As the GOP descends into civil war, there are growing signs that both parties are turning their focus on winning key congressional seats

The Republican party’s descent into civil war has revived Democratic hopes of an improbable treble by winning the presidency, House and Senate, allowing Hillary Clinton to pursue an aggressive agenda without the obstacles that have faced Barack Obama.

With Donald Trump’s campaign at risk of imploding, there are growing signs that both parties are focusing on the battle for Congress, where Republicans have everything to lose and could find Trump dragging them underwater like a drowning man.

Trump’s apparent declaration of war against the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and the Republican establishment on Tuesday will have done little to soothe nerves. Republican members of Congress seeking re-election now face the perilous choice of whether to risk alienating moderates or angering Trump diehards. Some are evidently trying to have their cake and eat it.

The Senate consists of 54 Republicans, 44 Democrats and two independents, both of whom caucus with the Democrats. The House breaks down as 246 Republicans and 186 Democrats with three vacancies.

This year was always going to be an uphill battle for Republicans in hoping to retain the Senate. Democrats are defending just 10 seats while the GOP has to hold on to 24. Democrats also tend to do better in a presidential election year with higher turnout.



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If Clinton wins the White House, Democrats need to take only four seats to gain control because the vice-president has the casting vote in the event of a tie. But key Senate races, which include presidential battlegrounds such as New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada, have remained competitive.



The House also seemed to be safe in Republican hands, due in significant part to the gerrymandering that has made districts more partisan. Despite Democrats’ best efforts to cast their opponents as the “Party of Trump”, few signs have pointed to the brash real estate mogul being as deadly to down-ballot candidates as they once feared.

But last Friday’s release of an 11-year-old video in which Trump boasted about sexual assault have again shaken the party to its core. As his poll numbers plunge, there are fears that independent and even some Republican voters will turn against the party, or at least stay at home on election day, potentially handing Democrats a crucial advantage. Suddenly the Senate looks in grave jeopardy and even the House could be in play again.

Voters support Democrats over Republicans for Congress by seven percentage points, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken after the release of the tape but before Sunday night’s presidential debate.

Democrats have been looking to tie candidates to Trump for some time and are now intensifying their efforts. One TV ad for a House seat in Wisconsin attacks Republican Mike Gallagher by playing the Trump video and stating: “Mike Gallagher still says we have to support Donald Trump. No, we don’t. We don’t have to support Mike Gallagher either.”

Among the most vulnerable incumbent Republican senators are Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Richard Burr in North Carolina, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Mark Kirk in Illinois, and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. Also facing tough re-election battles are senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida and John McCain in Arizona, who have managed to run parallel races to Trump despite endorsing him.



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In the wake of the lewd tape, Ayotte, Portman and McCain rescinded their support for Trump. So did Joe Heck, who is running for the open Senate seat in Nevada that is being vacated by the retiring minority leader, Harry Reid.



Rubio, who ran unsuccessfully against Trump in the Republican presidential primary, stuck by his former rival on Tuesday.

“I have never hesitated to oppose his policies I disagree with. And I have consistently rejected his offensive rhetoric and behavior,” Rubio said in a statement that captured the awkward contortions of many Republicans.

“I disagree with him on many things, but I disagree with his opponent on virtually everything. I wish we had better choices for president. But I do not want Hillary Clinton to be our next president.”

Rubio has led his Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy in most polling of the Florida Senate race, the latest being a University of North Florida survey showing the senator up by seven points. But an NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll also released this week showed Rubio with just a two-point advantage among likely voters, proving the contest is far from over.



Both polls were also conducted before the controversy over Trump’s tapes, which Murphy has sought to capitalize on. The congressman appeared with Hillary Clinton at a rally in Miami on Tuesday, paraphrasing Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention: “When Donald Trump goes low, Marco Rubio is right there with him.”



Other Republican senators continued to walk a tightrope, uncertain whether to embrace Trump or denounce him and risk a backlash from his vociferous supporters.

In Pennsylvania, Toomey trails Democratic rival Katie McGinty by one point, according to the Huffington Post’s average of publicly available polling. Toomey has made sharp criticisms of Trump but not yet made clear whether he will vote for him.



The challenge of holding Trump at arm’s length, while acknowledging that victory may elude them without his enthusiastic army of supporters, was apparent as Republicans sought to mitigate the damage from his comments about women. Ryan was jeered at a rally in Wisconsin for criticizing Trump, while Heck and the former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney faced similar protests at a campaign event in Nevada.



“They risk alienating the most loyal Trump supporters if they denounce him. And they’re still going to be criticised by Democrats for supporting him for months,” Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno, told USA Today.



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“I don’t think you can walk back your support for Trump at this point and actually gain voters. The best you can hope for is you might limit the bleeding.”

In the House, Democrats can target Republicans in 26 districts that Obama won four years ago. He came close in a further 23 districts. Some of the most vulnerable Republicans have denounced Trump in recent days. Barbara Comstock of northern Virginia has been a longtime critic of him but Democratic challenger LuAnn Bennett has thrown Trump at her on the debate stage and in commercials.

For now, the true down-ballot impact of Trump’s recent crash remains unclear. Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, who has been closely tracking the races, said: “I understand why Democrats are optimistic but that optimism isn’t based on any meaningful data yet.”

Shaun Bowler, professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside, had a similar assessment.



“It isn’t clear – or at least not from the data that are public yet – just how much damage Trump is doing to the GOP brand,” Bowler said. “Yes, there are lots of hardliners sticking by him regardless – it just isn’t clear though whether that support will translate into a win for candidates lower down the ballot.

“It seems likely that the wave after wave of attacks from fellow Republicans coupled with what seems to be generally regarded as Trump’s poorly run campaign will depress turnout among Republicans. Which means – for some candidates – there is a problem. On the one hand they can see the blowback Ryan is experiencing, suggesting there may be costs to bailing on Trump; on the other Trump’s candidacy simply may depress the number of voters who turn out. This is a harder group to talk about since it does depend on district-by-district knowledge.”

Whit Ayres, a veteran political consultant and pollster for Rubio’s presidential campaign, agreed: “It’s really too early to assess until we’ve had time to get some polling data back. I did believe that Republicans have an excellent chance to hold on to the House and a 50-50 chance to retain the Senate, both of which are more optimistic than many people’s view last summer.

“That said, we don’t know the effect of the tape, the debate and Trump’s pledge to essentially take the party down with him.”

In 1984, former vice-president Walter Mondale was demolished by Ronald Reagan yet Democrats gained two Senate seats. In 1996, former Kansas senator Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton by more than 8% but Republicans won two Senate seats.



It isn’t clear – or at least not from the data that are public yet – just how much damage Trump is doing to the GOP Professor Shaun Bowler

“There’s nothing written in the stars that just because the top of the ticket goes down, the members have to lose their seats as well,” Ayres said.



Ryan’s priorities as the nation’s top Republican, at least, are clear.



On Monday he told colleagues in a conference call he would no longer defend Trump, nor would he campaign with the nominee, and would instead concentrate on trying to hold on to the party’s majorities in the House and Senate. The goal, Ryan said, was to ensure Clinton did not get a “blank check” with a Democratic-controlled Congress should she win.



Ryan received both support and criticism from House members, some of whom warned that it was the very strategy of ostracising Trump, rather than backing him, that could cost them the House.

On Tuesday, Trump used Twitter to fire off attacks on Ryan. Disloyal Republicans “are far more difficult” than Clinton, he posted. “They come at you from all sides. They don’t know how to win I will teach them!”

Forty Republican senators and representatives have revoked their support for Trump, with nearly 30 of those calling on him to quit the race altogether, according to a count by the Associated Press. But Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, insists that the party stands by the nominee.

There are also signs of a shift in emphasis in the Clinton campaign, aware that control over House and Senate would present her with a historic opportunity to enact a progressive agenda that includes issues such as gun control and climate change.

Last year, Clinton accused the other Republican candidates of maligning Muslims after Trump proposed a ban on Muslims entering the country. “Their language may be more veiled than Mr Trump’s, but their ideas aren’t so different,” Clinton said during a December campaign event in New Hampshire.

“Donald Trump didn’t come out of nowhere,” Clinton said during a March speech at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “What the Republicans have sown with their extremist tactics, they are now reaping with Donald Trump’s candidacy.”

By May, when it was clear Clinton would win the Democratic primary, her campaign took a different tack.



“The campaign does not want to connect Trump and the Republican party. They want to make Trump look even more extreme than the rank-and-file Republican Member of Congress,” an internal email exchange between officials at the Democratic National Committee, made public by WikiLeaks as part of a huge cyber-attack, revealed.



The campaign spent much of the summer months casting Trump as far beyond the pale while touting endorsements from business leaders and influential Republicans.



But when the tape of Trump boasting about using his fame to prey on women was made public and the long-simmering tensions between factions of the Republican party erupted into a full-fledged civil war over the weekend, Clinton’s campaign gleefully fanned the flames.



“It’s pretty stunning that right after the debate the speaker of the House has to come and say he’s no longer going to defend Donald Trump and that each Republican member of Congress has to decide for themselves whether they’re going to support the nominee,” Clinton’s campaign spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, told reporters this week.



“I understand why they’re doing that, but Paul Ryan and leaders of the Republican party – there was a time when they could have stopped Donald Trump. There was a time where they could’ve spoken out against him. That time was the summer and obviously it’s too late now.”

In a signal that the campaign was not abandoning its courtship of Republicans and independent voters, Palmieri noted that the campaign launched ads featuring Republican voters backing Clinton in key battleground states, including Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and Iowa.

“Donald Trump didn’t become the nominee of his party on his own. The leaders helped legitimise him and I think they have a lot to answer for, and I imagine voters will hold them accountable, too,” Palmieri continued, singling out the Senate races in Arizona and New Hampshire, where Republican incumbents McCain and Ayotte had withdrawn their endorsements of Trump.

On Monday, McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, was forced to contend with his decision to disavow Trump.



“It’s not pleasant for me to renounce the nominee of our party,” the Arizona senator said during a debate in Phoenix with his Democratic challenger, Ann Kirkpatrick. “He won the nomination fair and square. But … I have daughters. I have friends. I have so many wonderful people on my staff. They cannot be degraded and demeaned in that fashion.”

Ian Prior, communications director of Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund, remained optimistic.



“From day one, Senate Republicans have been running their races focused on the particular issues that are important in their respective states,” he said. “Because of that, they are well positioned to withstand any cross currents from the top of the ticket and, consequently, this gives Republicans a good chance at retaining the majority in the Senate.”

But Obama, arguably still the most effective messenger for Democrats, twisted the knife while campaigning for Clinton on Tuesday.



“You can’t have it both ways here!” Obama told voters in North Carolina. “You can’t repeatedly denounce what is said by someone and then say, ‘But I’m still gonna endorse ’em to be the most powerful person on the planet!’

“The fact that now you’ve got people saying, ‘Well, we strongly disapprove. We really disagree. We find those comments disgusting, but we’re still endorsing him. We still think he should be president.’ That doesn’t make sense to me!”