With less than one week until Election Day, Democrats are looking good by nearly every national measure. The Senate math is another matter — and, of course, winning a majority there and in the House requires winning individual races, which can generally go one of two ways.
The party needs to win in red-leaning states, Republicans continue to outspend them in the waning days of the midterms, and some strategists worry that confidence on the left is getting ahead of what the evidence supports. In other words, despite a lot working against Democrats, the national picture remains firmly in their favor.
Strong conditions for Democrats
CNN’s Poll of Polls puts Democrats ahead of Republicans by about nine percentage points on the generic ballot. If that lead holds on Tuesday, it would be one of the House’s largest popular-vote margins in decades. The last time either party won the House popular vote by 10 or more points in a midterm election was 1986, CNN writes. That year, Democrats flipped the Senate midway through President Ronald Reagan’s second term and picked up seats in the House to hold a majority. Going into that midterm, Reagan was polling as high as ever.
This year, the midterm elections arrive as President Donald Trump’s approval rating is sinking lower and the Democratic Party’s is rising. A Marist poll conducted October 19 through 20 with NPR and PBS found Democrats leading 52 percent to 44 percent among likely voters and 52 percent to 42 percent among registered voters. In that same survey, 59 percent of likely voters disapproved of Trump’s job performance while 40 percent approved.
Former Senator Joe Manchin said on NewsNation that the atmosphere is ripe for a “complete tsunami.”
Manchin isn’t alone in his projection; forecasters have broadly been moving in the same direction. Fox News’s latest rating changes, as with its previous changes, all favor Democrats, with 19 House races shifting left.
For the Senate, Fox has the Ohio race shifting from Toss-up to Lean D, South Carolina going from Likely R to Lean R, and Mississippi moving from Solid R to Likely R. In the case of gubernatorial races, the outlet moved Ohio from Toss-up to Lean D.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter says Democrats appear to hold a narrow edge for the Senate, with Maine and Texas the likeliest majority-making contests.
Projections aren’t an exact science, but the data corroborates the gut-check. Politico reports that the number of donors giving through the G.O.P.’s WinRed platform is down about 30 percent from 2022, while ActBlue’s donor count has grown by roughly a third, from 4.9 million to about 6.6 million. Republicans still lead in cash on hand thanks to a small group of megadonors like Elon Musk, but Trump is far and away the only Republican who sees significant support among small-dollar online donors. Democrats, on the other hand, have a nationwide constellation of supporters giving comparably modest amounts.
Voting blocs are moving, too. The latest poll from N.Y.T./Siena shows Latino voters favoring Democrats by 30 points, which the New York Times calls evidence that Latinos are the decade’s most important swing group, having overwhelmingly slid toward the G.O.P. in 2024. The Washington Post reports that about one in five Trump voters — about 8 percent of the electorate — no longer approves of the president, a small but meaningful voting bloc. Some say they will cast votes for Democrats, some will support Republicans, and some won’t vote at all, citing the ballooning cost of living amid Trump’s presidency. Indeed, CNN reports that economic strain caused by the president’s second-term policies and wars has rippled through agriculture and industry, putting dependably red states such as Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska, and Indiana in play for governor, Senate, and/or House seats.
In a reliably red district in upstate New York, Blake Gendebien, a Democrat and dairy farmer, is capitalizing on his opponent’s ties to Trump and the rural district’s economic frustrations in his attempt to flip the House seat.
“I’m a different kind of Democrat,” Gendebien said on “Meet the Press.” “I’m a pragmatic reflection of upstate New York and the North Country.”
In South Texas, Johnny Garcia, a law enforcement officer, is making the case that his work experience will make him, a Democrat, appealing to a border community concerned about immigration and enforcement.
“There’s a new crisis that has now been created under this administration that is completely going after everybody but the hardened criminals that make our communities less safe,” Garcia told CBS News.
Nearby, Democrat Bobby Pulido continues to make his case, one quinceañera at a time, after his opponent, Republican Representative Monica De La Cruz, dismissed the Tejano legend last May when he won the Democratic primary runoff.
“This election isn’t about who you want performing at your niece’s quinceañera,” De La Cruz said. “It’s about who you trust with your family’s future.”
Making light of Pulido in a majority-Latino district where the singer is something of an icon was, Pulido told Mother Jones, “one of the most costliest blunders anyone’s ever made.”
Cause for concern
Not everyone is ready to celebrate. The New York Times reports that some Democratic strategists privately fear expectations among the party have outrun reality, especially in regard to the Senate.
Capturing a Senate majority hinges on winning states Trump won handily in 2024, some of which Democrats haven’t carried in decades. The president has been making appearances to those audiences, supporting his party’s candidates and attempting to reenergize, or remind, a voter base that at least at one time believed in him. Democrats winning states like Texas, where they appear to have momentum, is not a given, and truly, no one will know about the Senate until votes are counted.
Politico reports that internal polling on both sides shows Republicans closing the gap in the Midwest. Democrats are privately concerned that they may fall short of 2018-level success, retreating from a far more bullish stance earlier this month. Still, Axios reports that senior G.O.P. operatives, even at their most optimistic, struggle to see a Republican majority larger than 51 seats. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, meanwhile, took out a loan of $15 million to expand the map in the final stretch, signaling both ambition and financial strain.
The non-exhaustive (and expanding) Senate battleground
Maine: A Marist poll taken last week has former State Senate President Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee, at 49 percent of the vote and U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, at 47 percent among likely voters — in other words, a statistical tie. Among registered voters, Jackson leads 53 percent to 44 percent. That gap between registered and likely voters indicates that the result could hinge on who turns out.
Collins, the only Republican senator to win a state Trump lost three times, has spent her campaign attempting to distance herself from the president. She told the Wall Street Journal that this race has been unlike any other and that the environment has been the most difficult of her career.
“I have had tough races always, but this is the first time where there have been nonstop lies about me and my record — character assassination,” she told the Journal.
Texas: The contest between State Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee, and Democratic State Representative James Talarico has been the focus of much of this week’s coverage. Polling has consistently shown the Democrat ahead by low double digits. Paxton just cannot seem to outrun corruption allegations, and unfortunately for him, corruption is a top voter concern behind only the economy.
The New York Times reports that the attorney general is facing scrutiny over the 350 trips he’s taken outside of the state since being sworn in. He’s been to Utah, Iceland, and London; to South Africa, India, and Aruba; to the Grammy Awards, fishing, and hunting. Paxton is often absent from Texas even when needed, such as amid a deadly winter storm, when lawyers tried to depose him, and during this very Senate campaign. He has funded these trips, in part, with taxpayer money and the generosity of his wealthy friends. For a candidate supposedly attempting to buck accusations of corruption, he does not appear to be trying very hard.
Talarico has increasingly targeted Musk, who has given heavily to a group aligned with Paxton, for trying to buy “his very own personal United States senator,” the New York Times reports.
Not all the news is good for Talarico, though. The Washington Sun reports lingering frustration within the party that the Democrat has not done more to win Black voters, a criticism he’s faced since the primary.
Ohio: A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released Wednesday has former Senator Sherrod Brown, the Democratic nominee, leading Republican Senator Jon Husted 47 percent to 44 percent — a lead that falls within the ±4.4 percent margin of error. Brown is facing a massive spending campaign from a super PAC funded by the cryptocurrency industry, which has spent more than $55 million against him in its largest single-race investment of the cycle. The New York Times reports that some voters who voiced their frustration about the data center industry and increases in the price of energy did not feel moved by those issues to vote for Brown.
Brown is also facing disinformation spread by videos believed to be produced by artificial intelligence and Russian actors, the Associated Press reports. One video in a slew attacking both Brown and Talarico uses falsified images and testimony from Brown’s former staff members.
As Dan Kaufman wrote in the New Yorker, questions remain about whether Brown can win back the working-class voters who once delivered him to the Senate but have since defected to Trump.
Iowa: State Representative Josh Turek’s campaign has been a sticky one for Democrats. His slight polling lead over U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson has been inconsistent and in some cases nonexistent, with the Republican often polling ahead of him by low single digits. The most recent public poll, from Echelon Insights, has Turek leading, though, with 45 percent to Hinson’s 43 percent and a third candidate, the libertarian Thomas Laehn, with 7 percent — a relatively large share for a third-party candidate that could ultimately help one of the two leading candidates, depending on the split.
Turek told Semafor that he is “proudly a moderate.” The outlet wrote that he’s running a “radically centrist” campaign with border-security ads and criticism of his own party’s obstruction of farm and data center legislation. He released an ad this week in which he spoke plainly about his opposition to transgender women competing in women’s sports — a stance that is a departure from the Democratic standard. Despite Turek distancing himself from the Democratic Party, though, Axios reports that Senate Republicans see the state moving their way.
Alaska: Former U.S. Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat, continues to focus on fish. The New Yorker has a good profile of her salmon-centered campaign out this week.
Meanwhile, Republicans are growing pessimistic about the state, Axios reports, and the party’s desperation is showing. The Justice Department on Friday, at Trump’s behest, filed a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate election results if Peltola narrowly beats the Republican incumbent, Daniel S. Sullivan. The department argues that another candidate on the ballot, Daniel J. Sullivan, could confuse voters. Peltola and national Democrats have filed a legal motion to fight the lawsuit, and the New York Times reports that there are no obvious legal grounds for preemptively blocking the certification.
Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, meanwhile carries thousands of dollars in debt and legal fees he said he spent “simply to defend my right to remain on the ballot,” the Washington Sun reports.
On Wednesday, the New York Times published an investigation alleging that Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy was the result of a collective effort by Democrats, including Peltola’s team, to recruit a candidate to run and potentially spoil the race. The Peltola campaign denies having any involvement, and Daniel J. Sullivan has maintained he entered the race of his own volition.
Regardless of the result, Republicans are losing their grip on the state.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has held her seat for more than 23 years, endorsed Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins for governor, saying her duty is to Alaskans rather than the state G.O.P.’s good graces.
South Carolina: A N.Y.T./Siena poll taken from October 19 through October 26 of likely voters has Democrat Annie Andrews and Republican Senator Darline Graham tied, each with 48 percent of the vote — a striking result in the heavily Republican state. Graham is struggling to match the success of her late brother, Lindsey Graham, who was accused last week in a video released by progressive commentator network The Young Turks of paying escorts, at least one of whom was allegedly underage, for sex.
Two former South Carolina governors, Republican David Beasley and Democrat Jim Hodges, endorsed Andrews this week.
Kansas: The race between incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton, a pastor, appears to be a toss-up in a state where, until recently, the idea of a Democrat winning the Senate was almost unthinkable. They debated last week.
Florida: Despite some recent enthusiasm from party leaders like Senator Bernie Sanders and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Angie Nixon is in a less promising position. In a N.Y.T./Siena poll released Tuesday, Senator Ashley Moody is leading the democratic socialist 50 percent to 44 percent.
Minnesota: The same N.Y.T./Siena survey batch found Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, a progressive Democrat, leading Michele Tafoya, a conservative commentator, by 14 points, 54 percent to 40 percent.
Mississippi: I’m including this wildcard (as if many of the races I’ve already written about aren’t, in their own ways, wild) because Fox News moved it this week from Solid R to Likely R. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, the incumbent Republican, is facing a challenge from Scott Colom, a prominent district attorney in the state with deep ties via his parents to public service in Mississippi. In the last week, Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris each paid visits to the state to campaign, signaling that both parties think the race might be tighter than expected, the New York Times reports. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg campaigned with Colom in the state on Tuesday.
Mississippi has the highest share of Black voters in the country, and Colom is making a bet that courting their vote and capitalizing on dissatisfaction with Trump could make a win possible, NPR reports. If Colom wins, he will be Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.
Hyde-Smith is the first woman senator from Mississippi.
Michigan: The Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and the Republican Mike Rogers are locked in a tight race. For El-Sayed, the demographic-based conditions that have marked his campaign since his primary continue to follow him all the way until the final days of the midterm. The New York Times reports that the Democrat is facing a challenge borne from tensions between Black and Arab American communities in Michigan, which complicate his need for Black support — a top concern during the primary. Meanwhile, the Washington Post found Arab Americans who voted for Trump but are now backing El-Sayed, whom they see as the “America First” candidate.
Georgia: Senator Jon Ossoff continues to look good — and well-funded — compared with his challenger, Republican Representative Mike Collins. Former President Barack Obama is in Georgia today to campaign with Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic candidate for governor, whose race looks much closer than Ossoff’s.