

I mean, New Jersey was a place where he had narrowed his loss to just six points last year because of Latinos, young men and the like that he made gains with. And you just saw last night, those gains were not permanent with Donald Trump

not on the ballot and after 10 months of this term.

That was given back to the Democratic Party.

And in terms of the 10 months of this term, one of the factors that could be a good data point that is instructive is the question of Trump's immigration enforcement, whether it has gone too far. This is a question asked of Latino voters. 76% of Latino voters said yes in Virginia,

59% in New Jersey.

Yeah, and I think this is really telling because this issue, the issue of the border, Trump was clearly winning on, right? And Joe Biden was clearly losing on that issue. But to have this kind of a swing and to really get our first sort

of sense of understanding what the optics of this are really going to mean, the sort of basic truth it seems in American politics, and you know David you've covered so many presidential elections, is that the electorate in general isn't really hugely comfortable on either extreme, right? And that's true general isn't really hugely comfortable on either extreme, right? And that's true in the big picture and it's also true for these smaller issues.