One in four Trump voters say GOP candidates should break with the president to win in November, according to the latest POLITICO Poll, conducted by independent firm PF Global.
The findings underscore the degree to which even loyal Republicans understand President Donald Trump is a drag on the ticket. Persistent inflation, $4 gas prices, 7% mortgage rates, a quagmire in the Middle East and a trade war with Canada have given Republican candidates no shortage of opportunities to take the president to task.
Michigan’s GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers this week became the latest example when he called for an end to the “tariff war” with Canada — a notable shift after he spent weeks defending the president’s decision.
“It was brilliant by Mike Rogers … when you talk about the affordability issue, in every poll I get back, every week, more and more people have this as their top issue,” said Michigan-based GOP consultant Jason Roe, who is working on Rep. Tom Barrett’s (R-Mich.) reelection campaign. “Obviously the price of gas is a result of the Iran war, and in Michigan, more than anything else, the trade war with Canada.”
Rogers is hardly the only example. Florida GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar used an ad filmed in front of the White House to call out the president’s immigration crackdown. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), in her bid to win the Iowa Senate seat,has called for an end to the Iran war amid souring diesel costs. Ken Paxton, the GOP’s embattled Texas Senate nominee, has now been the subject of four leaks exposing his private attempts to distance himself from Trump and the national party.
“It’s just all dictated by the data,” said a GOP strategist working on a Senate campaign, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the president. “They see the writing on the wall about the gas prices and the inflation. Running as a Trump sycophant is not going to work in 2026. It’s the only political move you can do in Michigan, a state like that. It’s toxic to be tied to the man.”
There are some limits: No Republican has completely broken with Trump, and several are eager to stand next to him on stage or in the Oval. Few dare to criticize him directly. And many still lean on their ties to the president on the campaign trail and in their social media profiles as they seek to rally the MAGA base.
A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, scoffed at the idea that Rogers’ — or any other candidates’ — efforts to distance themselves from Trump administration policies, amounted to a major break with the president.
“If I’m a candidate that’s physically trying to push away from the president, I’m not attending this stuff. I’m just gonna back away all the way,” the official said. “Being in the midst of a campaign and needing to talk to the issues that are being discussed as kitchen table topics, you just kind of have to.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle pointed to the Trump administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug costs, cut taxes, secure the border and grow job numbers: “No one can dispute the fact that President Trump has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement, and the president understands how to communicate with them. President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress.”
Politicians touting their independence from Washington is nothing new. But as the poll reveals, it’s notable
that so many who voted for Trump, who has been the GOP’s dominant force for a decade, are ready for candidates to take that leap.
Much of the fracture is driven by the non-MAGA wing of his coalition, the people who voted for Trump in 2024 but do not identify as part of his most loyal base, the survey found. When asked about specific issues such as the economy, trade and tariffs, data centers, immigration and the Iran war, non-MAGA Trump voters were roughly twice as likely as MAGA Trump voters to say their GOP candidate should break from the president.
But Trump still retains an intense hold over the base. More than two-thirds of MAGA voters said GOP candidates should continue to align with Trump across all of those issues.
That creates a no-win situation for many Republican candidates: Tie yourself to Trump and his policies too tightly and you lose independents and non-MAGA Republicans. Break too far, and you risk leaving MAGA disenchanted.
Candidates trying to thread that needle are quick to praise the president but blame his advisers, as Salazar did, or avoid mentioning Trump by name at all.
Roe said each candidate has to measure the “downstream effects” of a decision to distance themselves from the president, adding that it’s a balance between “alienating your base with appealing to voters that are looking for some independence.”
On the campaign trail, many Republicans acknowledge that the president remains an asset in shoring up base voters crucial to November. It’s part of the reason Trump has aggressively traveled to red states — including Alabama, Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio and Texas — bastions of conservatism that need his star power to coax die-hard supporters to the polls. The White House official pointed to the president’s rally with South Carolina Senate candidate Darline Graham ahead of her run-off as an example of Trump’s ability to juice turnout.
RNC press secretary Natalie Baldassarre insisted that Republicans “remain united behind the president’s agenda” and are “laser focused on winning.”
“Our candidates will run the races necessary to best represent their districts and prevent Democrats from taking control,” she said.
The president is telling voters to “pretend” he is on the ballot, and he has insisted the party is already in a better place as he blitzes states across the country, touting his economy and arguing that higher prices are a small price to pay for national security amid the lingering war with Iran.
But some candidates are still nervous that if they campaign beside the president, they could alienate undecided voters. Some Republicans have encouraged Trump’s team not to send the president to a blue-leaning Omaha district and other key districts where his approval rating is underwater ahead of Election Day.
“I don’t think there are that many candidates who are clamoring for Trump to come to their state. But to the extent they do, it’s a gamble that they’ve already lost the voters who are gonna vote against them, and they need to light a fire under the voters who are sitting it out, and he’s the torch,” said Democratic strategist David Axelrod, who was chief strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. “The problem is the torch can burn the whole house down.”
The damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t dilemma is perhaps best captured with Paxton’s campaign in Texas. On Wednesday, Trump took the stage in San Antonio, bringing up Paxton, the same day his latest closed-door comments complaining about the Iran war and high prices dragging down his campaign went public.
But standing on stage with Trump, he struck a much different tune.
“Wow, what is it like to be up on stage with the president of the United States? Pretty amazing,” he said. “Mr. President, I want to thank you for coming for me, for coming for us and for coming for Texas.”