After we recorded, new Fox polls found Dems up eight in Ohio and down four in Michigan.
This week, Fox News released a poll showing Democrat Troy Jackson up two points over Susan Collins in Maine. Even more strikingly, Trump is more than 20 points underwater in the state. So we went back and looked at the summer’s Fox polls, and it turns out they’re some of the very worst for Trump of all. He’s deeply underwater in many states he won. This comes as two new forecasts have Dems narrowly favored to win the Senate.
Caitlin Legacki: Thanks for having me.
Caitlin, all of those, with the possible exception of North Carolina, are very close. And I will say, I doubt Roy Cooper’s that far ahead in North Carolina. In your experience, how good a position is this for Democrats given the timing, and what do you make of those numbers?
But I think, to your point, there’s a lot of things that have to go right between now and November for that to happen. And I think that while everyone is doing all of the right things, we certainly cannot take it for granted.
In Maine, it’s 39 to 60. That’s 21 points underwater. In Texas, it’s 45 to 54, nine points underwater in Texas. In North Carolina, it’s 40 to 59, 19 points underwater in North Carolina. And in Iowa, it’s 42 to 55, which is 13 points underwater. Trump won three of those states, two by double digits. I don’t know what to make of numbers like this. What do you make of them?
Sargent: How big do you think Iran is in this? My basic sense is that Iran is playing a huge role in Trump’s low approval ratings. It really symbolizes so many things about the failures of this presidency, and it’s yet another example of a direct link between his own pathological craziness and his policies and high costs on Americans. Do you think Iran is central to the equation here?
And so I think part of the reason you’re seeing Democrats doing well and Republicans doing so poorly in a lot of these historically conservative states is because there’s just so much frustration with the way that he’s popping off, as it were, and doing these things needlessly, and refusing to change direction or change course. It just, it drives people crazy.
And The Atlantic reports that Trump has “furiously” told aides that Iran is acting in bad faith in these negotiations. Yet, according to The Atlantic, his aides are privately showing him all this data that supposedly shows that if he just bides his time, Iran’s economy will ultimately cause them to surrender: Sir, sir, absolutely, you’re doing the right thing by doing nothing!
Legacki: I think this speaks, at a macro level, to the dangers of having a president who surrounds himself with yes-men. During the first Trump administration, at least, there were people around him that were willing to get fired from their jobs in order to try to tell him the truth. In the second administration, it’s all sycophants. And what that means is, like, we know he’s being given bad data.
But the other problem that Republicans in the Senate are dealing with is, you know, the main argument for Susan Collins to get reelected is that she has been a Republican check on Trump. But in all of these instances, you see kind of like this scenario where Republican senators stand up to Trump, they delay something, but then ultimately they fold.
Again, that’s with independents, in states that Trump mostly won. I just don’t know what to make of that. He’s around fifty points underwater with independents in three of those, a bit less in the fourth. Those numbers just seem too terrible for Trump to be real. What do you think?
But then also to show voters how they’re going to do things differently, and how they’re going to stand up to the Democratic leadership in a way that, I think restores some common sense to D.C. And you know, I think that the biggest mistake Democrats can make right now is to conflate the dissatisfaction with Trump as a mandate for Democrats or for Democratic policies, without us actually, like, getting into office and showing that that trust is earned.
And so maybe the way to think about this is, if there’s a way for Democrats to win the Senate this time, it’s in those numbers. In other words, there really is a very real opportunity here to win the Senate in numbers like those. It’s just a matter of converting just enough independents into Democratic voters to make it happen. What do you think of all that?
And so I think, you know, part of the reason that folks were freaking out about Francesca Hong, and were less enthusiastic about Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, is just that, you know, if we run too far to the left, we run the risk of losing seats that are otherwise winnable. And so I think we have to be very mindful that nothing is a given here. And all of these races, as strong as Democrats’ position is right now—all of these races are extremely losable for us, as much as they are winnable.
Democrats need to flip four seats, though, and a lot of those races are very close. We had another poll just out of Texas that had Talarico down one, unfortunately. And so the Fox numbers are encouraging, but they aren’t the whole story. What’s your sense of the whole map? Where do you see the strong spots, and where do you see the weak spots?
I’d also just mention, as it relates to Maine, both Alaska and Maine have ranked-choice voting. So I think that that adds a wrinkle that makes me a little bit more bullish on Democrats picking up that Alaska seat than otherwise I would be. And then, you know, somehow in all of this, Sherrod Brown in Ohio gets forgotten a lot. And I think, as red as Ohio has gotten in recent years, he’s running a really strong campaign. It’s very local. It’s focused a lot on issues related to data centers. And I think that he’s kind of the sleeper to get us over the finish line.
There was a time when I would have felt better about Maine than I do now. I think Troy Jackson really doesn’t appear to me to be a strong candidate yet. Maybe he can kind of grow into it, I hope, as you say, that he sort of codes for voters as a generic Dem. I don’t know if that’ll happen, but I really hope so. If you had to pick right now, which three out of Ohio, Maine, Texas, and Alaska would you say Democrats are going to win, if they are?
Sargent: OK.
The Graham Platner campaign obviously came with a lot of baggage that would have allowed her to make, I think, the story more about him. And it would have allowed her to make this election more of a choice. I think—having been in this position myself, working for Claire McCaskill in 2012—the worst possible person for Susan Collins to run against is a generic Democrat, right?
Sargent: All right, so you’re thinking Texas is probably the one that’s less likely to flip out of those four.
Sargent: Yeah, I think that’s right. And Ohio is going to be really tough, though, let’s face it. I mean, this is a state that Trump won by a very sizable margin in 2024. And I think Alaska is something everybody’s sleeping on in a way. But it does seem possible. It does seem like Sherrod Brown is running a strong enough campaign, and the numbers are bad enough for Trump in red states, that make a pickup in Ohio actually possible.
Legacki: Honestly, it might. And the thing about Ohio that I think people are sleeping on a little bit is that you’ve got both a governor’s race and a Senate race this year. And on the governor side, they’ve got Amy Acton versus Vivek Ramaswamy. Acton is also running a great campaign. Ramaswamy is also running a terrible campaign.
Sargent: Well, we have two new forecasts that pretty much bear out what we’re saying in this conversation. The Fifty Plus One forecast has Dems very narrowly favored to retake the Senate, at 55 percent probability. Nate Silver’s new forecast has it at 57 percent. I will tell you, I look at those numbers, Caitlin, and I say to myself, well, OK, I am right to think that everything’s on a knife’s edge here. Like, at first you look at the numbers and you say, OK, well, we’re favored. But, you know, those are incredibly, incredibly close odds, and everything could just flip like that.
Sargent: It absolutely could. You can see in the fundraising appeals from some of these candidates that they really see that as well.
Michele Tafoya (voiceover): I think right now, at least, just kind of keeping a stiff upper lip. Maybe you take one less trip to Starbucks, and so that gas goes a little further until this thing is over and these gas prices come back down again. Let’s just try to be patriots about this
Legacki: I haven’t seen “suck it up” as a winning message before, but you never know.
Legacki: Thanks for having me.
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