I’ve been thinking about the 2026 midterms a little differently.
We’re going to spend a lot of time between now and November talking about whether the election is a referendum on Donald Trump. Of course that will be part of the story. He’s the president, his party controls Washington and midterm elections are, by definition, at least partly a judgment on the people in power.
But I keep coming back to something broader: trust.
Who do we trust anymore?
That question starts with politicians and political parties, but it doesn’t end there. We’re having a much bigger conversation about whether we trust the institutions and systems that shape our daily lives. Do we trust the government to do what it says it will do? Do we trust the media to tell us what actually happened? Do we trust the way our elections are administered? Do we trust the information we’re getting about the food we eat, the products we buy or the companies that make them?
And then there is the basic question of whether we trust the information coming at us in the first place.
I’ve spent most of my career around politics and communications, so I’m fascinated by what that does to an election. A voter can be unhappy with Donald Trump and still not trust Democrats to govern. Someone can trust a candidate on one issue and have serious doubts about that same candidate on another. Someone can distrust the media and still consume it every day. Someone can believe an election result and still question the system that produced it.
We have more information available to us than ever, yet I’m not sure we have more certainty about what to believe. We have candidates communicating directly with voters, thousands of news sources, podcasts, newsletters, social media and an endless stream of people ready to tell us what is really happening.
Some skepticism is healthy. We should question institutions. We should ask for evidence. We should expect people in positions of power to explain themselves.
But there is a difference between healthy skepticism and deciding that nobody is trustworthy.
That distinction matters in politics because campaigns have become very good at getting our attention. They can create a viral moment in minutes, dominate a news cycle and put a candidate’s message directly into millions of feeds without relying on traditional media to carry it.
None of that guarantees credibility.
In fact, I wonder if credibility is becoming the harder currency in politics. The candidate who can get our attention is easy to find. The person we actually believe is a much harder thing to identify.
That’s why I’m interested in the idea of the 2026 midterms as a trust election. I don’t mean simply whether voters trust Republicans or Democrats. I mean whether candidates, parties and institutions can convince people that they understand what is happening in their lives and that they can actually do something about it.
The economy is a good example. Politicians can point to the numbers, but voters experience the economy through their grocery bills, their mortgage payments, the cost of sending a kid to college and whether their paycheck goes as far as it used to. When the political explanation doesn’t match a person’s experience, trust starts to break down.
The same thing happens when people hear conflicting information about elections, government programs, the news or even something as basic as what they’re putting on their dinner table. Once people begin to assume that someone is trying to sell them something, even accurate information can have a hard time getting through.
That feels bigger than a midterm election.
The political question is obviously important. Which party voters choose will tell us something about how they feel about the country and the people running it. But I’m more interested in what sits underneath that choice: who they believe, what they believe and whether there are still institutions they feel comfortable relying on.
That’s a much harder thing to capture in a poll or a campaign slogan. It may also tell us considerably more about where we are as a country.
I talked about some of this with Bob Cusack on the *Washington Examiner* podcast this week. [Our conversation here.]
Hey Lisa! This was a very insightful article on the question of "trust". It is so hard for people to trust politicians, the media, and anyone talking "at" them today. The key lies in having a real conversation that's not moderated by an AI bot or an algorithm that steers the reader towards the extremes. And make no mistake - there is an affordability crisis and those rising gas taxes and grocery prices will have an impact on people's personal allegiance to political parties and candidates. Who they trust largely depends on where they get their information. You're a great source for truth -- appreciate you!