Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson said on CNN Monday that the emergence of Elon Musk’s America Party could upend Republicans’ slim advantage in the upcoming midterm elections.
Musk said he’s launching a third political party. He also said that “when it comes to bankrupting” the country “with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.” During an appearance on “The Arena,” Anderson said Musk’s new political project is quietly eroding the GOP’s midterm edge and threatens to siphon off just enough voters to tip the balance in key battlegrounds.
“But, interestingly, we‘ve been talking about the Elon Musk of it all. I asked voters in some recent polling who would you vote for in the midterm, Republican or Democrat? Republicans are actually slightly ahead on that question, even though we‘ve talked about, oh, [what] the Big Beautiful Bill is going to do. Republicans are still in good shape, I think, heading into that midterm over a year from now,” Anderson said.
“But when we add the America Party in as an option, it doesn‘t do very well. But suddenly Republicans’ lead is gone. Just a couple of points here and there on the edges. But this is a game of inches to try to win the House or hang on to the Senate.”
Anderson said the GOP can’t afford to lose even a sliver of its base heading into a midterm cycle defined by turnout battles. She said that disaffected MAGA voters aren’t likely to back Democrats but could still cause damage by staying home or drifting elsewhere.
“I do think when you‘re headed into a midterm election where things like base turnout are more important than they are in general elections, where turnout is very high, you don‘t want to lose any portion of your base,” Anderson said. “I think it‘s unlikely that there are pieces of this MAGA base [that are] suddenly going to decide to go vote for Democratic candidates.” (RELATED: Longtime Republican Pollster Gives GOP Dire Warning About Midterms)
Anderson’s warning contrasts with what she said in June, when she admitted she’d misjudged President Donald Trump’s appeal to young and minority voters. New Pew Research Center data showed Trump’s 2024 gains with Latinos, Black voters, Asians, and younger Americans. Anderson said it caught her off guard.
“The thing that has been the most surprising is someone like me, eight years ago, was completely hair-on-fire that Donald Trump is going to take everything that our party has been doing to try to win over young voters or voters of color, and he is lighting it all on fire and it is going to be unrecoverable,” Anderson said.
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