By Jim Ellis — Monday, April 13, 2026
US House
Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY)
Unseating Rep. Massie, however, is a significant challenge. In his seven US House races, the Congressman has averaged 70.8 percent of the general election vote, and 77.4 percent in the three Republican primaries he has faced since his initial victory in 2012.
The President frequently tweets about Rep. Massie, lambasting him for typically voting with the Democrats on serious budget issues irrespective of the Congressman’s reasoning in using his vote to voice objection to the burgeoning federal budget and its huge deficit.
Massie, along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), also led the successful discharge petition effort for a vote to release the Epstein files. This act also angered Trump and the GOP leadership, but as Rep. Massie reminded the public, the President during the 2024 campaign agreed to release all of the Epstein related files after the election.
The Trump forces have recruited a Republican primary opponent for Massie after the President publicly called for such a candidate to come forward. Therefore, Trump and his political operatives are attempting to “have their cake and eat it, too,” in striving to unseat Massie while keeping the Blue Grass State’s 4th Congressional District in the Republican column.
The Trump-backed candidate is retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, whose previous venture into elective politics was an unsuccessful 2024 bid for a Kentucky state Senate seat. A recently released survey indicates that the task of defeating the seven-term incumbent who served as the Lewis County Judge-Executive before winning his congressional post still contains a high difficulty factor regardless of what effect comes from the Trump attacks.
Quantus Insights released the results of its new poll testing Rep. Massie’s bid for renomination. According to the QI survey (April 6-7; 438 likely KY-4 Republican primary voters; live interview), the incumbent would lead Gallrein by a 47-38 percent clip as the candidates move toward the May 19 Kentucky Republican primary election.
In terms of the personal favorability question, the GOP electorate splits with 51 percent responding they have a positive opinion of the Congressman while 46 percent expressed an unfavorable opinion. Even though he is less well known, Gallrein still posts a lesser positive response than the Congressman. The Gallrein favorability index was only 40:38 positive to negative within the Republican sampling universe.
Gallrein does get a boost from possessing the Trump endorsement, however. Here, we see 38 percent saying they are much more or somewhat more likely to vote for a candidate who the President endorses while 26 percent said they are much less or somewhat less likely to support the Trump-endorsed candidate.
The Quantus poll also tested for voting propensity. The pollsters divided the Republican electorate into segments of respondents who voted in the last four consecutive elections, the last three, the last two, the last one, and none of the previous elections.
In this instance, Gallrein tends to benefit because those voters casting ballots in the last four consecutive elections favor him by a 45-35 percent margin. Rep. Massie performs better with each of the other voting groups, and exceeds majority support within two segments, but the individuals’ vote propensity ranges from participating in most elections to not voting at all.
We can expect a very active final five weeks of the campaign cycle with the challenger needing to make bold moves to overtake the Congressman. While the President is “all-in” trying to defeat Rep. Massie, this poll and the incumbent’s strong voter history performance suggests that the Congressman still maintains significant strength within the district’s Republican voting base and remains the current favorite for renomination.
