Democrats are counting on a midterm wave, but in the very states they hope to win, polls have underestimated Republicans before.
Story Highlights
- Six Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas are at the center of Democratic hopes for the Nov. 3 midterms.
- In 2020, Maine polls had Sen. Susan Collins trailing, and she won by more than 8 points.
- In 2024, Donald Trump won Iowa, Ohio and Texas by far more than the final polling averages showed.
- Republican leaders say surveys are missing their voters; Democrats say they have many paths to victory.
Why The Old Misses Matter
A conservative column published on Sunday, Oct. 11 made the case that the wave talk is running ahead of the facts. An Oct. 1 national news analysis of the six Senate races showed why: in these same states, Republicans have beaten their polls in past elections. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said he expects Republicans to “keep the majority,” which stands at 53 seats to 47.
Democrats see it differently. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said, “We have lots of different paths to victory, and we’re not going to turn any of them down.”
The Collins Lesson In Maine
Maine’s 2020 Senate race is the best-known example. Democrat Sara Gideon, then speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, led Republican Susan Collins by 3.8 points in the final polling average. On Election Day, Collins won with nearly 51 percent of the vote to Gideon’s less than 43 percent. Collins, first elected to the Senate in 1996, is on the ballot again, facing Democrat Troy Jackson, a former president of the Maine Senate.
Trump Beat His Numbers In 2024
The 2024 presidential race showed the same pattern in three states with Senate races in the 2026 spotlight. In Iowa, Trump led the final polling average by 4.7 points and won by 13. In Ohio, he led by 7.7 and won by just over 11. In Texas, he led by 7.4 and won by nearly 14. In Michigan, Kamala Harris led the final average by 1.8 points, and Trump carried the state by about 1.4.
Alaska has its own history. In 2020, one Alaska poll had Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan ahead by 4 points. He won by nearly 13. Sullivan is running again, against Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman. “Alaska is a notoriously difficult state to poll,” said Nate Adams, a spokesman for the Sullivan campaign.
What Republicans Say Is Going On
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana put it bluntly: “You’re seeing an undersampling of Republicans.” Undersampling means a poll reaches too few people from one group, so that group’s views count for less than they should in the results. The conservative column says most experts put the gap at 3 to 5 points for conservatives.
In Michigan, where Republican Mike Rogers faces Democrat Abdul El-Sayed for an open seat, Rogers’ deputy campaign manager, Tyler Henningsen, said polls “continue to substantially underestimate Republican performance in Michigan.” House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said, “This is going to be a very close election.”
What The Record Does And Does Not Promise
The misses have not all run one way. In the 2025 elections, polls understated Democrats by about 6 points on average, according to polling analyst Nate Silver. In the three presidential years before that, final polls overstated Democratic margins: by 3.1 points in 2016, 4.6 points in 2020 and 2.7 points in 2024, according to reviews of poll accuracy that include the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the main professional group for pollsters.
Pollsters change their methods after a miss, so an old error does not automatically repeat. A past miss is a reminder, not a prediction. What the record does show is that in presidential years, and in these states, a small Democratic lead on paper has not always held up on Election Day.
For voters, the takeaway is simple. A poll is a snapshot of the people who answered it. The only count that settles anything is the one taken at the ballot box. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian policy group, summed it up: “The only poll that really counts is Election Day.”
Sources:
dailysignal.com, yahoo.com, newsweek.com
