The possibility that Trump will cost the GOP the Senate is coming into focus

President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally with Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley in Gastonia, North Carolina, on September 16. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/File Donald Trump Congressional news See all topics Facebook Tweet Email Link Threads Link Copied! Follow President Donald Trump might well have cost Republicans the Senate majority in both 2020 and 2022.

In the former, even Trump himself has allowed that his stolen-election crusade might have damaged turnout in the decisive Georgia runoffs. And in the latter, Trump saddled his party with a number of shoddy MAGA candidates he endorsed who went on to lose very winnable seats.

It’s certainly looking possible. And recent developments make this specter loom larger.

The biggest example is the Senate race in Texas. But Trump has also made things more difficult for his party to hold seats in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

It’s not clear that Trump’s involvement will have changed the ultimate result of any of them. But if the battle for the majority is tight, the party could certainly be ruing some of Trump’s maneuvers — again.

Trump said this week that he had “no regrets” about backing state attorney general Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn in their May runoff. But the same probably can’t be said for many in his party.

Paxton still hasn’t repaired his image since that brutal runoff, and some recent polls suggest he’s actually lost ground since then. His image is double-digits underwater in most polls — including by around 20 points in a pair of recent polls — and he’s trailed Democrat James Talarico by as much as six points in three different polls now.

Cornyn isn’t a popular politician right now, either. And judging by how competitive Democrats have been in red states like Alaska, Iowa and Ohio, it’s possible he could have been vulnerable, too. But Paxton’s problems are big and evident for everyone to see: A recent Fox News poll showed Talarico is winning 20% of likely voters who backed Cornyn in the March primary.

(Cornyn has avoided supporting Paxton to this day. And CNN’s Patrick Svitek reported Friday on leaked audio of Paxton privately claiming Cornyn wants him to lose.)

Even Trump seems to be quite aware of Paxton’s shortcomings as a candidate, judging by how he has mocked the way he looks, dresses, and speaks. Paxton has a bunch of other baggage as well, including an impeachment and criminal charges.

The conventional wisdom after the primary was that Trump was likely to endorse Cornyn, despite Cornyn having gently criticized Trump at times, because Cornyn had a better chance of holding the seat. Trump said an endorsement was coming “soon.”

But then Trump just … didn’t. Weeks later, when Paxton was about to win the runoff, Trump got on-board with him and sealed the deal.

If Paxton loses and the Democrats have a bare majority, that non-endorsement of Cornyn might emerge as the pivotal moment of the 2026 election.

Cornyn isn’t the only Senate Republican that Trump nudged aside, of course.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has spoken openly about how Trump’s attacks pushed him towards the exits. In his new book, he recalls how he decided to retire right after Trump attacked him on social media and said he was looking for other candidates.

“Ack Mr. President,” he texted Trump, according to the book. “Now would be a good time to start looking for my replacement.”

That hasn’t worked out so well for the GOP. Tillis got out, and then popular Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper got in. Today, it looks like the GOP might be giving up on North Carolina, despite Trump having carried it in all three of his elections.

Tillis might well have struggled against Cooper in this environment, too. But that’s if Cooper actually challenged him. And Tillis would at least have benefited from incumbency.

There’s little doubt he’d have proven more formidable than the man the GOP rallied around, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley. Whatley’s image has been underwater in the most recent quality polls from Elon University and Fox News.

Back in June, Trump decided to back Georgia Rep. Mike Collins over former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley in the GOP Senate runoff. And it made sense, given Collins was the more MAGA candidate, and Dooley was backed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who has at times tangled with Trump.

But even at the time, it was pretty clear Collins could be a problematic candidate, given some of his past controversies. And it’s only gotten worse since then, with a series of disclosures about Collins’s apparent ties to white nationalists.

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is quite popular, so it’s perhaps unlikely Dooley would have made the race competitive. But as with North Carolina, Trump probably sealed the deal. And as with North Carolina, there are signs the GOP might be throwing in the towel.

The latest addition to this list is one that Republicans likely won’t actually lose. But South Carolina is proving an unnecessary headache all the same.

Amid some fretting in the state, which Trump won by 18 points in 2024, the GOP recently decided to spend $5 million to shore up appointed Sen. Darline Graham in her race against Democrat Annie Andrews. And Trump recently decided to attack Andrews on social media using an anti-transgender slur.

Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, was plucked from almost total obscurity when Trump backed her for the appointment to replace her brother in July. Then, both decided she should run for a full term, too. She won the primary runoff with Trump’s endorsement, despite some very unsteady moments.

Elevating a neophyte over a bunch of more established politicians who had spent years waiting for a Senate vacancy didn’t go over well with the party establishment. And there has even been some talk of GOP voters writing in Rep. Ralph Norman, who narrowly lost the primary to Graham.

It’s not totally clear how close the race is; we’re waiting for quality polling. But Trump’s move to foist Graham upon his party was weird from the outset. There seemed to be little reason for Trump to get involved.

And now the party is dealing with the consequences of that.

What’s particularly striking about all this is that Trump and his political operation have been through this before. They should know the drawbacks of nominating bad candidates, because it’s cost them in previous years. They should know that Trump’s actions have made winning Senate seats more difficult.

There was plenty of evidence that Trump’s antics in trying to overturn the 2020 election cost the party those Georgia runoffs held on January 5, 2021. Turnout dropped disproportionately in heavily conservative areas. The GOP had almost always gained ground in Georgia runoffs until then, but it actually lost ground.

And Trump even acknowledged in a later interview that GOP voters were turned off because of the supposed voter fraud (that he basically conjured out of thin air). He also said that he didn’t urge them to trust Georgia election officials as strongly as he could have, because he was angry.

Trump was spared a true reckoning on this because of the events that transpired in hours after the runoffs, on January 6, 2021. But it was striking to see him so forthrightly acknowledge that maybe he played a role in costing his party the Senate majority — even if he thinks he did it for legitimate reasons.

Yet, he still proceeded in 2022 to make a bunch of curious endorsement decisions. And now it’s happening again, to some extent.

The difference in 2026, of course, is that Trump actually has to deal as president with whomever holds the Senate majority.