Gingrich: ‘If the election were in May, Republicans would lose’

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Tuesday that Republicans would lose midterm elections if voting took place next month, urging GOP lawmakers to campaign collectively as the party of affordability and peace.

“If the election were in May, Republicans would lose,” Gingrich told The New York Times .

The former House Speaker said Republican leaders need to “get reality a little better — and get communications a hell of a lot better” before November.

“The war, the sense of affordability and gasoline — some of that has to be cleared up in order to win,” Gingrich told the Times.

“If it doesn’t change, I’ll start tearing my hair out,” he added.

His comments echo Republican strategists , including Steve Bannon and Karl Rove, who’ve said that the party must focus on midterm messaging to keep a majority in both chambers of Congress.

GOP strategist Marc Short, former director of White House legislative affairs during President Trump’s first term, said Republicans knew there would be a struggle to keep the House majority in November.

“Now, far more people think the Senate is also in play,” Short told the Times.

Races in Maine, Texas, North Carolina and Michigan will be a crucial factor in which party takes the majority in the upper chamber.

“The Republicans cannot take the Senate for granted. They’ve got to worry about it. And again, the economic messaging cannot only be from the White House,” Rove said last month on Fox News’s “Journal Editorial Report.”

“The Republican candidates themselves, whether they’re in office or trying to get in office, have to have a concerted attention to this, and they have to have the right messaging and the right attitude,” he added, in a clip highlighted by Mediaite .

A survey released Tuesday found that support for Democratic and Republican candidates is evenly split among likely midterm voters, according to the Harvard-Harris poll .

Republicans have a cash advantage over Democrats heading into midterm elections, but mid-decade redistricting efforts are threatening the perceived outcome of congressional elections nationwide.

Virginia was the most recent state to approve new congressional maps, which favored Democrats . However, GOP voters turned up in droves to vote against the ballot referendum, with 48.3 percent of them casting their ballot to block the redistricting effort. The measure narrowly passed with 51.7 percent of voter support and was immediately challenged in court.

“If Republicans perform anywhere near on average the way they did in Virginia last night, we not only add seats to the Senate, but we add seats to the House,” James Blair, a deputy chief of staff at the White House, told CNN last week .

“We’re not ignorant of the history of the midterms, obviously, right? But it’s way too soon to declare defeat,” he added.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.