Donald Trump and Mike Johnson might want to look away from the latest midterm numbers.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten certainly didn’t sugarcoat them.
With just weeks remaining before voters decide control of Congress, Enten walked through the latest polling Monday morning and delivered a remarkably blunt assessment of the Republican Party’s position.
“The levee has been breached, the blue wave is coming over the wall, Speaker Johnson and President Trump,” Enten declared.
And he brought numbers.
The biggest problem, according to Enten, is Donald Trump himself.
In the key House districts examined by CNN, Trump currently has a net approval rating of minus 16 points.
For comparison, Enten pointed back to Trump’s first midterm election in 2018.
Trump was eight points underwater then.
Democrats went on to flip the House.
Now?
His standing in these crucial districts is twice as bad.
“Simply put, mathematically, this equals a Democratic majority for the House of Representatives,” Enten said.
That’s not the only warning sign.
The economy — usually one of Trump’s strongest political selling points — has become another serious vulnerability.
According to the numbers Enten presented, just 37 percent of voters in those key House districts approve of Trump’s handling of the economy.
That matters enormously because voters consistently rank economic concerns among the biggest issues driving their decisions.
And Enten’s current House projection reflects just how dramatically the environment has shifted.
If the election follows the polling he analyzed, Democrats would gain approximately 22 seats and emerge with 236 members in the House.
“At this point, it looks like Democrats are going to have a very merry November indeed, at least when it comes to the House of Representatives,” Enten said.
It is still September.
Polls can change.
Individual House races can move independently of national trends, and projections several weeks before Election Day are not election results.
But Enten isn’t the only election analyst seeing serious trouble ahead for Republicans.
Cook Political Report founder Charlie Cook offered his own grim assessment over the weekend.
Cook argued that the political environment isn’t necessarily being driven by voters suddenly falling in love with Democrats.
Instead, he believes much of the movement is anti-Trump.
“It isn’t pro-Democrat,” Cook said. “It’s anti-Trump, basically, and Republicans that have been supportive of the president.”
Cook has described Democratic control of the House as increasingly likely, while warning that the size of any Republican losses remains uncertain.
And CNN’s own reporting Monday suggests anxiety is spreading inside Trump’s political operation.
CNN reported that advisers and Republican strategists increasingly expect an extremely difficult November.
One Trump adviser put it considerably less delicately:
“It’s obviously going to be f—ing rough.”
The White House isn’t surrendering.
Trump is expected to campaign aggressively over the final stretch, with advisers focusing heavily on turning out his most loyal supporters.
Trump has repeatedly urged supporters to behave as though his own name were on the ballot.
But that strategy carries an obvious risk if Trump’s own approval numbers are part of what’s dragging Republican candidates down.
That’s why Enten’s comparison with 2018 is so striking.
Eight years ago, Trump was eight points underwater in the key districts Enten examined.
Republicans lost the House.
This time he’s 16 points underwater.
Nobody knows exactly what voters will do until the ballots are counted.
But when CNN’s numbers guy looked at the data Monday morning, he didn’t see a small shift in the political weather.
He saw the levee breaking.
“The blue wave is coming over the wall.”
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