WASHINGTON — With Election Day just two months away, Republicans are behind in eight key battleground Senate contests, according to the RealClearPolitics average of public polling.
The GOP has already faced expectations of a difficult fight for control of the House, given the historical headwinds that often hit the party holding the White House. Now, the Senate landscape is showing growing signs of trouble as well, including in states once considered dependably red, such as Texas and Ohio.
“It points out the obvious that Republicans are in pretty bad shape going into the midterms and that they’re looking at historic losses,” Republican strategist Terry Holt told The Post, offering a blunt assessment of the party’s weak polling position.
“The question is whether some of these races can be saved with some miraculous turnout that apparently is going to be very expensive or whether or not the mood in this country can be changed fundamentally.”
The latest RCP Senate polling averages show Republicans trailing by 2 points in Alaska, 7.5 points in Georgia, 2.3 points in Maine, 1.8 points in Michigan, 2.6 points in Ohio, 2 points in New Hampshire, 8 points in North Carolina and 1.9 points in Texas.
One bright spot for the party is Rep. Ashley Hinson’s (R-Iowa) 1.4 percentage-point lead in the Hawkeye State over Josh Turek. The problem is Iowa appears to be far more competitive than it had been during recent cycles.
Democrats currently hold three of the battleground seats in contention, while Republicans have the other six. All of the battleground races in the RCP aggregate, except Georgia and North Carolina, are within what would usually be the margin of error in a typical poll.
“National Republicans have been sounding the alarm that midterms are hard since last year, and we’ve been firm that not a single race should be taken for granted,” one Republican operative involved in Senate races told The Post.
That operative stressed that “Republicans continue to believe we’ll hold the Senate” and pointed to a recent analysis about how polling in the summertime has typically made Democrats look stronger than they actually are during recent cycles.
In that analysis, Echelon pollster Patrick Ruffini noted that 3,312 polls had, on average, overestimated Democrats by 3.7 points over the past four election cycles. During the summer, the error rate was about 5.9 percentage points.
Republicans are sitting on a massive cash advantage over Democrats between President Trump’s super PACS and the official party groups that haven’t been fully put to work yet. There are also questions about how much one-time trillionaire Elon Musk will dip into his deep pockets.
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Moreover, there have been dramatic instances where the RCP aggregate significantly overestimated Democrats in the past. It had Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) down dramatically against Sara Giddeon, but she ultimately won by 8.6 percentage points in her 2020 reelection bid.
Recently, in Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed had a 10.2 percentage-point lead over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in RCP aggregate for his Democratic primary, but he only won by 1 percentage point.
“I’m seeing private polling in some of these [races] … where they’re continuing to underpoll Republicans and Trump voters,” veteran Republican pollster Jim McLaughlin said.
“I think the Republicans are in much better shape than what a lot of these media polls are showing, and look, we still got a long way to go between now and Election Day.”
This go-around, Trump won’t be on the ballot, posing complications for Republicans in turning out their base, while Democrats are likely to be highly motivated.
“One of the most important things is going to be for these campaigns to turn out Trump voters that don’t normally show up,” McLaughlin stressed, noting that he’s optimistic the GOP will be able to pull that off.
To achieve that goal, Republicans have been capitalizing on far-left radicalism this cycle, including the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which they hope will mobilize their base.
“Republicans are united in defeating Democrats’ socialist insurgency, which would raise taxes on working families to bankroll free benefits for illegal immigrants,” National Republican Senatorial Committee press secretary Bernadette Breslin said.
Most polls overwhelmingly show that affordability is at the top of voters’ minds heading into the midterms. That issue could get even more pressing in Alaska, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, if Trump’s trade war with Canada doesn’t get resolved.
“I’m very suspicious of the RCP polling in general, but they do a lot of it, and it’s trackable,” Holt said of the aggregate. “The mood is sour, and I think nobody’s really questioning that, and even if you’re oversampling Republicans in your poll, you’re going to get that.”
“I think that might be the real problem that this doesn’t show how really, truly bad it is.”