A Conversation with Veteran Pollster and Political Strategist Mark Penn About the Midterm Elections
Mark Penn is one of America’s most prominent political strategists and pollsters, with five decades of experience analyzing public opinion and advising political leaders. He served as President Bill Clinton’s pollster and was a key strategist behind his successful 1996 reelection campaign, helping Clinton recover from the devastating Republican victory in the 1994 midterms. He also helped Clinton navigate his impeachment proceedings and later met with President Donald Trump during his first impeachment, reportedly offering polling insights and political advice, although Penn denied serving as a Trump adviser. Penn also served as chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and advised British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Currently chairman and CEO of Stagwell and co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, Penn brings an unusual perspective to the 2026 midterms. In this conversation with Ami, he examines the Republican defeat, Trump’s prospects for recovery, the future of both political parties and the increasingly uncertain position of Israel in American politics.
You helped President Clinton recover from his 1994 midterm defeat. How does Trump’s defeat compare?
President Clinton had six years to recover, although he pretty much recovered in two. It’s a little different when it’s the last two years of your term. But what I think the midterms proved is that there’s a big swing voter group in America. Everyone had gotten so entranced with just going after political bases and thinking that everyone just stuck with their base. They didn’t realize that there are actually a lot of voters—Latinos, younger men and others—who don’t have a long history of voting and can float back and forth. So it can go in the other direction as quickly as it went in this direction. I think that’s the biggest message of the midterms. There are more swing voters in America than people realized.
What made those swing voters turn against Trump?
The perception that people had was that there was a bad economy that’s getting worse. We had a very similar thing in 1995 and ’96, and we put out a concerted effort that was ultimately successful. The Trump administration wasn’t successful, because it was dealing with inflation, which is something that people haven’t had to deal with for a long time. People under 50 have never known inflation and don’t understand how difficult and politically powerful it can be. There was no “Inflation Reduction Act” from the Trump administration.
They did do a number of things, such as trying to expand gasoline production and lowering the prices of prescription drugs, but gas prices and particularly interest rates went up. Furthermore, there was a perception out there that the economy was getting worse even though inflation was coming down very significantly. Inflation is a third of what it was under the Biden administration.
Correct. There was also record lowest poverty in history and very strong full employment, and median wages hit an all-time high. They had a lot of good statistics, but what we saw in the polls was people’s views on the economy declining, particularly during the last two months of the political campaign. That was the most serious, overwhelming factor here. There were a lot of grumpy voters who were unhappy with the state of the economy, and they changed their votes as a result.
In other words, “It’s the economy, stupid,” correct?
The economy is the overwhelming factor here; there’s no question about it. Now, if you look at border towns in Texas, they might have also been concerned about ICE and immigration policies that they thought went too far, but the economy was far and away number one. Number two was some of the immigration policies, and number three, there has been a lot of talk about the war, but I think that’s a very distant third or at best indirect because it was part of the inflation story, as opposed to a lot of direct votes on the war itself.
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