Daniel Wolfram
As GOP polling slumps, the cash pledges reach record highs.
Trump has dominated the news stream over the past few weeks leading up to the midterm elections with promises of “free money.” From $90 Medicare rebates to $500 ACA offsets, the federal government has spent recent weeks floating direct cash infusions to American households.
And here is a video released yesterday, October 14, in which Trump once again promises $5,000 in your pocket and economic success “that you have never, ever seen before.”
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That Trump promises to give money to the American people is nothing new. But it is not a coincidence that the more the polls keep showing poor midterm results for the Republican Party, the more money Trump promises.
What the polling shows
Just how bad is the internal polling Trump receives, which has caused him to shift to this strategy?
That likely will not become public information, but the professional pollsters’ surveys forecast a dire outlook for the GOP in November.
The Hill reports that across all polls, the Democratic Party holds a 9-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. That is two points more than in the last “blue wave” in 2018 — the last time the American public responded to how they felt about two years of Trump as president.
Will Trump’s money strategy work?
Trump first floated his idea of sending every red-blooded American $5,000 at his Trump-a-Palooza Republican midterm convention in Dallas.
It came as a surprise to many of Trump’s fellow Republican candidates for the Senate and the House when he announced it during his speech.
According to CNN, many Republicans were concerned and even “squirming” about the idea of Trump giving out around $1 trillion as a quid pro quo.
It is unlikely that it will come to fruition, as there are many ethical and judicial hurdles to clear, one being that federal law bars giving money to influence voting, in addition to securing congressional approval.
There is also the question of whether Trump will even follow through with his promise.
Promising money is an age-old strategy in American democracy
This is far from the first time that Trump has promised money to Americans — or even sent it to them.
According to the BBC, Trump promised in January that Americans would get a $2,000 check because the country was getting so much money from the tariffs. That never materialized.
Promising checks on the campaign trail is not only a strategy reserved for Trump or the GOP. In the 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs, Joe Biden explicitly leveraged direct cash, framing Democratic victories as the only path to completing the $2,000 relief checks.
Trump himself leaned on the strategy in 2020 when his signature accompanied the CARES Act payments.
When the votes are tallied in the days after the November 3 midterm elections, the American people will have decided whether they believe Trump will really send them the promised money — or if they would rather see changes once again.
