Matt Drudge, the founder of the conservative news aggregation site Drudge Report, predicted Friday that the GOP would lose 60 seats in the House in November’s midterm elections.
Drudge appeared to base his prediction on President Trump’s approval rating according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Friday. The poll found that Trump’s approval rating matched former President Obama’s approval at the same stage in his presidency, at 47 percent among likely voters.
“Trump and Obama both have 47% approval at this time of presidency, according to Rasmussen,” Drudge tweeted. “Trump will also lose 60 seats in the House like Obama did during first midterm! Unless…”
Fifty-one percent of voters currently disapprove of Trump, the poll found.{mosads}
Drudge’s tweet comes less than two months before the midterm elections.
Democrats are eyeing the midterms as a chance to retake the lower chamber of Congress. The party needs to flip at least 23 seats to win back control of the House, something political handicappers say is likely to happen.
Democrats have a 14-point lead over Republicans on the generic House ballot, according to a poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University. And the party holds a roughly 8-point lead over Republicans in a RealClearPolitics average of generic congressional voting surveys.
FiveThirtyEight forecast Friday that Democrats have a nearly 83 percent chance of retaking the House.
Obama won the presidency in 2008, but Republicans won back the House majority in the 2010 midterms.