NYT (“Democrats Show Strength in Final Days of Race for the Senate, New Polls Find“):
Democrats are ahead of Republicans in almost all of the seven battleground states that will determine which party controls the Senate, according to the final set of polls from The New York Times and Siena University before the midterm elections.
The surveys found that Democrats hold sizable leads in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and Kansas, which has not elected one since 1932.
To win a Senate majority, Democrats need to defend all the seats they currently hold and flip at least four seats that are currently held by Republicans. It has been seen as an uphill battle because many of the seats they need to win are in Republican strongholds.
But the new polls found Democratic candidates ahead in five states that now have Republican senators and effectively tied in a sixth. They hold leads in Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas and a narrow edge in Alaska. They are effectively tied in Iowa.
In Michigan, the lone top Senate battleground already held by Democrats, the poll found the Democratic candidate leading by double digits. (It was conducted before a Democratic feud erupted in Michigan this weekend.) The surveys did not include North Carolina, where polls have long found the Democrat leading and Republicans have pared back their campaign spending.
If this holds, it would be a stark contrast to the last presidential cycle, when President Trump won all seven swing states. But, of course, Maine, Ohio, Kansas, Alaska, and Iowa are all within the margin of sampling error.
Despite a known Republican lean, the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate projects a four-seat Democratic pickup, and thus a 51-49 Democratic majority, in the Senate:
Aside from slightly favoring Hinson in Iowa, the outcome is identical to the NYT/Sienna poll.
Nate Silver is charging for his detailed breakdown, but he’s projecting a 53-47 Democratic Senate with an 80.1% likelihood of Democratic Senate control.
Despite the late-breaking kerfuffles in Alaska and Michigan, I do think this will be a wave election that will flip the Senate. Democrats are simply more energized, both against President Trump and in favor of many of their own candidates.
