Don’t look now, but the Democrats’ Senate nominee has a bigger lead in Texas than in Minnesota.
That’s according to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, showing Democrat James Talarico up 2.6 percentage points over state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX) while in Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D-MN) leads former sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya by 1.8 points.
Statistically, that’s not a huge difference. But Minnesota has historically been one of the bluest states in the country, and its Senate race wasn’t supposed to be competitive this year. Texas is among the reddest, and it hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
A Democrat leading, or even being in the hunt, in Texas could be a sign that a blue wave is coming. But what then to make of Minnesota, where the most recent poll shows a tie between Flanagan and Tafoya?
This is what the fight for control of the Senate looks like in general. Democrats are leading in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, and Alaska. Republicans are up by just 1.1 points in Iowa, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. There have even been polls showing Republicans trailing in Kansas and Nebraska. The White House seems to be taking these numbers seriously.
At the same time, Democrats have not locked down Senate races in Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, or Minnesota. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) outperformed her poll numbers to win reelection six years ago. But that doesn’t explain Michigan, which hasn’t elected a Republican senator since the historic red wave of 1994.
New Hampshire hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since Kelly Ayotte in 2010, during another red wave. Now Ayotte is the governor, and she is heavily favored for reelection. Former Sen. John Sununu, a Republican, could be on the verge of a comeback. Cook Political Report now considers the race a toss-up.
It doesn’t seem very likely that Democrats will win Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska while losing one in Minnesota or anywhere in New England. It’s possible that Republicans have false hope in some of the bluer states where they are currently competitive. They are not actually leading in any of these places, not even Collins, just holding the Democrats to low single-digit leads on average. The initial post-Labor Day polling shows things getting worse rather than better for the GOP.
There are still a lot of undecided voters in the Minnesota Senate race. The poll showing Tafoya tied with the Democrat also finds her getting just 42% of the vote, which would not be an unrealistic outcome for a Republican candidate in the Gopher State.
Or maybe the Democrats are overrated because of a summer polling swoon. “In the last few election cycles, we’ve seen a pattern of Democrats looking competitive in red state Senate contests during the summer only to fade by election day,” writes Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini.
Candidate quality also matters. Many Republicans warned against nominating Paxton, who is struggling to raise money for his Senate campaign and has required assistance from President Donald Trump’s political operation, over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). (Cornyn also seems a bit salty over his primary loss.)
Left-wing Democrats who are at least adjacent to the Democratic Socialists of America, if not outright members, have been underperforming in statewide contests, including making some of these races too close for comfort. In Minnesota, Flanagan is also dealing with a certain amount of backlash against the Somali daycare fraud scandal, which was bad enough to convince Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to abandon his bid for a third term.
Abdul el Sayed has been a polarizing figure in Michigan. Troy Jackson doesn’t have the same baggage as the socialist Democrat he replaced earlier this year, the defenestrated Graham Platner, but hails from the same wing of the Democratic Party.
But if Republicans are struggling to win Senate races in states that voted for Trump by double digits, that doesn’t bode well for the much smaller House majority either. The one silver lining for the lower-chamber GOP has been that the universe of seemingly competitive seats is much smaller than the national conditions imply.
Everything Republicans have done, from the midterm convention to mid-decade redistricting to sending Trump and Vice President JD Vance out on the campaign trail to the Voting Rights Act litigation before the Supreme Court to opening the money spigots in what should be GOP-friendly territory, has been designed to buttress a congressional map that is much redder and less competitive than the one Democrats flipped in 2018.
But what if national conditions are so bad for Republicans that previously safe seats are now competitive? “It appears to me that the president has now reached a critical mass of problems that are threatening to take this election to a place that the 2026 map and the small number of competitive districts and Senate seats should not allow it to go,” political analyst Charlie Cook warned recently. “I confess this is a lot bigger than I expected, but here we are.”
THE VERY REAL SCENARIO WHERE THE GOP EXPANDS ITS SENATE MAJORITY
The Senate has gone against the national political grain in the last two midterm elections. Republicans gained seats there while losing the House in 2018. Democrats did the same thing in 2022.
This time could be different.