Rating Changes Toward Democrats Across the Board: MI-SEN to Leans D, Other Key Statewide Races to Toss-up

Overall ratings summary:

HOUSE: 211 at least Leans D, 203 at least Leans R, 21 Toss-ups. See ratings.

SENATE: 48 at least Leans D, 47 at least Leans R, 5 Toss-ups. See ratings.

GOVERNORS: 24 at least Leans D, 22 at least Leans R, 4 Toss-ups. See ratings.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— A persistently poor national environment for Republicans informs several rating changes this week toward Democrats.

— The highlights involve moving Michigan’s marquee Senate race to Leans Democratic and Iowa’s to Toss-up.

— Several Republican-held governorships, including in big states Florida, Ohio, and Texas, also become more vulnerable in our ratings, as do a few House races.

Table 1: Crystal Ball Senate, gubernatorial, and House rating changes

Map 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings

Map 2: Crystal Ball gubernatorial ratings

Six weeks to go

We couldn’t blame someone for being skeptical, on a gut level, of what appears to be a growing blue wave this year. Polling, particularly in heavily white, working-class northern states, has sometimes overestimated Democrats, and not just in presidential years. It may also be the case that voting is more tied to tribe than to material conditions, limiting the upside for either party even in times of deep economic concerns, especially in places not typically favorable to them. If Democrats end up underperforming, some of these possibilities will have been at play.

And yet, consider this: 2018, the last most comparable election, was a bad year for Republicans. That happened despite there being no real economic or inflationary headwinds for Republicans, and the president’s net approval (though still poor) was only about half as far underwater as it is now. This year, the president’s credibility on the economy is shot, and has been shot for the bulk of his term; the decision to strike Iran has become so unpopular that top GOP Senate candidates, such as Mike Rogers in Michigan and Ashley Hinson in Iowa, are calling on the president to end the war. Based on these big-picture factors, why shouldn’t 2026 be as bad or even worse for Republicans than 2018 was?

Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote this morning that “Republican polling has so deteriorated this month that the only uncertainty remaining ahead of the midterms is the depth of the party’s losses.” Whatever private data indicate, the public data are bad for Republicans—perhaps too bad in some instances, but bad nonetheless.

We are making several rating changes today across Senate, gubernatorial, and House races. Needless to say, the poor national environment for Republicans is a driving force for all of these rating changes. Let’s go through them:

— We continue to believe that progressive Abdul El-Sayed (D) will underperform what a Democratic Senate candidate could or should get in Michigan in a year like 2026. Yet we still have viewed him as a soft favorite to win, and we’re going to formalize that by pushing his race to Leans Democratic. Polling has generally pointed to El-Sayed, but just narrowly, with a Suffolk University poll showing him up 47%-40% released this morning a positive outlier for him. One caveat: That poll included a question about recalled 2024 presidential vote showing a roughly Kamala Harris +6 electorate, about 7 points to the left of what actually happened there. We do think the Michigan electorate will be more favorable to Democrats than the 2024 electorate, but that’s a lot. A Washington Post/Schar School poll from last week only had El-Sayed up 48%-45%, but respondents also favored a Democratic Senate by a 53%-45% margin, showing both El-Sayed’s underperformance but also perhaps indicating room to grow. Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) typically doesn’t get much beyond 45% in polls even as he’s kept it close with El-Sayed. El-Sayed may yet turn out to be the Democrats’ answer to Herschel Walker or Todd Akin or other Republicans who kicked away past winnable Senate races in favorable environments, but we do see him with an edge at this point.

— Marist drew a lot of eyeballs on Tuesday morning with a poll showing state Rep. Josh Turek (D) up 50%-42% on Rep. Ashley Hinson (R, IA-2). This one we really do think is too good to be true for Democrats, and maybe it’s this year’s version of the Ann Selzer poll showing Kamala Harris up 3 points in Iowa in 2024 (she lost by 13). There are other credible public polls of Iowa that show a much different race: Emerson and Suffolk had Hinson up 5 and 4 points, respectively, in late August. Hinson, as we noted above, just broke with Trump on Iran, and she also released an ad emphasizing bipartisanship, telling signs of a candidate adjusting to a threatening environment. This is all enough for us to now view Iowa Senate as a Toss-up as opposed to a Leans Republican race. Meanwhile, Democrats seem likely to make at least some congressional gains in Iowa even if they don’t win the Senate race. To reflect this, we’re pushing Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R, IA-1), the narrowest Republican House winner in 2024 despite holding a Trump +8.5 district, from Toss-up to Leans Democratic. She faces a third matchup with Christina Bohannan (D), a former state legislator: The race has been a big magnet for outside spending—second-highest in the whole country so far, per Rob Pyer’s tracking—so it’s not like it’s over.

— There are lots of potential sleeper Democratic Senate targets across the country—or, in many instances, “independent” sleeper targets, as independent candidates have emerged as the main challenger to Republican Senate incumbents. But of those sleepers, the one that has become the most interesting to us is Kansas, a traditional Democrat vs. Republican race as Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) faces megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton (D). Marshall has faced some negative stories recently, most notably a New York Times report about Marshall, a practicing doctor before becoming a member of Congress, going after patients for medical debt. An Emerson poll showed Hamilton up 45%-43%; the Hill’s Alexander Bolton reported Monday that a Republican source told him private polling also showed Hamilton slightly ahead. Kansas has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, and we’d still be surprised if that streak ends this year. But we’re moving this from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.

— Making the same move are the open Florida gubernatorial race as well as Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) reelection bid; the GOP is still favored in both but close polling, a bad political environment, and possible exhaustion with long periods of Republican leadership may make both of these races fairly close. One other change in Texas comes in TX-9, a majority-Latino Trump +20 district that is one of the five seats Republicans targeted in their gerrymander. The district has surprisingly seen a modest amount (roughly $200,000) of GOP outside spending, and it did vote for Beto O’Rourke (D) in the 2018 Senate race despite being reliably Republican otherwise (though not by as much as that Trump +20 2024 showing indicates). We’re flagging it as Likely Republican. In aforementioned Florida, we are moving Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R, FL-27) from Likely Republican to Leans Republican; Salazar made national news last week for pushing back on the Trump administration’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement, and a big swing against Republicans in heavily Cuban-American South Florida can’t be ruled out, especially as Salazar faces a credible challenger in former newscaster Eliott Rodriguez (D). This district backed Trump by 14.5 points but was much more competitive as recently as 2020.

— We also are pushing Ohio’s open gubernatorial race as well as Gov. Joe Lombardo’s (R-NV) reelection bid from Leans Republican to Toss-up. We have resisted making this pair of moves for months because of the Buckeye State’s generic GOP lean as well as Lombardo’s incumbency, but we can no longer justify looking at the Republicans as favorites in either race given broader trends. Republicans have had big spending edges in both races but they still both appear highly competitive.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.