As America enters the closing stages of this year’s midterm election campaign, Republicans are not just on the back foot ahead of their date with destiny on Tuesday, 3 November, they are flat on their backs in the ring – and the referee has already started the count.

The roots of what appears to be impending disaster for America’s Grand Old Party lie in a series of numbers that provide incontrovertible evidence of the damage caused to the Republican brand by President Donald Trump. His name does not appear on any ballot paper this November, but the White House conceded months ago that the force of his personality makes this year’s electoral cycle a de facto referendum on his return to power.

With Trump’s fellow party lawmakers battling to preserve their positions and slim Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, polling and surveys have for months shown the President’s support cratering. On every single issue voters are questioned about, they disapprove both of his approach and the support proffered by his party’s elected representatives.

Trump’s ratings are tanking

A look at the details underlying Trump’s approval ratings shows that there is not one issue on which he can claim majority support of Americans. CNN’s most recent survey, conducted in late July, showed the President’s overall approval rating stood at just 34 per cent. But on key individual issues he is in an even worse position.

Just 21 per cent of voters said they approved of his handling of fuel prices, which have soared as a direct consequence of his fruitless war on Iran. That same military campaign is opposed by 72 per cent of voters while his handling of inflation scored the backing of just one voter in every four.

Even the two strongest suits in Trump’s arsenal among his own supporters – mass deportations and his continuing questioning of US election integrity – are backed by only 39 per cent and 41 per cent of the public respectively.

There is, in short, no issue on which public approval of Trump’s positions is higher than their disapproval. And the vast majority of political analysts argue there is no way for Republicans to turn that situation around between now and 3 November.

The congressional balance of power could tilt

Underscoring the challenge faced by Republicans is the fragility of their current majorities in both the House and the Senate.

If the Democrats keep all the seats they currently hold in the House, they will need to flip just three seats from the Republicans in order to secure the 218 votes needed to control the chamber, thus coming in a position to launch fresh impeachment investigations into Trump and his top aides.

Independent voting analysts Inside Elections have highlighted 66 seats they believe could switch. And at least 16 Republicans are considered in significant difficulty. The Democrats, by contrast, only have five Representatives in possible swing seats.

As a result, the party is already daring to dream of winning the chamber’s gavel and, with it, the power to turn Trump into a legislative lame duck for the remaining two years of his presidency.

In the Senate, Democrats face a tougher challenge. Currently the chamber seats 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats, meaning Trump’s party is only four seats away from losing control to their opponents. Of the 35 seats up for grabs this election cycle, the Inside Elections survey suggests only one Republican seat (North Carolina) is “tilting” towards the Democrats. (In US politico-speak a “tilt” indicates a minuscule perceived advantage to one party of perhaps only one or two percentage points. It is only one up from a “toss-up”. By contrast a “lean” suggests a small but definite advantage of as many as five percentage points.) The same data shows three Democrat seats (Georgia, New Hampshire and Michigan) are considered vulnerable to Republican attack because they are either “toss-up” states or only “tilting” Democrat.

Yet Trump’s strategists are deeply alarmed by Republican voters’ lack of enthusiasm for some of the party’s candidates and fear they may simply choose to sit the midterms out. More controversially, former Trump aide Steve Bannon recently told viewers of his webcast the Senate is more at risk than most pundits understand, and he is pushing the President to declare a state of emergency that would allow him to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents at polling stations – a measure that could decimate turnout, especially for Democrats.

Minorities are deserting Trump in droves

Trump’s policies have driven a fresh wedge between Republicans and the growing electoral power of black, Hispanic and other minority voters in America.

In the 2024 presidential election, Trump secured the support of 46 per cent of Hispanic voters, a number so unprecedented that some political analysts argued they had effectively secured him his second term in office. Dissatisfied with Joe Biden’s handling of the economy and, in many cases, attracted by Trump’s plan to deport illegal immigrants, the wave left Democrats fearful over their ability to win Hispanic voters back.

But new polling shows Democrats now enjoy a 24-point advantage over Republicans in securing Hispanic votes. According to the research by the non-partisan Pew Research Center almost 50 per cent of Hispanic voters interviewed said they would back Democratic Party candidates in November, with just 26 per cent planning to back Republicans. This is a massive loss for Trump’s lawmakers who have soured over his stewardship of the economy and recoiled from the brutality of his mass deportation campaigns.

Black voters are also deserting the Republicans in droves. In 2024, Trump secured an historic 15 per cent of the black vote (almost double the 8 per cent support he secured in 2020). Today, that advantage has also been completely erased, with 8 per cent now saying they will back Republicans in the midterms, according to Pew researchers.

The money factor

The Republicans retain one significant advantage in the weeks ahead, and it comes in the form of cold, hard cash.

Trump’s capacity to raise money remains unparalleled in modern American politics and comes at a time when the Democratic Party is in fundraising disarray. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) – the party’s central organising structure, responsible for raising its campaign war chest – is in meltdown, with top donors and fundraisers saying they will withhold cash until the DNC appoints new leadership.

In July, the DNC took out a record $15m (£11m) loan to cover debts which had left it facing bankruptcy. Suppliers have been told not even to bill the party for midterm events until after the election.

At the end of June Republicans had $128.5m (£95m) in cash, no debt, and a virtually limitless ability to launch an advertising blitz that targets particularly left-wing Democratic socialist candidates Trump accuses of being “radical-left communists”.

The Democrats had $16.3m (£12m) in cash and $18.5m (£14m) in debt. That not only means the party may struggle to remain competitive in some electoral battlegrounds, but it also allows Republicans to argue that if the DNC cannot even balance its own books, it should not be trusted with the economic stewardship of America.

If anything saves Trump and his Republican candidates, it will be their campaign war chest. But while money is the mother’s milk of American politics, having pots of it will not necessarily overcome voter antipathy towards Trump and his party’s political positions.