Republicans have badly misjudged who they need to reach at their Dallas midterm convention this week, according to CNN’s Harry Enten, and he warned the entire premise of the event is “ill-conceived.”
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The GOP scheduled the two-night event to compete directly with NFL season openers, which Enten called a baffling choice — but the bigger problem is the audience Republicans are targeting: hardcore MAGA voters who are already motivated to turn out.
According to Enten’s data, 59 percent of MAGA Republicans say they’re extremely motivated to vote in the midterms, nearly identical to the 60 percent of Democrats who say the same. The group with the lowest motivation, he said, is non-MAGA Republicans — voters far less likely to approve of Trump and more likely to believe his hold on the party should end.
“That’s where the problem is,” Enten said, arguing a Trump-centered convention is least likely to reach the very voters the party actually needs to persuade.
Enten also pushed back on the idea that Republicans need to shore up their own base’s vote choice.
Comparing 2024 to July 2026 polling, he said GOP voters are backing Republican candidates at essentially the same rate as two years ago — no convincing required. The real movement, he said, is among independents, now 12 points more likely to back Democrats, and Democrats themselves, up 8 points.
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“You know what these two groups share in common?” Enten said. “They don’t like Donald Trump to a historic degree at this point.”
On the likely convention message attacking Democratic socialists as communists, Enten said the data doesn’t support it as a winning strategy. He cited polling showing voters are actually less likely to back a Trump-endorsed candidate (52 percent) than a candidate tied to Democratic Socialism (50 percent), and that just 29 percent of voters say a Trump endorsement makes them more likely to support a candidate, compared to 32 percent for a democratic socialist label.
“So no, it’s not a good argument,” Enten said. “This whole idea is ill-conceived.”
He added that even a sound argument against the far left could backfire depending on the messenger: “If you’re coming at it from, ‘Oh, Trump is so good and those Dem socialists are so bad,’ the American people are just, like, actually not quite right.”
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