Donald Trump has disappeared from the Republican adverts

In an election campaign advert last year, Ashley Hinson, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Iowa, said she would be “Trump’s main ally” in Washington. A year later, facing a neck-and-neck contest with the Democrat Josh Turek, she declared she wanted to end the war in Iran, which has driven up the cost of living for the state’s residents. In another advertisement, she claimed she was capable of passing important laws for Iowa, whoever the president might be.

Analysing the Republicans’ election adverts, the New York Times found that less than one dollar in every hundred is spent on an advert mentioning the president; by contrast, as much as twenty dollars in every hundred spent by the Democrats goes on adverts that mention the name ‘Trump’. According to Politico, Democratic candidates for the House and Senate have spent $145 million on adverts mentioning Trump, compared with just $8 million by the Republicans.

Although the president is imploring citizens to vote “as if I were on the ballot”, the Republican candidates are doing everything they can to distance themselves from a president whose popularity is steadily declining, currently standing at just over 30 per cent. The Democrats, on the other hand, constantly mention him, making him the negative focus of their messages: the war in Iran, tariffs, healthcare cuts and the way the Administration has handled the documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents a marked shift from the dynamics observed during the primaries: at that time, Republican candidates eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the MAGA base and secure the president’s coveted endorsement allocated 55 per cent of their advertising budgets to spots that mentioned Trump in a positive light. Today, in swing states, the race is instead about distancing oneself: the candidate in Alaska, Dan Sullivan, mentioned Trump in a recent advert, simply to remind voters that he had forced him to release the Epstein files.