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I'm your host Greg Sargent.
“This week Fox News released a poll showing Democrat Troy Jackson up 2 points over Susan Collins”
and 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 there's 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 and it also comes as new reporting suggests Trump and his advisors don't understand how they got to this point.
So do Dems really have a shot at the Senate.
To parse this question, we're talking to Democratic strategist Katelyn Legaki who's worked on a lot of Senate races. So if you go back through four recent Fox polls of Senate races, here are the top lines. In Maine, Troy Jackson, Edge's Senator Susan Collins by 48 to 46, in Texas, Democrat James Tela Riko is up on Ken Packs than by 51 to 48.
In North Carolina, Roy Cooper is sizeably ahead of Republican Michael Wattley by 53 to 44. In Iowa, Josh Turwick is up over Ashley Henson by 50 to 46. Katelyn, all of those with the possible exception in 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?
“Our friends at the Democratic Senate campaign committee could not, I think, be in a better”
position than they are right now. This is an extremely difficult map for Democrats. So to be leading, even if only within the margin of error in all of these states, it's an
incredible sign that the Senate is within reach, but I think to, you know, 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. Well, I'll say I really think that all these Senate races are on a nice edge with the possible exception of North Carolina and Georgia, which is one we didn't talk about the numbers
on. But the main event in these fox poles is Trump's dismal favorability ratings. Let's go through them. The main is 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? A lot of folks said that they voted against Democrats in 2024 because they were dissatisfied
with the Biden administration's approach to inflation and reducing costs. And Trump campaigned on promises to bring costs down on day one.
“And I think when you look back at the last two years, almost every single thing he's”
done has actually increased costs, whether it's unnecessary tariffs on allies like Canada, or needlessly bombing Iran and shutting down the straight-of-war moves, which has caused some of the highest gas prices we've seen in decades, every single thing he's done has been like a heat-seeking missile to increase prices on American families. And I think that that's a huge factor in the dissatisfaction you're seeing with his job
performance. 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? 100%. I mean, one of the most glaring, I think, signifiers of cost and inflation that American families
Have is the price of gas at the pump.
And so every single day when people are commuting to work and having to fill up their car,
they're seeing $5 a gallon, $6 a gallon in some places, and that's, first of all, it's
frustrating on its own, but it's doubly so when everyone knows that this was a war of choice.
“And so it, 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 drives people crazy. I think also the war is a big reason that the Senate is risk for Republicans because voters
implicitly understand that Congress has just basically turned a blind eye and essentially given Trump this blank check for this insane adventure he's on, the war is hitting people with higher costs, it's creating the impression that Trump is completely lost and rudderless as a leader. 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, you know, sir, sir, absolutely, you're doing
the right thing by like nothing, you know, so they're basically telling him right now that doing nothing is a very smart plan really shrewd on his part and you can kind of see that manifesting itself in Trump constantly saying things like, I've got nothing but time, and it's like behind the scenes Republican Senate Trump just must be tearing their hair out.
“I think this speaks at a macro level to the dangers of having a president who surrounds himself”
with yes men, you know, during the first Trump administration, at least there were people around him that were willing to get fired from their jobs in order for trying to tell him the truth. In the second administration, it's all sick of fans and what that means is like, we know he's being given bad data, we know people are using that to push their personal political
agendas and the people that are suffering most are American families and then the families that are being bombed and Iran and elsewhere simply because, you know, we kind of have a sucker for a president right now, 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, the area where Republican senators stand up to Trump, they delay something, but then ultimately they fold.
“Yeah, well, let's talk about independence for a second because I think for independence,”
the failure of Republican senators to stand up for Trump is really critical in Maine and
the Fox polling, Trump's favor of all rating with independence is 23 to 73 in Texas, it's 18 to 78, I'm not kidding, those are the numbers in North Carolina, 24 to 74 in Iowa, 24 to 67, again, that's with independence in states that Trump mostly won. I just don't know what to make of that, he's around 50 points underwater with independence three of those, a bit less than the fourth, those numbers just seem too terrible for Trump
to be real. What do you think? Yeah, I think that to some degree they are real, but where I agree with you is that they're not necessarily going to be democratic voters, and I think that a lot of those independence are just fed up with both parties right now, and so the the impetus on democratic candidates
is to stand up to Trump and show how they're going to be able to be a check in a balance on him, 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, you know, I think restore some common sense to DC, 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. I think there's maybe a realistic way to understand these numbers in keeping with what you're saying, which is, Trump is in absolutely terrible shape with the electorate and with the middle of the electorate as well, like these numbers within independence are just absolutely
Awful, but that doesn't necessarily mean Democrats win them in the numbers th...
need, 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 independence into democratic voters to make it happen.
What do you think of all that? Being it's exactly right, and I think this goes to the heart of a debate that has been waging within the democratic party for the last few presidential elections where there is a fundamental question of, is it more important to excite and turn out our base or is
“it more important to moderate a little bit in an effort to win over those independent voters?”
And obviously it's a balancing act because we need our base voters to turn out, but we also
need to win enough of those independence in order to get over the finish line. And so I think, you know, part of the reason that folks were freaking out about Francesca Hong and in our, we're less enthusiastic about him do I'll say it 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, is a given here and all of these races as strong as Democrats position are right now. All of these races are extremely lovable for us as much as they are winnable. If you're enjoying this episode and want to get even more out of the DSR network, you need to check out our sub-stack.
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“They are on a nice stage, I think, as I said earlier, let's talk about the overall map for”
a sec. I think if Abdul al-Sayed hadn't won in Michigan, we might feel even a little bit better right now. I think Abdul can get there. I really do.
It seems like he wants to win and it seems like he's taking the steps necessary to moderate men, fences in the party and so forth. And it's going to be a very good year for Democrats. That's probably enough to get him there. Democrats need to flip four seats, though, and a lot of those races are very close.
We had another poll just at a Texas that had Talarika 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?”
Yeah, so I think you're exactly right about Michigan. I think Michigan is still very winnable. It's just going to cost Democrats more money in terms of outside spending and investment to get there. The strongest spots that I see are North Carolina and Georgia.
I think the bright spots are really Iowa, Texas, and Alaska. 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 somehow in all of this shared Brown and Ohio gets forgotten a lot. And I think as Red is 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. Let's just assume from now that Georgia is almost going to certainly stay in the Democratic
campaign. And let's just also assume that North Carolina Democrats are going to win there. It really does look like Roy Cooper's going to win. It might make a lot of these challenge just doesn't appear strong enough and Roy Cooper's well-liked in the state and so forth.
So that means Democrats have to flip three out of Ohio, Maine, Texas, and Alaska.
There was a time when I would have felt better about Maine than I do now.
You know, 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's sort of codes for voters as a generic dim. 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?
Alaska, Ohio, and Maine. And I actually have a very different take than you do on Maine, which is that in part of the reason that I was more in favor of Janet Mills than I was of Graham Fattner is that the worst case scenario for Susan Collins running this campaign is that it is a referendum on her and whether or not she has been an appropriate check on Donald Trump.
The Graham Plattener 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 the, you know, having been in this position myself working for Claremma Casco in the 12, the worst possible person for Susan Collins to run against is a generic Democrat. Right. And so even if he's not the world's strongest campaigner, I think that if he and like
Democratic outside groups are able to make the main election a referendum on Susan Collins and Donald Trump, there's a very good chance we would not. All right. So you're thinking Texas is probably the one that's less likely to flip out of those four. Yeah.
And like, it's not meant to be any sort of knock on Talorico. He's running a great campaign. He's doing everything he needs to. It's just that Texas is such a big state. It is still expensive to run there.
“I think it is just inherently the hardest of the three states to win in.”
Yeah. I think that's right. And Ohio is going to be really tough though. Let's face it. This is a state that Trump won by a very sizable margin in 2024.
And you know, 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, for Trump in red states that make a pickup in Ohio actually possible.
So you can see a path through the races that you just identifying that basically goes something
like this. Sherrod Brown runs a strong campaign all the way through and Trump's terrible numbers just make it possible to eat it out. Troy Jackson runs a generically democratic campaign in Maine and they manage to turn it into a referendum on Susan Collins and Donald Trump.
And Alaska happens without anybody looking, right? Honestly, it might.
“And you know, 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 the VAC, where I'm a swammy. Acton is also running a great campaign. Ram a swammy is also running a terrible campaign. And so I think, you know, increasingly it's hard to see any scenarios in which Republican
voters in Ohio are excited about turning out and democratic voters are unenthusiastic. And so I think those factors lend themselves to kind of a perfect storm in Ohio of Democrats eating one out there. Well, we have two new forecasts that pretty much bear out what we're saying in this conversation. The 50 plus one forecast has stems very narrowly favored to retake the Senate at 55% probability.
Nate Silver's new forecast has at a 57%. I will tell you, I look at those numbers, Caitlin, and I say to myself, well, okay, I am right to think that everything's on a nice edge here. Like at first, you look at the numbers and you say, okay, well, we're favor. But you know, those are incredibly incredibly close odds and everything could just flip
like that. Yeah, it's a coin flip. And I think the thing that nobody is really talking about or focused on is the fact that Republican Party committees and outside groups have about twice as much money as Democrats. And you know, Democrats are raising a ton of money, the campaigns are out raising their
Republican opponents.
But when you're looking at a disparity of about 650 million to 375 or whatever Democrats
have, that's a big difference.
I think that that is something that right now is the one thing that Democrats...
crushing and that could be the difference maker.
And absolutely could. You can see in the fundraising appeals from some of these candidates that they really see that as well.
Well, Caitlin, let's close on the comic relief here.
It has to do with Iran.
“And I think this really underscores the degree to which Trump's terrible numbers and Republicans”
difficult spot is rooted in the Iran War as well as a few other related things.
The shell to FOIA, the Republican candidate for Senate, had this to say about prices
and the Iran War, listen. So I think right now, it leaves 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 patriot about this.
Well Caitlin, there you have it.
“I think what that actually shows is that these Republican candidates all have one other”
big liability, which is they're not allowed to seek any distance from Trump. They have to defend everything he does as absolutely perfect. So the point where they actually have to say screw you to the voters in order to sustain their haggiography for Trump.
“I haven't seen second up as a winning message before, but you never know.”
You never know. Caitlin Ligaki. It was really awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.
You've been listening to the Daily Blast with me, your host Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a new Republican podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler on the DSR network.
