中期选举民调显示民主党领先，共和党在红州面临压力

Abby, I think I wanna start with you this morning because as we've been talking about the president's popularity, the unpopularity of some of these economic policies, the war in Iran, etcetera, we've seen an interesting thing, which is, you know, the president does not suffer usually from a lack of loyalty within Republicans, but we are seeing a few candidates pivoting away from mentioning Trump in some of their speeches and almost going against him.

You know, we have Maria Avril Salazar, a Republican in Florida, making a statement. We have Byron Donald who kinda scrubbed his campaign website of some of the more outright Trump, mentions. Is this a pattern we think we're gonna see, and and how has the reaction been to this? I think it's to be determined. And what's interesting about those two races you mentioned is those are pretty competitive races. Maybe the Florida one shouldn't, the governor's race shouldn't have been.

But as this wave may expand into redder areas, do we start seeing some of these, you know, very red, very, very conservative politicians putting distance? And I think when that what we've seen previously is very normal for a midterm, but if we see this expand deep into conservative country, I think it's a really uncharted territory. Ashley, you have your finger, of course, on the pulse of polling, and there was this NPR PBS Maris poll that came out this week.

And I think the the headline from that is that by a 12 margin, I'm quoting here from NPRPs, registered voters say they would prefer to elect a democrat to congress over a republican. How how seismic is that likely to be as we get closer and closer here to the midterms just a few weeks away? Yeah. We're five weeks out at this point, and we see that Democrats in the generic ballot are up by high single digits or, like, some of these polls are actually showing low double digits.

On average, Democrats are up by about nine in the generic. We're seeing more and more favorable chances for Democrats to take over the house most certainly and possibly even the senate. We see a lot of toss ups here, a lot of changes to leaning or likely dim. It's looking like a very good field for democrats right now. In fact, in the generic, they've gained a point and a half. We see the president at his lowest approval ratings, at least during his second term, low low ratings when it comes to the economy and the inflation and gas prices.

It's a pretty abysmal picture right now for Republicans heading into the midterms. Ashley, is the senate realistically in play, and what are some of the unexpected flips to watch either in the house or the senate as you're looking at these races start to tighten? The senate could very well be in play. In fact, prediction models have it anywhere from the upper fifties to 60% likelihood. We definitely need to see Democrats hold on to states like Georgia, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota.

We even have some wild cards when it comes to Montana and Idaho where we see some strong independents running. And then Democrats absolutely have to get, and these are a bunch of toss ups right now. States like North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and then Maine, of course, we know has been a big one. Now we saw that in the latest New York Times, Sienna, Susan Collins was up by a couple of points, but, obviously, this was before the pay to play allegations.

So Right. You know? And and we see Kansas as well. So there's a big spread here and a lot of different opportunities for Democrats to get that net plus four. Abby Livingston, let me dovetail this conversation with what we were just talking about, over the the first part of the show that is president Xi's visit to The United States and kind of the anxiety among a lot of farmers in this country about their prospects for for exporting agricultural goods to China.

And as we were saying, we don't have kind of full readouts of what that conversation consisted of. We have kind of a broad promise from president Trump that things are gonna get better for for farmers. When you look at some of the states that Ashley just mentioned in the Midwest, agricultural states like Iowa, How much is this issue among farmers in particular playing a role in the way that we're seeing these, these percentages shift?

I think it's absolutely why this state is in play, and I'd throw Kansas into that as well. And you have other issues hitting farmers. You have, the price of diesel, which I'd never heard diesel mentioned in a political conversation before this year, and now it comes up all the time. And you also have Elon Musk's elimination of USAID, which farmers use export their crops to third world countries. And so this is a profession that has a cycle to it, and it has been completely disrupted.

And, you know, I don't think Democrats are gonna win rural America, but I have a sense that they're being heard in a way they haven't in many, many years. Ashley, there's also this interesting polling gap between who voters say they're going to support and who they expect to win. Can you explain that? So, you know, of course, this is perception by by the public. And so the public still sees in some of these red states that the Republican is going to win, but we see also that there's polling that's showing that the Democrat is up by a few points or it's looking like a tie.

So, you know, very interesting juxtaposition here of voters just believing in what has happened before, the history of where they live, and and who who people have historically voted for versus what's actually going on. And like we had mentioned, especially in some of these redder states where historically it may have been a Republican, we see some very close races or we see potential wins for Democrats. Abby, I know you want to talk about Texas.

I know you want to talk about Paxton and Talarico. Go for it. Well, I would say it's a five alarm fire, but that Republicans were saying that in March. And what I can say is this race is taken extremely seriously by operatives in both parties in the state, and there is a real, real possibility Texas could flip at the senate level and possibly other statewide races in November. Ashley, pick up on this. I look at the Texas Tribune this morning.

This is the headline in large font. All recent polls have Tal Rico ahead of Paxton in the US senate race. What are those data telling you? I'm one of those people you polled that just doesn't quite believe this, but okay. You know, Tyler Rico has been ahead in, I think, 15 out of the past 16 polls. I mean, we always talk about never looking at one singular poll because polls are a snapshot in time. But when you're looking at averages and multiple polls together, this is really telling you something.

I mean, you know, of course, we have talked about polling error in the past and what polling error could mean, but polling error also doesn't necessarily go in one direction. It could favor Democrats as well. So this has been a pretty telling race where we're seeing Talarico lead in virtually all of the polling that has been done there. Abby, there's also some other interesting races. You mentioned Ann Wagner. She's in the Saint Louis suburbs.

She could be in trouble. Why would that be so significant for Republicans? So Ann Wagner's was in trouble in 2018, and Missouri legislators redrew that to be an even safer seat. She's a pretty good politician. But if that seat is even being pulled, that means that there is concern. And not all of these reds red district Republicans are capable of running general election campaigns. They only know primary campaigns. And so we are on the precipice.

It may or may not happen. But if the bottom falls out, this wave could start compounding where you have candidates who are not prepared to make the case to general election voters, and things could deteriorate over the next few weeks. But we'll have to wait and see if the Republican ad spending can staunch the bleeding.