Red State, Blue Hopes – Is Kansas Really in Play?

With only a month until Election Day, the GOP is unexpectedly playing defense in several red states and dumping money into races it considered safe earlier this year. One of those places is Kansas, a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since Franklin Roosevelt clobbered Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election. Adam Hamilton, a former registered Republican and founder of the nation’s largest United Methodist church, hopes to break the streak. Liberty Nation News’ polling average shows him tied with Sen. Roger Marshall. Some say the polls are overestimating Democrats, while others believe they’re underestimating them. Either way, Democrats seem convinced this seat is ripe for turning blue. Perhaps they’re getting ahead of themselves.

Once Upon a Time in Kansas

Marshall is a first-term senator in what is essentially a red state, though Kansas often elects Democratic governors. Trump won it in 2024 by 16 points, but a recent Emerson College poll for Nexstar showed his approval rating there was 40%, with 53% disapproving. Marshall has largely defended the president’s agenda, but Trump’s platform isn’t as popular as it once was, and the senator has noticed.

Like many Republicans on the ballot, the incumbent has started to distance himself from the president. After Trump threatened to ban the sale of jets made by a Canadian company with a large workforce in Kansas, Marshall posted on social media: “I’m going to fight to keep Bombardier’s over 1,200 Kansas jobs. I’ve already taken that concern inside the Oval Office.” The senator also spoke out about ICE agents sweeping through his state, posting: “When ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement.”

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Marshall’s campaign hit some turmoil in early September when The New York Times reported that he had filed more than 700 lawsuits against patients with unpaid bills during his decades-long career as an OB-GYN; 81 of those patients were later arrested for missing court dates. During a debate following the Times’ exclusive, moderators questioned Marshall about the lawsuits, and the crowd chanted: “shame on you.” He defended his debt collection efforts as “common business practices” but was repeatedly booed throughout the debate.

Of course, the Hamilton campaign turned Marshall’s old business practices into an attack ad, releasing a video of a patient who said she had been arrested over an unpaid sum. Meanwhile, Marshall’s campaign advertisements describe Hamilton as a “woke megachurch C.E.O.” and a “millionaire megachurch C.E.O.” But there’s more to this race than verbal jabs and attack ads.

The Mirage

One of the biggest factors that’ll influence voters’ decisions in Kansas this year will likely be economic headwinds. Diesel in Kansas averaged more than $6 a gallon at the beginning of October, according to AAA, up roughly 77% from a year ago. The high cost of powering farm equipment is certainly weighing heavily on some Kansans. Perhaps that’s a big reason why Vice President JD Vance recently campaigned there on behalf of Marshall, trying to put voters at ease and float promises of better days ahead.

Also unhelpful to the GOP is a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in mid-September that found 51% of Republicans disapprove of how Trump is handling the cost of living, outnumbering the 44% who approve. Statistics like these might make Democrats more confident they can flip the seat and break the 94-year streak, but two factors might shatter those hopes.

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First, as of August 2026, Kansas had more than 2 million registered voters, according to Ballotpedia, with 24.71% Democrats, 44.36% Republicans, and 29.68% independents. A Pew Research Center analysis found that 93% of voters who supported Biden in 2020 voted for Democrats in the 2022 midterms, and 97% of Trump voters stuck with Republicans. If Kansas partisans behave the same way, Republican turnout would have to drop drastically for Democrats to close the gap. Some Kansas Republicans have crossed the aisle before, most notably to elect Gov. Laura Kelly twice. Hamilton, however, would need that kind of defection on top of winning a slew of independents.

Second, many Republicans who disapprove of Trump are unlikely to vote for Democrats, according to a March survey published by Jared Abbott, a political scientist and the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics. Of nearly 2,000 Trump supporters surveyed, “less than a fifth of those who were uncertain about voting Republican in the future said they might vote for a Democrat,” as Liberty Nation News previously reported. “Most were either undecided or said they would support neither party.” So some disapprovers could end up tilting the scales by sitting out this election.

Keep in mind: Marshall won his seat in 2020 by 11.4 points, even though people widely expected a tight race. Hamilton’s path is narrow. He needs a majority of independents to break his way and enough Republicans to either cross over or stay home. The polls say it’s close, but in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, “close” might be a mirage.