House Democrats Begin To Believe in a ‘Blue Tsunami’ as Senate Polls Show Tight Races in Traditionally Red, Swing States

Democrats, hopeful that they can retake the House majority given Republicans’ slim three-seat margin, are visualizing a “blue tsunami” in November, bolstered by recent polling and fundraising numbers that show historic GOP territory uncharacteristically shifting to the left. Polls of individual races across the country give Democrat incumbents an edge on every House and Senate seat they currently hold, though a few races are closer than they may like. The Michigan Senate race has become more competitive after Democrats nominated a left-wing progressive, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed to challenge a former congressman, Mike Rogers. The New Hampshire race has similarly tightened as a former Republican senator, John Sununu, distances himself from President Trump as he looks to retake his seat in an open contest against Representative Chris Pappas. What is really giving Democrats a burst of hope this week is a New York Times–Siena College poll, which shows the opposition party with an eight-point lead in the generic congressional ballot, close to the final 2018 nationwide margin of victory of 8.6 percent, when Democrats picked up more than 40 seats in the House. The Times–Siena poll tracks with other poll aggregates, including Silver Bulletin, which finds Democrats have a 7.6 percent margin lead in the generic ballot. The average of polls in 2018 gave Democrats a 7.3 percent advantage.“That is deeply into wave territory,” Mr. Silver posted on X, qualifying in separate posts that while “every poll since Labor Day has just been radioactively bad for Republicans,” he is “very skeptical” of polls showing extreme Republican underperformance in red states. “And they’re exactly where polling error has been concentrated in recent years. But there are quite a few of them,” he posted.On the Senate front, Democrats are holding leads that could give them a majority in the upper chamber, an idea both Republicans and Democrats would have found shocking even one year ago. If Democrats hold on to Michigan and New Hampshire, they need to pick up at least four states — the likeliest being Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Alaska — where Republican candidates are consistently polling behind their Democratic opponents. Speaking to reporters before leaving Washington last week, Senator John Kennedy admitted that even in deep-red states, the GOP are forced to focus their attention and advertising dollars. Mr. Kennedy spent the weekend in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas — all states Mr. Trump carried by double-digits — to support Republican nominees in those states, including two sitting senators. “If you told me six months ago I was going to be having to spend my time in those three states, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Mr. Kennedy told reporters. “Those oughta be fat guy layups for us.”“Now we’re going to win there, but the races are close,” he said. Polling aggregates have shown a steady move toward Democrats and Democratic-aligned candidates in the three deep-red states. In Iowa, the Democrat, a state representative, Josh Turek, now leads the GOP nominee, Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, by just under one point in a race that has been well within the margin of error and has been flipping back and forth for a month. Ms. Hinson, who is seeking to fill the seat held by retiring Senator Jodi Ernst, was leading by about three points earlier this year. A separate poll out of Kansas this week by Emerson College shows the Democrat challenger, Adam Hamilton, with a two-point lead over the first-term Republican, Senator Roger Marshall. The leads in both states are remarkable, if not fanciful, since Kansas hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932, while Iowa has been reliably Republican since Ms. Ernst’s first Senate election in 2014. Senator Chuck Grassley, 93, has been elected and re-elected by Iowans since 1981.In Nebraska, no Democrat is running in the Senate race, but Democrats hope that machinist Dan Osborn, an independent, will unseat Senator Pete Ricketts, a first-term Republican who replaced Ben Sasse in 2023 and previously had served as the state’s governor. Messrs. Osborn and Ricketts are tied in the polls, according to Silver Bulletin’s polling aggregate. Republicans entered this year with a major money advantage, though that advantage seems to be doing little so far. Of the six major campaign committees run by the two major parties — three by Democrats and three by Republicans — the Democratic outfits have raised $577 million compared to the Republican groups which have raised $669 million. The Democratic National Committee also has about $16 million worth of debt on its balance sheet. At the end of the last quarter — which is the most recent fundraising data available to the public — the three major Democratic fundraising outfits, the national committee, and the Senate and House campaign committees, were entering the home stretch with $77 million on hand, while Republicans’ three main campaign groups had more than $150 million. The elephant in the room for Republicans has been Mr. Trump and his own outside spending group, MAGA Inc., which did not begin disbursing money to candidates until just a few weeks ago. Up until the end of August, the only money Mr. Trump had spent on the midterms was about $900,000 in a special GOP Senate primary for Senator Darline Graham of South Carolina. Now, his political action committee has reserved more than $138 million in ad spending, according to an analysis conducted by AdImpact, a firm that tracks political spending.

House Democrats Begin To Believe in a ‘Blue Tsunami’ as Senate Polls Show Tight Races in Traditionally Red, Swing States

House Democrats Begin To Believe in a ‘Blue Tsunami’ as Senate Polls Show Tight Races in Traditionally Red, Swing States

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