This is fun

Our own polls told us this might happen, but I didn’t let myself hope it could be this good.

It’s a total repudiation of Trump, MAGA and the Republicans who went along with it all - the war, the inflation, the corruption, the masked ICE thugs and the cynical disregard for what the American people declared in 2024 they wanted done.

Republicans - in Raleigh and in Washington - acted like they had a God-given right to do whatever they wanted, however they wanted; the people be damned.

When the people don’t think they aren’t being heard, they have a blunt way of getting your attention.

Republicans in Raleigh got greedy. They drew up what they thought was an 11-3 Republican congressional map. It became a 10-4 Democratic map.

Their gerrymandered legislative map resulted in Democrats winning nearly a super-majority of their own in the state House and a near-even split in the Senate.

Republicans who wrote laws and budgets now will be writing resumes and job applications.

The three polls we did this year with Change Research showed this might happen.

Our July poll of all voters statewide showed Roy Cooper ahead 50-41%. That seemed the outer limit of his margin then. It turned out to be the upper limit of Michael Whatley’s vote.

The same poll showed Trump with a 58-40% disapproval rating - 18 points underwater.

The poll said that, in a hypothetical 2028 matchup, Barack Obama would beat Trump in North Carolina by 53-36% - a 17% margin.

The last week of September, we did an in-depth poll of over 1,000 registered Unaffiliated voters that showed how Trump was dragging down Republicans.

Those voters gave him a 65-33% disapproval rating - 32% net disapproval.

We also did a poll in September of North Carolina’s 50 most rural counties: Trump’s base of support. Even those voters gave him a 50-48% disapproval rating.

Nothing Trump did in the last month changed all that.

His rallies made it worse, his speeches made it worse, his social media made it worse and the candidates he hand-picked made it worse.

Republicans who went along with his chaos, cruelty, corruption and incompetence paid the price.

It was a referendum on Trump - and them.

As Trump liked to say on TV, “you’re fired!”

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