Two days before Election Day, Daily Wire opinion editor Ben Domenech and DC bureau chief Tim Rice review the 2026 midterm cycle with John Bickley and Georgia Howe. They discuss surprises such as the collapse of Democratic candidate Graham Platner in Maine and the unexpected prominence of AI as a campaign issue.
The hosts walk through key Senate races in Maine, Alaska, Texas and elsewhere, and debate whether Trump's final push can blunt a possible blue wave. They also examine prediction markets versus polls, the credibility problems facing pollsters, and how the results could reshape Trump's agenda.
In this episode Georgia Howe, John Bickley, Ben Domenech, Tim Rice
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The election is just 2 days away, and a lot has happened even just in the past month.
In this episode, we speak with our very own Ben Dominic and Tim Rice to recap the highs and lows of this election cycle and give you all the key developments you need to know come Tuesday night. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Hou. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Truth is under attack in our culture. People are embracing lies about gender. They're rejecting the sanctity of every human life. And the government is even punishing people for saying what is true and right. But the biblical principles on which our country was founded still matter, and they must be defended.
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Guys, thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having us.
Good to be with you.
So we're in the final days now of this election. There's been no shortage of news over the last few weeks. It's been actually pretty wild to keep up with. Let's start big picture, though, and kind of look back. What have been some of the biggest surprises this election cycle?
Oof. I mean, looking all the way back, we have to start with everything about Graham Plattner in Maine. It feels like 6 years ago at this point, but it wasn't that long ago. I mean, finally, Democrats had found somebody who seemed like they could beat Susan Collins. And then not only did he implode, but he imploded in the most spectacular way possible with his Reddit posts resurfacing and allegations of being on a creepy pervert chat room and all that. And I mean, that was a big early loss for Dems, a big upset.
But that's, I don't know, Ben, what next? There's no shortage of surprises, but that's the big one for me.
Indeed. Yeah. I think the biggest surprise to me is actually kind of a broader trend surprise. I think at the beginning of the year, we certainly thought that if the Iran war, if that conflict went on the way that a lot of people thought it could, if gas prices took a serious hit, that that would be a major aspect of the debate going into the final weeks of the election. What I think a lot of us didn't cotton onto was the idea that AI and a lot of things related to AI would end up becoming such a dominant factor in the way that politicians had to navigate this particular moment.
And that, by the way, is one that I think Republicans certainly didn't expect to have to be on the defensive about going into the final weeks of the election. They were leading the way last year saying, you know, our states are going to be the center for this, Texas in particular. You know, this became a major issue. Democrats have played both sides of this, and they've done so, I think, in a pretty savvy way, though the legacy media has let them get away with all of it by turning the President's Association with these Silicon Valley billionaires and the like as something that is a monopartisan Republican liability.
Now, if Dems take the House, and certainly if they take the Senate too, all that AI money is going to start flowing in the direction of Democrats too. And so then they'll have a problem on their hands. But for this moment, I think Democrats have leaned into that issue to a greater degree than certainly any of us expected back in January.
Yeah, I can say personally, I've seen so many ads here in Tennessee specifically about this issue. And I've tried to step back and just think, you know, if I'm a nonpartisan watching this, is this effective? And the ads have been really good. These are Democrat ads specifically focused on this issue.
Yeah, and I think that, you know, one of the things that we saw there is, you know, Democrats were also trying to kind of own this as something that they were pro. Josh Shapiro in a critical state in Pennsylvania was someone who was ahead on this. But then you saw all of these Republican governors and the like basically saying, we're going to press pause on these things. It's played into a lot of races. And I think that frankly, this is one that caught Republicans by surprise. And because the president is so personally invested in it, they really couldn't create any distance between themselves effectively in messaging on this. Those ads, I've seen several of them, they're very effective.
They're running ads along those lines in Texas as well for James Tallarico and others. And I think that part of the issue, though, there is, you know, these are Democrats playing games with this. They don't actually, you know, have a plan to sort of, you know, just breeze away the need for data centers in America or something along those lines. And so they're perfectly happy to demagogue on this issue. And I think that they've reaped some, we'll see how much, electoral benefit from it.
Right. I think a lot of people don't actually know yet how they feel about AI. Now, if we're going to distill down just a few races to keep our eye on on Tuesday, which are the ones that you think are going to become the most important? Obviously, there's a few we've been talking about a lot, maybe some dark horses as well.
Yeah, I mean, if we start by just kind of bracketing off Michigan and Texas, the Tallarico, Paxton, and Mike Rogers, Abdul Al-Sayed races, which are obviously the ones that have taken up the most oxygen and a lot, I think the most money officially, if not, then it certainly feels that way. I think, I mean, I'll go back to Maine. I think, you know, I do personally think that Susan Collins is going to pull it out. That's what Susan Collins does. She wins impossible elections and then spends 6 years making Republicans mad. But it's still very close.
And, you know, anything can happen in any of these races, right? That's obviously a little bit of a non-sequitur. But so Maine, and then going all the way across the map, Alaska, especially, which again, was another one that was always going to be very close. It took on a lot of, I think, surprising relevance because the president and vice president both went to Alaska, drew a lot of national attention there because they're worried about losing this state. And then the recent revelation just a couple of days ago from the New York Times, of all places, that the Mary Peltolas campaign and the DSCC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, were behind the double Dan Sullivan gambit, which, you know, in a bid to kind of throw off ranked choice voting in Peltolas' favor.
Even if that race winds up being a blowout one way or the other, that's something to watch because now that sort of, that kind of skullduggery from the Peltola campaign and Democrats is one of the stories that we're going to take out of this cycle for sure.
For sure. You know, I think that the other thing to sort of look at here is the Democrats when it came to recruitment, you know, they, I think, did a very good job in terms of their selections. And they really, you know, they made a runway for a number of these candidates. I mean, there was a point, you know, where Tallarico might not have been the candidate in Texas, and you could have had a Jasmine Crockett race that wasn't going, you know, as well or that had less money behind it. You know, when it comes to the situations that they've had in several states across the country, you know, they've done recruitment with a mind of people who look to be either moderates or, you know, in the case of somebody like Sherrod Brown in Ohio, is a kind of fake moderate, comfortable retread.
And that's the kind of approach that they've used in their recruitment. So I think the overall story there is one where, you know, Republicans, you know, I think did a much better job of trying to sort of dictate, you know, what the races were going to look like early on. They did a great job when it came to the redistricting fights, which many of them were very worried about early on. What they couldn't anticipate, I think, is that the president's support among Hispanic voters in particular would decline to a point where a lot of those redistricted seats in the House would look more competitive than they had thought they were going to be.
And I think that they also ended up in a position where they were counting on this massive amount of money that they had a huge dollar advantage going into the final months of the election over the Democrats. They were counting on that to really haul them over the finish line. We'll find out whether that was a success or not based on the outcomes here.
Yeah.
Because I'm not entirely sure that you can have that kind of effect with money the way that you used to within political campaigns.
Yeah, that's something you've brought up on this show, and I think that is such a great point. How do you spend money effectively now in the current media landscape with TV watching, with online habits? What is actually effective? I think there's going to be lots of lessons to learn after this election. Now, historically, midterms have not been kind to the party in power. Like you mentioned, the Republicans do have a spending advantage. They also have President Trump. And President Trump has been super active.
He promised to be. He has been. I mean, he has had a grueling final stretch hitting every state imaginable. He's really leaned into this. Do you think that Trump's efforts will turn the tide or should Republicans still be bracing for a bloodbath on Tuesday?
I think they turned a tide. They didn't fully turn the tide. So what I've been saying, and I think Republicans should be bracing for losses, but I think that reports of, you know, kind of a blue wave or a Republican implosion are greatly exaggerated. I think they've always been a little bit exaggerated. We've seen, of course, that a lot of these polls are not super trustworthy and in many cases have straight up been fabricated in favor of Democrats. But also, this is just sort of how these things go, right? With midterms, we talked about this on the District Club a lot. You know, it starts, oh, it's going to be a blowout for this party.
No, it's going to be a blowout for the other party. Most times, it's actually a lot closer than, you know, the extremes, right? Believe it or not. So I think that was always a little bit the case. I do think that Trump's barnstorming and his, I mean, open and outright plea, pretend I'm on the ballot, right, really helped bring some, not fringe, but, you know, kind of not the MAGA diehard base, but, you know, think about those voters who voted for Trump in 2024 because of things like, we're tired of Biden-Harris craziness, right? It was hard for Republicans to run on that this cycle, partially because Trump is in the White House.
A lot of that craziness has been dispatched with. And also because the Democrats wound up nominating so many candidates who were outwardly crazy. It's a little bit harder, weirdly, paradoxically, I think, to run and say, you know, this guy's a lunatic. This guy's going to impose crazy liberal policies when you have someone like James Tallarico saying, elect me and I will impose crazy liberal policies. It almost takes the oxygen out of it. So by putting himself back on the table and asking Americans to think of this as a referendum on him, I do think that Trump brought more of those voters to the table.
I do not think that it's enough to win mostly for Republicans, maybe not even, not keep both houses of Congress, maybe just one. But I do think that when we look back at it, we'll see that, you know, as best as we can kind of analyze the counterfactual, more Trump was better than less Trump.
You know, I really agree with a lot of Tim's analysis there. I will say, though, that I think that it is very disturbing that, and should be disturbing for Republicans, that late in the game, they are not competitive in a state like North Carolina. They're not competitive in a state like Georgia. You know, in a cycle where even with the historical trends, you would like them to still be spending money, they've pulled back completely, essentially, from those contests, you know, on the Senate side. And I think, you know, there's some legitimacy to the fact that Darlene Graham is going to have potentially a tough time when it comes to South Carolina.
Ultimately, I think she'll easily, you know, pull it out. But it's one of these things where you don't like to see a race get that close, you know, within a solid red state. And it certainly would have been nicer for Republicans to have been able to not have to shore up some of these other people and perhaps spend money in a more competitive and potentially winnable, even in a historically bad cycle kind of thing, to, you know, have something to play with when it came to Minnesota or the like. So look, you know, I think the president absolutely stopped a lot of the bleeding that was going on.
The real question, though, is if Republicans, you know, were enthusiastic enough about him that they're willing to go out and vote for some of these candidates who they're less excited about, such as a Darlene Graham.
Now, there's been a lot of declining trust in polls recently, not to mention the two fake poll scandals just in this past cycle, one of which may have actually affected who ended up on the ticket. And we've had this shift towards looking at prediction markets to get a better sense of who's ahead. And by the way, for people listening, you can check out the Daily Wire Election Hub. We actually have the option to view both the prediction markets and the polls on our election map. So given that, can you break down the difference between polling and prediction markets?
Is one more influenceable than the other? And also, which one would you say is actually better at predicting the final outcome?
Well, I'll take the easier part of that question and then stick Ben with the harder one. I think that, you know, the main difference, right, is that prediction markets are, and their argument for why they are more accurate is people are putting their money where their mouth is, right? People are putting money on the person that they're going to vote for. So if you're in South Carolina and you want to vote for Darlene Graham, you put money on Darlene Graham on Polly Market. The more, if she's rising in that market, it means that a lot of people are going to vote for her. But of course, you don't have to live in South Carolina to bet on Darlene Graham on Polly Market.
And then it's also, I think when you think about that, right, and you expand out who's betting, anyone can bet. What are people looking at? How are they informing their bets? They're probably looking at the polls, right? That's the thing, right? Like, if you're going to bet on a, if you're betting on a parlay, if you have a touchdown parlay, you're probably going to look at ESPN first, right? So that's, it would be like saying, oh, look, what's a better predictor of what's going to happen in the Thursday night football game, you know, an ESPN analysis or the Polly Market odds? Well, one is probably informing the other. So I don't think we've seen yet, because this is the first election where we've had both, I don't think we've seen exactly which one is more accurate, but I do think we need to be wary of these claims that one of them is wholly independent from the other.
Yeah, I think that that's totally true. And in addition to that, I think that one of the things that you can't account for when it comes to, you know, some of these prediction markets is late breaking news stories or things that, you know, affect an election. I mean, the number of people who probably, you know, placed prediction market investments on one outcome in the Alaska Senate race a month ago, who are looking at the stories that are coming out, you know, this week, you know, that could easily have affected, you know, what the decisions that they're making in the same way that, you know, an injury report would affect who you're betting on, you know, when it comes to sports gambling.
I also think that the other thing we need to keep in mind is just because the money might be smarter than the polls doesn't mean that the money is smart. And I think that that's the thing that people need to keep in mind about these prediction markets. There are a lot of people who get into them who want to make money, who make, you know, long-range bets or they make, you know, sort of, they're just throwing darts at the board, you know, thinking, what if this crazy thing happens? There's a way to make a lot of money this way. And I think that that's something that people should keep in mind is just as true when it comes to the prediction markets as it is when it comes to sports gambling.
At the same time, polling is broken and there's much worse polling going on here. And as, you know, our Sunday, our weekend interview just a week ago with a pollster, you know, was focused on this and he basically said, you know, that it is easier to do cheaper, bad polls than at any time in history. And that you have to understand that those are clouding a lot of the different, you know, aggregators and people who are giving you poll averages and the like. So it's hard to trust the averages even as an indicator on this, just given the amount of bad material that's being added to good.
You know, we keep predicting a reckoning coming for the polling industry and it really does feel like it's happening this year. This has been a brutal year for pollsters. Final question, whether or not there's a blue wave, do you see Trump altering his approach on his key agenda items after this election?
I think that they, yes, if Democrats win, certainly if they win both houses of Congress, but even if they win one, I think that the only way we'll see Trump kind of stay on the same course, and I mean, to the extent that we can predict what course Trump, if Trump would stay on a course in general, right? That's obviously the wild card here. I think if obviously, look, if things stay the same, it's more likely that he'll stay on the same course. The more things change, I think the more we're going to see radical pivots from Trump, whether that is kind of a last gasp trying to flood the zone with a lot of changes in the lame duck years, a lot more executive orders because he can't get things passed in Congress, and of course, probably a much more defensive posture because, again, especially the more Democrats control Congress, especially if they have both houses, they're going to be calling for impeachment.
They're going to be investigating the president, every member of his cabinet, every member of his family. And so that's obviously going to put Trump and the White House in a defensive crouch. The president, of course, when he gets into a defensive crouch, also likes to go on offense. So I do think that, yes, the more of a blue wave it is, the more of a reaction we'll see from the president.
I think that one thing that's going to immediately happen after this election, assuming that the outcomes are the way that I expect them to go, is that the president's going to engage in an all-encompassing campaign to try to get the Senate before it either changes hands or moves to something like a 50-50 situation, which is what I think is going to happen, then I think that he's going to try to push everything that he possibly can through. He's going to put the screws to the folks who are going out to the exits. He's going to try to make sure that, you know, any aspect of his agenda that they didn't get onto the table gets onto the table.
I think he's going to be very frustrated with pushback from John Thune and the like. That's the immediate. In the long term, I think that the real thing that this is going to do is lead to an aggressive and framed as anti-corruption push by Democrats that's really going to be all these new folks who are coming into Washington trying to get two-time, trying to get play on their, you know, particular, you know, the horse that they would like to beat. And then they're going to go pick somebody to go after. They're going to go after people who the president likes and they're going to go after people who they think they could maybe pick off with an embarrassing enough story or performance in front of a committee.
They're going to do that in a way that's going to be designed to try to frustrate the president's agenda and pushing past that with executive orders and with, you know, pretty aggressive action, I think when it comes to foreign policy, it's going to be what the president does in the out years. But the other thing that's going to happen, and this is the most long-term aspect of this, is the Democratic Party is going to fundamentally change. We already know it's going to fundamentally change just based on the fact that you've had all these people win primaries in situations where they are going to end up as members of the House. They will be a thorn in the side of Hakeem Jeffries. They're going to push the party in a more radical direction when it comes to a massive number of areas of policy.
And that's going to create, I think, an opportunity for Republicans to push back against something, you know, for the first time in a while that truly seems to most of the country like it's a radical overstep when this election was, as we've, you know, as we will probably learn at the end of the day, mostly about economic concerns and gas prices.
All right, well, just two days left, we will find out how this all shakes out. Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming on.
Of course.
Great to be with you.
That was Daily Wire opinion editor Ben Dominich and DC Bureau Chief Tim Rice. And this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire.
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With Election Day just two days away, Morning Wire sits down with Daily Wire opinion editor Ben Domenech and DC bureau chief Tim Rice to break down the biggest surprises, defining moments, and key races of the 2026 midterm cycle. They examine Democrats’ unexpected success in making AI a campaign issue, the Senate battles to watch in states like Maine and Alaska, Trump’s final campaign push, and whether Republicans should brace for a blue wave. Plus, they discuss the growing influence of prediction markets, the credibility crisis facing pollsters, and how the election results could reshape Trump’s agenda and the future of both parties. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 3172- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:Alliance Defending Freedom - Visit https://JoinADF.com/WIRE or text WIRE to 83848 to make TWICE the impact for freedom today. - - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast
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