Transcript of Midterm Surprise: Democrats Are Surging in Red America

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From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. A new set of polls from The Times finds that Democratic candidates are doing remarkably well in the red states that they need to win to flip control of the U.S. Senate in next month's midterm elections. But they're doing less well in the blue states that, in theory, should be far easier for them to win. Today, my colleague, Chief Political Analyst Nate Cohn, offers his theory of what's behind the numbers. It's Monday, October 5th. Nate, welcome back.

Michael, thank you for having me.

And back so soon.

It's that time of year. You'll forget about me soon.

We could never forget about you.

So kind. You can rest assured I will not forget about you.

Okay.

Nate, in your last appearance on the show, you explained that to flip control of the United States Senate, which is a genuine possibility in these midterms for Democrats, that they would have to win seats in states, to use your words in that last conversation, that Democrats have no business-winning red states. Or put differently, Republicans could keep control of the Senate by winning the kinds of seats that they always win in the Trump era. That was basically your analysis.

That's right. To win the Senate, the Democrats must, even if everything else goes right, win at least 2 states that Trump won by at least 11 points in the last presidential election. States that traditionally the Democrats have no business winning in a federal election.

Right. So that makes it a real uphill battle for Democrats. But you have just gone into each one of these Republican states where these Senate races are happening, and you have polled each one of these races, and you have found that what was once seen as impossible might not be so impossible. So talk about what which states you polled and what you found.

Yeah, we polled the 5 red states where the Democrats seemed to have their best chance of winning: Ohio, Texas, Iowa, Alaska, and Kansas. All 5 of those states voted for Trump by at least 11 points in 2024. And we found the Democrats were really highly competitive in all 5 of them.

Hmm.

We found them with meaningful leads in 3 of the states: Texas, Alaska, and Ohio. We found the race tied in Kansas, and we had the Republicans with a nominal 1-point edge in Iowa.

Nate, this feels quite meaningful that Democrats have real leads in 3 solidly Republican red states and are basically tied in the other 2.

It's extraordinary. I mean, to take a historic perspective on this, for the Democrats to even win one of these states would really be exceptional. It has been 16 years since a party has managed to win even one state that leans so much toward the other side in a regularly scheduled Senate election. So to contemplate that the Democrats have a serious chance to not just win 2, but perhaps even more, this is something that we just haven't seen in this era of polarized politics.

Right, and this would seem to tell us that Republicans' unpopularity in this moment and in this midterm election is basically turning red states into battleground states, into swing states almost.

Yeah, I think that's right. This is an exceptional set of circumstances with a really unpopular Republican president, in some cases weak Republican candidates, and in all 5 cases, strong Democratic candidates. And that appears to be enough to give Democrats a real chance to do something that, again, you just don't expect them to be able to pull off in a typical election.

So that's the formula here that helps to explain this: an unpopular president and strong, it sounds like, Democratic candidates. Let's just focus for a moment on the first of those. We've talked about President Trump's unpopularity in our last episode with you, and I assume the Republicans' challenges in these red states are mostly tied to that, to the fact that the president is so unpopular. But what exactly is the problem?

Look, it's hard to be surprised when we see bad numbers for the president at this point. It's been the story all cycle, but these numbers are really shockingly bad, I think, for the president. His approval rating across these 5 states is just 40%.

Hmm.

And to step back for a second, these are states where Trump won 56% of the vote in the last election. So it just suggests that a huge chunk of the typical Republican coalition in these states is outright dissatisfied with the president's handling of almost every issue that we asked about in the poll.

Such as?

Such as the economy, the war, affordability, gas prices, in most of these states, immigration as well. There's nothing good here for the president. And I should also point out that the president's approval rating has dropped in these states 5 points since we polled them last in June. He is falling as we enter the heart of the campaign season to a real danger zone that we didn't see earlier in the year, and that I don't think we've seen for an incumbent president in such solid states probably since George W. Bush in 2008 or 2006.

Okay. Well, let's move on to the second part of what seems to be behind the strength of Democrats in these traditionally red states when it comes to Senate races, and that's what you You said are strong candidates on the Democratic side, which I presume means weaker candidates on the Republican side.

Yeah.

I mean, as, as bad as the president's approval ratings are, I'm not sure it would be enough for Democrats to win states this Republican if it weren't for the fact that they also seem to have really found the right 5 candidates in these states. Just for a simple overview, in all 5 of these states, more voters say they have a favorable view of the Democratic candidate than an unfavorable view. And conversely, more voters say they have an unfavorable view of the Republican candidate than a favorable one.

Wow.

Even though, again, these are red states, more voters say they're Republicans than Democrats, and yet they like the Democrat more.

That's fascinating.

And the advantage that the Democratic candidates possess is it's very broad. I mean, just take 2 questions. Who has the better moral character? The Democrat leads in all 5 states. So that's a judgment about their personal integrity. But even more surprising, perhaps, which candidate is too far to the left versus too far to the right? Even though in all of these states voters say the Democratic Party is too far to the left, in all 5 of these states voters say the Republican candidate is too far to the right and are less likely to say the same of the Democratic candidate. So the Democrats have nominated people who voters find personally compelling and who they consider to be ideologically acceptable, despite how conservative these states are. That's a real feat.

Hmm. You're saying that Part of the success of these Democratic candidates in these 5 red states is that they're not associated with the larger Democratic Party brand, which, as you just said, the poll finds most voters think is too far to the left. So let's talk about one or two of these Democratic candidates in particular. And let's maybe start with Kansas, which definitionally, at least in my lifetime, has been very strongly identified with Republicans.

It is the most Republican state of the bunch in the last presidential election, and it is also the one where the Democrats have, according to this poll, their most popular candidate in Adam Hamilton. And Adam Hamilton, I think, just exemplifies how the Democrats have managed to find someone who is both acceptable on personal grounds and ideologically a moderate. He is a pastor of the largest United Methodist congregation in the country. And certainly by being a pastor, you would presume that he's of good moral character. You would also be less likely to assume that he's an ideological radical. And for good measure, he has no electoral track record. This is not someone who has voted for a bunch of Democratic bills in the past. There's nothing that the Republicans can really tag him with. It's a very challenging person for them to run against.

And what about the Republican candidate in Kansas that Hamilton faces?

As the Republican candidate, Roger Marshall is not a very strong candidate. He's— he is the incumbent. But he is someone who has underperformed in the past. He did not do especially well in 2020 for a Republican in Kansas, even though he won comfortably. He has all kinds of liabilities, even besides just being a Republican incumbent right now. You know, as our colleague Sarah Kliff reported last month, when he was a medical doctor in Kansas, he, in pursuit of medical debt on some of his patients, he had low-income Kansans arrested for minor medical debts. The Democrats have been airing advertisements about that in the state.

Mm-hmm.

And you put all of that together, and now it looks like it could be a top-tier battleground state that people didn't have on the map at the beginning of the cycle.

Right. Because as you said earlier, the Kansas Senate race is now a dead heat, very much a battleground. So talk, Nate, about how this question of strong Democratic candidate, weak Republican candidate is playing out in the states where the Democratic lead is even bigger than in Kansas. For example, I guess in Texas or Alaska.

It's clearly the story in all 3 of the states where the Democrats have a comfortable lead. That's Texas, where James Talarico is up 6 points. over Republican Ken Paxton. Alaska, where Democrat Mary Peltola is up 7 points over Republican Dan Sullivan. And Ohio, where Democrat Sherrod Brown leads Republican Jon Husted by 3 points. In all 3 of those races, the Democrats have the candidate quality advantage. To take maybe the most opposite case from Kansas, I think maybe focusing on Texas is an easy one.

Sure, please.

If Adam Hamilton is the most popular candidate in the poll, the Republican candidate in Texas, Ken Paxton, is the least popular candidate in the poll. His political woes are, are not new and may be familiar to many people listening right now. He was impeached by his own party. He's faced federal investigation. He is in the middle of a messy divorce. And President Trump, who's endorsed Kent Paxton, he just makes fun of him ceaselessly. This is not a compelling candidate. I mentioned earlier that the Democrats have this advantage on moral character. Well, that advantage is 23 points.

Hmm.

In Texas. So this is a profoundly flawed Republican nominee who has clearly put his party in grave danger in what has been one of the nation's most reliably Republican states over the last several decades.

I mean, why in your mind, and given the very polarized era we live in, aren't Republican voters able to look past flawed candidates And just summon what we have come to understand is a reflexive, some would even call it tribal voting instinct, and get behind these Republican Party candidates. The poll is just finding that's not happening.

I think it's worth sort of peeling back the layers here. The first layer that's peeled away from the Republicans are the voters that gave them a chance for the first time in 2024. Young voters, Latino voters, These are not loyal Republicans, and they did not get what they thought they were voting for. No wars, low prices. Instead, prices are up. We're entangled in a foreign war. The immigration stuff has gone farther than any of these voters wanted, and there's now an enormous reversion back to the Democrats. And that's a huge problem for Republicans in Texas in particular, which is one of the most Latino states in the country and also has a disproportionately young population.

Mm-hmm.

In the poll, James Talarico has more than 60% of the vote among Latino voters. He's up by nearly 30 points, and alone, the Latino vote is enough to make that state into a battleground this cycle.

Fascinating.

But that's just the first layer. These are states that are reliably Republican. For the Democrats to lead here, the Democrats are breaking into a kind of voter who they just don't usually win. And I think it's important to remember that while the Republican Party is really unified in a lot of ways behind Donald Trump. There is and always has been a meaningful part of the Republican Party that has serious reservations about Trump, because there are Republicans who disagree with Trump on tariffs and disagree with him on immigration and disagree with his personal conduct and his moral character. And I think it is worth remembering that all 5 of these states voted against Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary. These are states with more of those traditional Republican voters who liked George W. Bush, who liked Mitt Romney, liked Ronald Reagan. So there may be a disproportionate group of these Republicans who have never been totally comfortable with Trump all along. But now that things have gotten this bad, the floor is sort of falling out beneath Republican candidates here. Hmm.

So 10 years after those Republican voters registered their objection to not-yet-President Trump, they are reemerging. it seems quite powerfully in these states in this midterm and going so far as to consider voting for a Democrat.

I think that's the easiest explanation for why maybe these states are racing to the left farther than other states, that all along there has been in these states a traditional group of Republican voters who has never really been comfortable with him, has gone along against the Democrats, but now with Democrats putting forward the right folks, and with things getting so bad in Washington, they might just be about to do something they've never done before. So it goes without saying that the Democrats are overjoyed to be doing this well in red states, but their strength in these red states is even more important because the Democrats are actually having an unexpectedly difficult time in several relatively blue states that the Democrats might have assumed they could take for granted at the beginning of the cycle, let alone in this political environment.

Hmm. Okay, so we're gonna talk about that somewhat counterintuitive idea that Democrats are having a tougher time in blue states right after the break. We'll be right back. The Athletic has something we need to turn you on to. The Athletic Live, hosted by me, Charles McDonald, Max Brown, Kofi Yeboah, and The Athletic's Zach Harper, and my guy here, We're taking your questions, asking you to weigh in, and hitting you back in the group chat. Plus, every week we're doing live watch-alongs of the biggest games in the NFL, NBA, and more. We'll be running live polls, arguing in the chat, and highlighting your best reactions in real time. Come join the most interesting group chat in sports. Head to YouTube and subscribe now to The Athletic Live presented by DraftKings. by Google Gemini. Hit the bell to get notified when we go live. So Nate, talk about what you found in the polling of the key Senate races in the blue or bluer states than the red states that we just talked about.

Yeah, in addition to the 5 red states that we just polled, we also surveyed 3 blue to purple states, Maine, Michigan, and New Hampshire. And despite these enormous Democratic breakthroughs in the red states, the races are still pretty competitive in these more Democratic-leaning states.

Hmm.

And why is that?

Well, the answer ultimately comes back to candidate quality again. Donald Trump is extraordinarily unpopular in all of these states, but the Republicans have either nominated really strong candidates, who are relatively moderate and have well-established bases of support in the state, or the Democrats have nominated someone who has the potential, at least, to alienate some voters who would otherwise vote for a Democrat.

Basically, this is the inversion of the candidate quality dynamic—

It is the exact opposite.

—that you laid out in the Republican states.

And the most extreme case is Maine. Maine is, of all the states, the most Democratic. Kamala Harris won it by 7 points in 2024. And believe it or not, of all of the state polls we just did, it is the one where the Republican is doing best. Susan Collins actually led our poll by 3 points, even though it's the bluest state of the bunch. At risk of repeating myself, it's a simple story. While voters in the state strongly disapprove of President Trump's performance and want Democrats to control the Senate, They like Susan Collins and they don't like the Democratic candidate, Troy Jackson.

Hmm. And does this poll help explain why Susan Collins seems to be such a strong Republican candidate?

Well, Susan Collins scored well on basically everything we asked about. They think she's an effective senator. They don't think she's too far to the right, even though this is a blue state. And to be honest, Susan Collins has demonstrated outside of polling in election victory after election victory that this is someone who has a lot of support in Maine built over decades of public service there. The Democratic Party's hope was that in this political environment, they could finally bring her down. And it turns out that at least in this poll, and it's worth noting that other polls do show Troy Jackson ahead, so there's at least a chance that we're an outlier on this, but at least in this poll, despite how unpopular Donald Trump is, Maine voters are still inclined to give Susan Collins yet another shot in Washington.

I'm curious what Maine residents told us about why they don't like Troy Jackson.

I've got to be honest, I don't feel like the poll really did a great job of explaining why Troy Jackson is this unpopular. His rating in the poll is 49% unfavorable, 41% favorable in a blue state. That's much worse than any of the other Democratic candidates. He's not a perfect candidate. He's not the most charismatic figure. He also became the Democratic nominee in an unusual way when he was selected by a convention to replace Graham Plattner in July. But I have to say that I think the single biggest mystery across these 8 polls is why is Troy Jackson this unpopular?

Interesting. Okay, so that's Maine. Is there anything else notable that you found about the other 2 blue-purple states, New Hampshire and Michigan?

I think Michigan is the one worth focusing on. Unlike Maine, this is not a story of a strong Republican candidate. It's a story of a complicated Democratic candidate who has real strengths and weaknesses. And the question has been, are these weaknesses bad enough, severe enough to cost Democrats a state that they should really win easily in this political environment?

Mm-hmm.

The poll found Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat, up 5 points over Mike Rogers, 49 to 44. But when you look under the hood of this poll, though, I think you see that there are still some risks here for Democrats. Like, he really does have these big strengths and big weaknesses. In this poll, they all happen to sort out to a modest Democratic lead. But if the balance of them was a little different, then maybe he could be in trouble really quickly.

Well, talk about El-Sayed's strengths and his weaknesses and just generally remind us about his candidacy.

Yeah. So just to back up about Dr. El-Sayed, he is a progressive candidate and not just someone who has progressive views on the issues, but who is part of this sort of activist wing of the party. Someone who has surrounded himself with characters like Hasan Piker, who by the way is extremely unpopular in the poll, who's associated himself with the Democratic Socialists even though he doesn't consider himself one. And he won his party's primary very narrowly on the strength of support from young voters in particular. And the poll definitely shows that he has real strength among young voters heading into the general election. I think it's possible that he actually has the biggest lead among young voters in this poll of any time Siena Poll ever conducted.

Ever conducted?

I think it's possible. We've done hundreds of them, but he's up 82-11 among 18- to 29-year-olds in the poll. That's an extraordinary—

He's electrifying the youth of Michigan.

He's at least electrifying them to pick up the phone and take a poll about him. So that's an extraordinary number. I have to say that I feel like there's a little bit of risk entailed in being so dependent on a fickle And difficult to reach voting block. If the truth of it is that he's actually at 60%, which would still be a good number, then he's in a lot more trouble than the poll found. On the other hand, the poll does show him with real weaknesses among the kind of voting groups that Democrats have been doing really well among this cycle, and even worse than other Democrats. So just Black voters voted against Abdul El-Sayed in the primary, and he's not doing that well among them in the poll. He's only up 76 to 13. That's a pretty good number, but just for comparison, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate is up 92 to 1 among Black voters. So in the poll, there are a lot of Black voters who say they're going to vote for the Republican for Senate, even though they plan to vote Democratic for governor and for Congress as well.

Wow.

And similarly, he's doing much worse among older voters. He's losing among voters over age 45, whereas the other Democrats are essentially tied or ahead. So there again, he has this mix of strength and weaknesses. And I think that if you're a Democrat, you're still a little bit concerned about this race. If the poll has overstated his strengths a little bit and those weaknesses are real, then suddenly maybe this is a closer race than we think. But again, he's up 5, and you can take that one of two ways. On the one hand, 5 points is a meaningful lead. On the other hand, it's a real underperformance. In fact, the Democrats lead by 10 points on the generic ballot in the poll. So he's cost Democrats half of the lead they ought to have in this race. So I do think we really can look at evenly and fairly from both perspectives.

Nate, given what the polling you've done in all these 8 states reveals, what in your mind is the clearest path for the Senate to flip? And I'm not asking you to prognosticate, just answer based on what the poll found.

Well, there are a lot of ways to think about that, but let's use the one we did at the beginning of the episode. The Democrats need to win at least 2 states that Trump won by 11 points to win, provided everything else goes their way. The blue state polls suggest they can't count on everything going their way. We found Susan Collins leading in Maine, after all, and she may not win Maine in the end, but if she did, then Democrats would need 3 of those red states. As I mentioned at the beginning, the poll has the Democrats ahead by 3 points or more in 3 red states. So if the polls are exactly right, the Democrats would win the Senate by flipping Ohio, Alaska, and Texas. They would lose Maine, but it would still be enough. If they lost other states, the Democrats would need to compensate for that by winning in a state like Kansas or Iowa. And alternately, if the Democrats ultimately won Maine, then they could afford to lose one of those red states where they have a comfortable lead in our polling.

Got it. All to say, the future of the Senate is really hard to predict, foolhardy to predict, but Regardless of who ends up winning the Senate, I think what's most striking to me anyway is that in the lead-up to this election, Democrats quite clearly are making bigger gains in red states than they are in blue or swing states. And that is just very counterintuitive.

Even crazier than that, Michael, they're not just making bigger gains. Democrats are doing better in Texas than they are in Michigan and Maine in this poll. And I think that we'll see what the election result is going to be in a month, obviously. But if these polls were to all be perfectly right, which they won't be, but if they were to be, and we were to step back and try and explain the election, I think what we would say is that in this election, candidate quality was a huge deal. And that at a time when both parties have been discredited, when the Biden presidency just failed to bring the return to normalcy that he promised, when the Trump presidency failed to bring low prices and an end to foreign wars, when both parties were unpopular, that voters gravitated toward the candidate that they thought they could trust, whether that was a moderate Republican with experience in Maine or a Democratic pastor in Kansas.

Mm-hmm. So one way of looking at these polls is that they tell us voters are rejecting both parties right now to a certain degree. And so in these states that are most likely to determine control of the US Senate, being a candidate that is not too closely tied to, tethered to, associated with either is the kind of candidate Most likely to win.

We will see when the results come in whether that's right. But, you know, just stepping back for a second, it has been 20 years since voters were— it's been more than 20 years. I think it's been 25 years since voters were satisfied with the direction of the country. They voted for both parties. They've tried all of this. And at a time when everyone is frustrated and dissatisfied with both the status quo and their usual options have failed, It doesn't surprise me that we're seeing the familiar partisan patterns of the last decade begin to weaken a bit as voters try and consider what they can do to shake things up.

Well, Nate.

Michael.

As always, thank you very much.

Thank you for having me. Always fun.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The United States rushed over the weekend to withdraw all 12 of its B-1 Air Force bombers from a base in southern England after commanders learned of potential terror attacks tied to Iran. The pullout came a week after British police arrested several men who had been traveling near the base in white vans. The base is seen as a potential target because it's been used by American bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. And the New York Times obtained documents showing exactly how Cornell University punished the 7 fraternity members accused of sexually assaulting a female classmate known in court records as Jane Doe. All of the men have denied any wrongdoing. The documents show that 2 of the men were expelled from the university. Another, who had already graduated, was barred from the campus. 2 more were suspended. The remaining men were handed lighter punishments that included writing papers reflecting on their behavior.

Meanwhile, This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our history, and I know many of you are angry, saddened, and struggling.

In a video message to the campus over the weekend, Cornell's president acknowledged the pain that the case has caused and promised that the university's response would be both thorough and transparent.

This is a defining moment in Cornell's history. We must lead the way. We owe it to Jane Doe and to survivors of assault to get this right.

Today's episode was produced by Jessica Cheung and Lexi Diao, with help from Rachelle Bonja and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Rachael Quester, contains music by Brad Fisher and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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