"Looking at all of the public polling rolling in and hearing about a great deal of private surveys, it’s hard not to conclude that this election still looks horrific for Republican candidates. Among those in competitive states and districts, the question is less who will lose, but who will survive?

If I were a Republican on the ballot this fall in a state or district that Trump either lost or won by single digits, I would be worried that he is going down—and could take me down with him. Independents continue to shift away from Republican incumbents in every corner, in nearly every kind of competitive district. As one Republican pollster put it to me on Thursday, “We are getting our ass kicked with independents.”

For Republicans who need any appreciable amount of support from independent voters to get over the finish line, November is going to be a heavy lift. Political pros on both sides of the aisle are seeing little good news for Republicans, though one GOP pollster wrote in an email, “I have seen slight (very slight) improvement in the data in the last week.” The qualification and comment in the parenthesis was the campaign consultant’s, not mine.