What happened?
The U.S. election map appeared to shift in favor of Democrats recently, heightening Republicans’ fears that voters angry over the Iran war and the rising cost of living are poised to deliver the GOP a midterm drubbing. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved three key Senate races toward Democrats, who must pick up four GOP seats to win control of the chamber. New Hampshire went from “toss-up” to “lean Democrat”; North Carolina from “lean Democrat” to “likely Democrat”; and Kansas, where megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton is neck and neck with Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.” Seemingly giving up on North Carolina, where former Democratic governor Roy Cooper has a comfortable lead over Republican Michael Whatley, the top GOP Senate super PAC canceled its ads there and shifted funding to South Carolina—which Trump carried by 18 percentage points in 2024— and Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. A New York Times/Siena poll found Democratic Senate candidates leading in reliably Republican Ohio, Alaska, and Texas, and one point behind in Iowa. With Democrats favored to take the House, a GOP strategist drew lines to the blue wave of 2006. “If the bottom continues falling out,” he told Politico, “this will be worse.”
President Trump floated suspending the federal gas tax to ease anger over pump prices averaging $4.50 a gallon, a move that would require congressional action. Trump, whose approval rating hit a record-low 32% in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, held rallies in Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas. The dire polls are “fake,” Trump said in Mobile, Ala., and “don’t account for the fact that Trump is out campaigning.”
What the columnists said
A huge cash advantage was “supposed to be the GOP’s ace,” said Isaac Arnsdorf in The Washington Post. Since Labor Day, Republicans have poured half a billion dollars into competitive House and Senate races. But Democrats’ advantage on a generic congressional ballot has only widened since then, from about 6 points to 9, according to one polling average. Over $190 million in attack ads aimed at Democratic Senate candidates James Talarico in Texas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan hasn’t moved the needle—El-Sayed’s favorability is up 5 points since August, according to Fox News surveys.
Democrats are gaining ground with several key groups, said Ruth Igielnik in The New York Times. They include voters under 30, who in the Times/Siena poll favored Democrats by 30 points, and Latinos, who favored Democrats by 24 points in a recent NBC News/Telemundo poll, up from 12 points before the 2024 election. And in nearly every state the Times polled, Democrats are winning among independents, “the bloc of swing voters that typically decides elections.” The polls could be wrong, said Jim Newell in Slate. They’ve previously “underestimated Republican energy in the Trump era,” by failing to reach enough white, noncollege voters. Since those abound in red states like Kansas and Iowa, “the error there will be greater if pollsters are missing this cohort again.”
If the polls are right, Republicans see a potential “lifeline” in left-leaning New Hampshire, said Ken Thomas in The Wall Street Journal. John Sununu—a moderate former one-term senator— is narrowly trailing Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, who has for months “been urging the national party to avoid complacency in the battleground state.” Maine, where longtime Sen. Susan Collins is in a tight race with Democrat Troy Jackson, could give Republicans another swing-state win.
But it’s a marker of Republicans’ vulnerability that Democrats have “found an opening in one of America’s reddest states,” said Lauren Egan in The Bulwark. Trump won Kansas by 21 points in 2016, and 16 points in 2024. But Democratic Senate challenger Hamilton has “run a masterful race” pitched to the center—and he’s been aided by Trump policies. Medicaid cuts are squeezing rural health care providers in the state. Its farm industry, already hit hard by tariffs that shrunk exports, is now struggling with the soaring price of diesel for tractors and combines. And ICE raids at meat- processing plants have “enraged” those in the livestock industry.
That Kansas is in play beggars belief, said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. “This stubborn, spiritually rhomboid state” has voted GOP in every federal statewide race “since an aberrational blip at the dawn of the Roosevelt administration.” But such is the effect of Trump’s agenda on “otherwise deep-red, agribusiness heartlands.” I believe Marshall will pull it out, but with rough weather ahead for the GOP, the state is “officially on tornado watch.” The “conditions for a freak event are now fully in place.”