MARK MECKLER: The 10 Senate races that will decide everything, and why the polls are probably wrong again

We’re five days out. The cable shows have their maps up, the generic ballot is flashing blue, and the pundits are already writing the Republican obituary.

I’ve seen this movie before. So have you.

Here’s what the “blue tsunami” crowd isn’t telling you: the Senate is still very much in play, and on the current numbers, Republicans are in a better position than the headlines suggest. Republicans hold 53 seats. Democrats need a net gain of four just to take the gavel. That means they have to win almost every close race on this map. Republicans only have to win their share.

And most of these “Democrat leads” are a point or two. That’s inside the range the polls have missed by, in the same direction, for a decade.

The pollsters’ track record

Let’s start with the scoreboard, because it matters.

2016. The polls had a Democratic bias of about 3 points, according to Nate Silver’s own analysis. We all remember how that night went.

2020. It got worse. The pollsters’ own professional association, AAPOR, called it error “of an unusual magnitude,” the worst in 40 years nationally. For Senate and governor races, the polls overstated the Democratic margin by 6 points on average. Six points. Joni Ernst was supposedly in a toss-up in Iowa and won comfortably. Susan Collins trailed in nearly every public poll and won by 8.6 points.

2024. The pollsters patted themselves on the back for “improving.” Here’s what their improvement looked like: for the third straight presidential cycle, polls underestimated Republicans, overstating Democratic margins by 2.7 points across all offices. In the competitive Senate races, the Republican beat the polling average in 10 of 11. Rick Scott was supposedly up less than 5 in Florida and won by almost 13. Ted Cruz was up about 4 and won by 8.6. Dave McCormick was supposed to lose in Pennsylvania. He won. And the famous Selzer Iowa poll? It missed by 16 points.

To be fair, the 2022 midterm polls were closer to the mark, and nobody should assume a miss is guaranteed. But the pattern of the Trump era is clear. The misses keep going one direction. Pollsters still struggle to reach the kind of voters who don’t answer surveys from strangers, and a lot of those voters vote Republican.

So when you read “Democrat leads by 1.5,” translate it. That’s a coin flip at worst. On the recent track record, it may be a Republican lead.

Now, the races. The latest numbers below come from The Daily Wire’s battleground rundown.

Texas: Paxton vs. Talarico

James Talarico supposedly holds a 1.5-point lead over Ken Paxton, and some polls show it tied or Paxton ahead. In fact, of the last five polls, three of them show Paxton slightly up. Again, momentum matters, and it’s all in Paxton’s favor at this point. But this is the marquee race, and the media is desperate to finally deliver the “Texas turns blue” story they’ve been promising for 20 years.

Remember Cruz in 2024. Polls had him up about 4. He won by nearly 9. Texas has a long habit of making Democratic hype look foolish on election night. And living here, I can tell you, Texas isn’t blue and we are not voting for Talaric.

The only real concern is rural turnout, and that’s exactly why President Trump is rallying in Corpus Christi and Lubbock this week. If rural Texas shows up, this one isn’t close. I think this one pretty easily goes to Paxton in the end.

Michigan: Rogers vs. El-Sayed

Abdul El-Sayed theoretically (again…according to the untrustworthy pollsters) leads Mike Rogers by less than two points, and the race is tightening. Rogers came within a whisker of winning this state two years ago. This time he’s facing a far weaker and much more divisive opponent.

El-Sayed is the radical Islamist candidate of the socialist left, and even his own party is nervous. They brought out their elder statesman, Barack Obama to campaign here…that’s not confidence, that’s desperation. And while Obama is a talented politician, his brand has never carried over to anyone else.

Even El-Sayed’s primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, told Politico that Rogers is engaging Detroit’s Black community “harder and more successfully” than any Republican she can remember. She hasn’t campaigned for El-Sayed, and this week she publicly blasted a Michigan ad blaming Israel for America’s economic problems. If she’d been the nominee, likely Rogers would be in real trouble.

When a Democrat’s own primary rival is publicly praising the Republican’s outreach, that tells you something the topline poll doesn’t. The momentum is with Rogers and my prediction is that he pulls out a strong victory. This is a real pickup opportunity.

Maine: Collins vs. Jackson

The polling says that Troy Jackson leads Susan Collins by 1.4 points.

I’ll say it plainly: I would never bet against Susan Collins based on a poll. In 2020 she trailed by somewhere between 4 and 6.5 points in the averages, never led a public poll, got outspent badly, and won by almost 9. This one reminds me of the Lucy and Charlie Brown football routine. How many times can the press and the pollsters tell us that Colllins is going to lose and then just say “oops, you shouldn’t have trusted us,” afterwards?

This year Collins is facing an opponent who told her to “shut up” in their final debate and then doubled down on CNN. Former Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin campaigned for her. A key firefighters’ union endorsed her. Maine independents, especially independent women, have rewarded her before, and Jackson’s behavior is not the way to win them over.

Have you looked at this guy? He’s literally been a member of every party in Maine, and came in third in the gubernatorial primary. He got slotted in the Senate race only because the Democrats decided that a guy with a Nazi tattoo who was credibly accused of sexual assault (Graham Platner) wasn’t going to fly with voters.

Minnesota: Tafoya vs. Flanagan

This is the sleeper. Michele Tafoya is a genuinely strong recruit in a blue state that is fed up. She’s the very definition of a solid Republican candidate. We need way more candidates like her. Polls show her within striking distance of Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who has to answer for the Walz administration’s record, including a sprawling Medicaid fraud scandal. And she is a full swing crazy leftist.

It’s still uphill, but never underestimate polling bias. Minnesota voters have watched their state government fail them, and a candidate like Tafoya gives them a reason to send a message. If there’s a surprise on election night, keep your eye on Minnesota. That could be a huge pickup for Republicans.

Ohio: Husted vs. Brown

Sherrod Brown leads Sen. Jon Husted by 3.3 points, and Democrats are excited about it.

They should remember 2024. Ohio voters already showed Sherrod Brown the door once, in a presidential year. Trump has won this state three times. A 3-point Brown lead in Ohio, given the history of polls in this state and this era, is not a lead I’d lose sleep over. The question is turnout. Republicans are leaning into the anti-socialist message, and it works in Ohio when voters show up. Momentum matters in elections and everything is moving Husted's way right now. I think this one goes to Husted.

Iowa: Hinson vs. Turek

Effectively tied (according to the “polls”), with individual polls giving Rep. Ashley Hinson a narrow edge. Republicans see her as a strong candidate running a solid campaign.

Don’t forget this is Iowa. This is the state where Ernst was a “toss-up” in 2020 and won comfortably, and where the most respected pollster in the state missed by 16 points in 2024. Democrats are hoping fuel prices, tariffs, and healthcare worries will carry them. But Turek is a dyed in the wool radical leftist in a very conservative state. I’d still much rather be Hinson.

Kansas: Marshall vs. Hamilton

Sen. Roger Marshall holds a razor-thin lead polling lead over Adam Hamilton, a liberal Methodist pastor. The media is calling it a late Democratic break. Wishful thinking and suspect polling doesn’t make it so. It’s still Kansas.

Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. That’s not a typo. A tied poll in Kansas is, in my view, a sign that the poll is struggling to find Kansas Republicans, not that Kansas is about to break a 94-year streak. Still, Marshall needs his voters to take this seriously and show up. I think Marshall wins this one.

North Carolina: Whatley vs. Cooper

I’m not going to wave this mess off. Dem. Roy Cooper leads Michael Whatley by more than 10 points in the RealClearPolitics average, Cooper is popular in NC. Republicans are pulling resources, and the President himself has sounded resigned to it. I’ve said Whatley is a terrible candidate since the beginning. This was a payback pick for the President, and it was obviously a grave mistake.

But note what this means for the math. If Democrats are counting on North Carolina as their sure pickup, they still need three more, and every one of them comes from the list of races where the “Democrat lead” sits inside the polling margin of error. One seat doesn’t make a majority. But it is a really bad unforced error by Republicans.

Georgia: Collins vs. Ossoff

I hate this one. Georgia should never have sent Ossoff to the Senate in the first place, and there’s some ugly Republican history there which I won’t revisit right now. Jon Ossoff leads Rep. Mike Collins by 8, though the governor’s race is much tighter, with Republican Rick Jackson narrowly ahead of Keisha Lance Bottoms. Reports of weaker GOP turnout operations in rural Georgia are a warning sign that should be fixed, not accepted.

An 8-point gap is a real hill. But if rural Georgia turns out the way it can, the margin will be smaller than the experts expect, and that matters for every race on that ballot. Though I really hate this, this is likely a Democrat Senate seat. I think the Governor’s race will be close, but really Georgia, are you going to put Bottoms in the Governor’s seat? Is Georgia really that bad?

Alaska: Sullivan vs. Peltola

Mary Peltola’s lead over Sen. Dan Sullivan has shrunk to under a point. Add to it that Alaska is notoriously hard to poll. In 2020, the polls had Sullivan in a competitive race, and he won by double digits.

Watch out for the games, though. There’s a Democratic-backed effort to promote a decoy candidate with Sullivan’s name to confuse voters, and the Justice Department has already filed suit over certification. The NY Times just reported that Pelota’s operatives were behind putting an independent candidate on the ballot whose name is also Dan Sullivan, and this will add to Democrats’ potential legal woes here. With the baffling system of ranked-choice voting (a feature not a bug), this one may not be settled on election night. But don’t let anyone tell you it’s over just because the count is slow. Ranked choice voting IS part of the cheat, and it was intended to be so. And in the second Dan Sullivan and potential legal fights…this one could take a while to sort out

The bottom line

Add it up. Democrats need four net seats. Two of their targets are real, at least on paper. Everything else they need sits in races where they lead by a point or two, or trail, in polls that have grossly underestimated Republicans in three of the last four cycles.

That’s not a blue wave. That’s a field of coin flips at best, and recent history says the coin is weighted towards sanity this election.

But here’s the thing: polling error doesn’t win elections. Voters do. Every “Republican overperformance” you read about above happened because real people showed up when the experts said it was hopeless. That’s the whole game. And we won’t know the results of the game until after the polls close and the votes are counted.

So don’t believe the pundits who call it before the votes are cast. Likely they and the pollsters who feed them such nonsense will be wrong again.