The Cook Political Report recently moved 11 House races toward Democrats, just a week after shifting 18 others toward them. Three red-state governor races have also inched closer to Democrats this month. Even more surprising, the Texas Senate race is considered a toss-up (Texas!), along with Iowa, Maine, Kansas, Alaska, and Ohio. Some Republicans remain steadfast that the midterm polling is wrong and that they’re going to win big in November despite an unfavorable political environment and the president’s atrocious approval numbers. Are they right? Is all this blue-wave talk just wishful thinking built on biased surveys, or is the GOP as doomed as the mainstream narrative presumes?
Midterm Warning Signs
Despite how imperfect polls are, they’re probably the best tool we have to measure midterm sentiment, and the picture they paint for the GOP is bleak. Just look at Texas: Democrat James Talarico continues to enjoy a small lead over state Attorney General Ken Paxton, although there ahs been some recent tightening. In Alaska, former Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, has led or tied Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in every poll since late September. GOP Sen. Roger Marshall appears to be losing ground against Democrat Adam Hamilton in Kansas, though the latest InsiderAdvantage poll shows Marshall ahead by one point, his first polling lead in nearly two weeks. In Iowa, Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson is tied with Democrat state Rep. Josh Turek in Liberty Nation News’ polling average. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) leads Sen. Jon Husted (R) by an average of three points in Ohio. South Carolina is also competitive. None of this bodes well for Republicans, and the House races don’t look much better.
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Democrats are favored to win 18 Republican-held seats, according to Decision Desk HQ’s Oct. 12 estimate. They’re also favored in “12 Democratic-held seats that were carried by President Trump in the 2024 election,” explained DDHQ. “Another nine toss-up seats carried by Trump could also go for Democrats. These crossover seats could provide Democrats with around 25 to 35 seats of their would-be House majority.” Democrats could also flip most of the Republican-held seats that Trump didn’t win in 2024. Meanwhile, the GOP is behind by nearly eight points in the generic ballot.
We’ve seen this story before, though. Donald Trump, as a first-time presidential candidate, was largely dismissed by the media. Pollster Nate Silver gave Hillary Clinton a 71% chance of winning the presidency in 2016, one of many estimates that widely missed that year. In 2024, a Des Moines Register poll released right before the election showed Kamala Harris winning Iowa, which Trump handily won while outperforming his polling numbers in every swing state.
So, one could argue that the polls are unreliable and are underestimating Republicans, yet the GOP likely has internal polling that aligns with public polling; otherwise, the president probably wouldn’t be campaigning in states he won by double digits in 2024. More significantly, though, many of these states don’t have large numbers of swing voters. Granted, the latest Fox News poll shows Trump’s job approval among Republicans overall has dropped 16 points since March 2025 (11 points from among non-MAGA Republicans), and Republicans need MAGA voters. But the president’s biggest fans probably shouldn’t be the GOP’s top concern.
The Persuadables
In a recent Siena College poll for The New York Times, conducted in five battleground Senate races in Republican states, Democratic candidates were winning independents by 24 points across the five states. These are the people who typically decide elections, and right now, they apparently want more moderate candidates who can work across the aisle, according to an in-depth report by the Welcome Democracy Institute. It examined working-class voter sentiments in Iowa, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. It included seven focus groups in Obama-to-Trump locations and a statewide survey of over 1,000 self-identified independent voters in Michigan. The focus groups, though not representative of the electorate as a whole, shared some enlightening comments.
When asked about Republicans, a man from Michigan who leans neither way and voted for Trump in 2024 said: “They need to align themselves with very moderate ideals of the country, really stop playing into this over-the-top extremism on their end, and really just focus on what’s important to the everyday American.” These people care less about party and ideology and more about middle-class values and a decent living, the results of the focus groups suggest. “I’m moderate,” a Pennsylvania woman said. “I’ll vote for a good Republican. I’ll vote for a good Democrat. All I care about is how you’re going to represent us, the middle class, and take care of us.”
Almost all the participants expressed similar sentiments, and many were sick of both parties. “I feel like growing up,” an Iowa woman said, “it was a lot more blurred. You could have opinions on either side and still come to middle ground where now it’s very black and white. You’re either on our team or you’re not on our team.”
Beware of the Undertow
Whether swing voters choose a Republican or a Democrat in November could boil down to one metric, a question Gallup asked respondents in its pre-election poll: “Which political party do you think can do a better job of handling the problem you think is most important?” Republicans led on this measure during the previous two election cycles, but in Gallup’s latest poll, Democrats lead by 11 points; among independents, they’re ahead by 13. Between 1994 and 2022, the party with the advantage on this measure gained House seats during each midterm election. Strength In Numbers asked a similar question in and found Democrats leading by between nine and 13 points all year.
Participants in the Gallup survey were also asked which party they thought would do a better job of keeping the country prosperous, another question on which Republicans usually have the advantage. This time, however, Democrats lead by 14 points.
Elections are notoriously hard to predict, but most signs point to a possible blue wave. Then again, the House and Senate maps might not be as expansive as Democrats think. The polls could be oversampling the left or be distorted by nonresponse bias. Plus, Republican-leaning undecided voters could always break for the GOP and give the party a lift. On the other hand, a red undertow could drag the GOP under if a swath of Republican voters sits out the election. Even if Democrats do take both chambers of Congress, they might discover that the independents who backed them this fall voted against a party rather than for an agenda. That kind of coalition could begin to unravel as soon as the 120th Congress convenes.
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