U.S. President Donald Trump departs Air Force One at Corpus Christi International Airport on Oct. 27, 2026, in Corpus Christi, Texas. President Trump is traveling to Texas for campaign rallies in Corpus Christi and Lubbock ahead of next week\u2019s midterm elections. (Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump is barnstorming deep-red states across the country to defend GOP majorities in Congress as Democrats make inroads in some unlikely places.<\/p>\n
The president has made 19 stops to states he handily won and six to battlegrounds since Sept. 9, according to ABC News tracking. Those include three in Texas, two in Ohio, two in Tennessee, and visits to states that for some observers may be surprising: Oklahoma, Kentucky and Alabama.<\/p>\n
The president is set to make his fourth campaign season trip to Texas \u2014 a state he won in three presidential elections \u2014 on Tuesday, where he will attend two rallies; Vice President JD Vance will be in Texas for a rally later this week. These two upcoming trips mean Trump and Vance will have visited Texas \u2014 typically reliably red \u2014 eight times since Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n
An early October\u00a0ReconMR poll\u00a0found that among likely Texas voters, Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico had 48% support while Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton had 44% support, within the poll\u2019s margin of error.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s red-state travels come with just days until the high-stakes midterm elections where control of Congress is at stake.<\/p>\n
As Democratic candidates largely center their campaigns around affordability and ending the Iran war, they are fending off attacks from Republicans, largely on taxes, culture war and transgender issues. At the same time, Republicans are calling on the president and his Cabinet officials to heed voter economic concerns.<\/p>\n
As Republicans look to shore up support among the MAGA faithful, Trump\u2019s approval ratings have suffered. His approval rating recently reached a record low of 33% in the ABC News\/Washington Post\/Ipsos poll<\/a>. About 7 in 10 Americans say that gas is unaffordable and that the country is headed in the wrong direction, according to the same poll.<\/p>\n On Monday, Trump hit the campaign trail in Mississippi, where no Democrat has been elected to the U.S. Senate since 1982. Trump carried the state by a 23-point margin in the 2024 presidential election. GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is defending her seat against Democrat and district attorney Scott Colom.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of folks ain\u2019t gonna be able to make this rally because they can\u2019t afford the gas to get up here,\u201d Colom said at a press conference in Corinth ahead of Trump\u2019s rally in the city.<\/p>\n Trump said on Monday that he was supporting Hyde-Smith in the state because he \u201ccan\u2019t take a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t take a chance. She\u2019s got no problem. The only problem is sometimes, and this happens, and sometimes when you think somebody\u2019s doing so well, nobody wants \u2013 they all stay home,\u201d Trump said \u2014 later adding \u201cso that\u2019s why I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, Trump campaigned in Kansas for Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, who is fighting in what ABC News is rating a toss-up race for reelection against Democrat Rev. Adam Hamilton. Vance stumped for the one-term incumbent in September and again on Monday.<\/p>\n