肯·帕克斯顿称特朗普的大会伤害了共和党，他的话不无道理

Ken Paxton says Trump’s convention hurt the GOP. He has a point

2026-09-30T15:46:34.470Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/30/politics/ken-paxton-trump-midterm-convention

It seemed a highly questionable decision even at the time — to hold an unorthodox GOP midterm convention dubbed “Trump-a-palooza” largely focused on a historically unpopular president. But President Donald Trump muscled the idea through anyway, and no Republicans seemed willing to object.

Now it’s pretty clear it was a dud – and might well have hurt the GOP.

And even the man who seemingly could have benefitted most is apparently saying that out loud.

The New York Times on Wednesday published audio of Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton privately complaining to conservative donors and lobbyists that Trump’s much-hyped midterm convention — which was held in Paxton’s home state and focused heavily on him and his race — did more harm than good.

“So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers,” the Texas attorney general said. “Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.”

(In a statement to CNN, Paxton senior adviser Nick Maddux called the Times’ story “manipulated nonsense” to “create a story that doesn’t exist.” He didn’t elaborate on that claim.)

But no one has to take Paxton’s word for it; the publicly available data point in the same direction.

While we’re largely talking about shifts within the margin of error, the GOP’s numbers have clearly trended in the wrong direction since the convention was held in Dallas on September 9 and 10. And at the very least, the convention didn’t provide any sort of “bounce” that presidential nominating conventions often spark.

The generic ballot and enthusiasm

That’s most evident if you look at the so-called “generic ballot” — i.e. asking voters to choose between an unnamed Republican and an unnamed Democrat.

The major polling aggregators including Nate Silver and FiftyPlusOne all show that, if anything, it’s Democrats who have gotten a bump since the midterm convention. They both show Democrats expanding their margin on the generic ballot by at least two points since September 9.

Indeed, Democrats appear to have gotten a sudden spike that actually started around that point.

And individual polls bear this out too:

• Democrats expanded their lead among registered voters from 7 points in June to 11 points shortly before the convention to 12 points in a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday.
• They expanded their lead from 5 points in late August to 7 points right after the convention to 8 points last week, per Reuters-Ipsos polling.
• They went from up 6 points in August to up 8 points a week after the convention in polling from Strength in Numbers-Verasight.
• An NPR-PBS-Marist College poll around the same time showed them leading by 12 points — after leading by 9-10 points in the spring.

Three other polls — from CNN, NBC News and Fox News — all showed no change from previous polling. But that also suggests the convention was a waste.

Only one high-quality poll, from the New York Times and Siena College, showed the generic ballot improved for the GOP after the convention. But the prior poll there was from back in May.

Beyond the generic ballot, the data also suggest the convention didn’t help the GOP much with its enthusiasm deficit. The Marist poll shows 76% of Democrats said they cared a great deal about who wins control of Congress, compared to 67% of Republicans.

There is some uncertainty here, because the shifts are small and the convention wasn’t the only variable that could have moved voters. It seems relatively few people watched the convention beyond the most politically inclined — despite Trump’s false boasts of massive ratings. So it’s entirely possible the impact was negligible and the movement we’re seeing comes down to other factors.

But consider this: If there is one person who seemingly stood to gain, it should have been Paxton.

The convention wasn’t just held in his home state, after all; this is also a candidate who is struggling to rally his base behind him in a red state. Trump could at the very least help with that, one would assume.

Of course, Trump also spent much of the convention rather curiously ragging on the way Paxton looks, dresses and speaks.

And polling suggests Paxton’s problems very much remain — or have grown worse.

A ReconMR-Siena College poll that spanned the convention and a Marist College poll last week both showed Democratic state Rep. James Talarico leading by 6 points (the former among likely voters and in the latter among registered voters). Those are Talarico’s biggest leads to date in the general election period.

A Texas Southern University poll, meanwhile, shows a 47-46 Talarico advantage.

But perhaps more to the point, both the Siena and Marist polls showed Paxton’s image ratings still languishing badly. His net favorability was 17 points underwater in the former (38% favorable to 55% unfavorable) and 21 points underwater in the latter (33%-54%). He did improve slightly in the Texas Southern poll, but he was still in the red by double digits.

(Maddux, the Paxton adviser, added in his comments to CNN that “every serious pollster will tell you that our numbers have improved since early September. Ken Paxton is going to win this race, and he looks forward to closing strong alongside President Trump including when he comes to Texas this week.”)

So it seems the convention did no favors to the one man it really could have served to benefit. And, combined with the weird personal insults, one could perhaps understand why Paxton might feel a little sour about that.

But if history is any indication, Trump is unlikely to accept that his attempts to make the midterms about himself could be hurting Republicans.

He’s more likely to plow forward and keep the spotlight on himself.