Seven Weeks to Go: Polling Not Getting Better for Republicans; 8 House Rating Changes

Overall ratings summary:

HOUSE: 210 at least Leans D, 203 at least Leans R, 22 Toss-ups. See ratings.

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

GOVERNORS: 24 at least leaning to each party, 2 Toss-ups. See ratings.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— There’s been little improvement in the Republicans’ polling position as the end of summer looms, with Democrats hitting a new high for the cycle in generic ballot polling averages.

— Eight House rating changes in favor of Democrats push them a little closer to 218 in our ratings and the Republicans a little further away.

Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating changes

The post-Labor Day poll position

Those waiting for a Republican recovery in the polls will have to keep waiting, and the wait may be for Godot. The post-Labor Day period has seen the Democrats generally doing well in surveys. The most-watched one was the New York Times/Siena University House generic ballot poll released Tuesday morning: Democrats were up 8.5 points. Polling averages of the generic ballot have recently hit their biggest Democratic edges of the cycle: RealClearPolitics, the Silver Bulletin, and FiftyPlusOne all show a Democratic lead in the 7-9 point range.

A switch from registered voters to the smaller universe of likely midterm voters has aided Democrats in some polls, as seemed likely to be the case for months given higher self-reported Democratic enthusiasm to vote. The Economist/YouGov weekly national survey provides an extreme example: In its latest poll, Democrats had a 44%-39% lead among registered voters (similar to the leads the poll has shown for Democrats throughout the cycle), but a 51%-39% lead among likely voters this week. Reasonable minds can differ on whether such a big difference is realistic, but the enthusiasm problem for Republicans is not a new one. Hence the cycle-long Republican focus on trying to fire up their base voters—the decision to hold last week’s midterm GOP convention can be viewed as being in service of this goal—but the effort does not as of yet appear to be paying dividends (and a complication to this base-first strategy is that MAGA Republicans appear more motivated than non-MAGA Republicans, per CBS News/YouGov polling released over the weekend). We’ll see if a recent gigantic infusion of cash by Republican outside groups moves the needle: Texas, where the rescue mission to save Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in the Senate race is now fully underway, is a prime place to monitor for movement. Polling, including from a recent AARP poll by a respected bipartisan polling team, suggests state Rep. James Talarico (D) is still ahead.

Republicans probably were aided to some extent in 2018 by that fall’s divisive fight over confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Four years later, Democrats got a jolt from the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Is anything like that coming in 2026? If so, it hasn’t happened yet.

And even if “it,” whatever “it” is, happens, remember this: As our Editor in Chief Larry J. Sabato posted on X the other day, “Keep in mind that most of what happens now doesn’t matter a whit. Operatives and media whose jobs are to exaggerate every jot and tittle will insist otherwise. Yet the path is basically set.”

Beyond those overall observations, we are making a handful of House rating changes today. We’ll hit on those, as well as a few other observations about the state of play elsewhere, below:

— The most noteworthy change comes in New Jersey, where we now view Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R, NJ-7) as a modest underdog in his race against veteran Rebecca Bennett (D). Kean likely was hurt, or at least not helped, by a long, opaque absence from Congress earlier this year, which he eventually explained was because he was undergoing treatment for depression. To the extent he was hurt by the absence, it was likely more about his lack of explanation as opposed to the treatment itself. Veteran New Jersey pollster Patrick Murray, who previously ran the now-defunct Monmouth University poll, recently found Bennett leading Kean 47%-42% in a poll for Insider NJ from his new firm, StimSight Research. Kean’s approval numbers in the poll were actually worse than President Trump’s. NJ-7 is the kind of affluent, high educational-attainment district that Republicans have struggled to hold in the Trump era; the district narrowly backed Trump in 2024 but seems poised for a swing back.

— Rep. Bill Huizenga (R, MI-4) mulled running for Senate but sought reelection to the House instead after national Republicans closed ranks around former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) in the Senate race. But he finds himself in what appears to be a highly competitive contest in a Trump +5.5 southwest Michigan district against state Sen. Sean McCann (D) that is a top target (so far) of House outside spending. There are many Toss-up races where we would pick the Democrats if the election was today; this is one where we’d still pick the Republicans, but there’s enough uncertainty that we see it as a Toss-up for now.

— Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R, IA-1) and Zach Nunn (R, IA-3) appear to be in significant trouble in their races, although we still view those races as Toss-ups (both were among seven Republicans who backed a House war powers resolution to end the Iran war on Tuesday night). The state’s other competitive seat, the open IA-2, is a little redder than that pair (IA-2 is Trump +10, while IA-3 is Trump +4.5 and IA-1 is Trump +8.5). But it doesn’t have an incumbent, and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand seems likely to carry the district even if he loses his race, which we call Leans Democratic (remember that the three aforementioned Iowa House districts are less Republican than the state as a whole, thanks to the large GOP lean of the state’s other district, IA-4). Iowa seems like enough of a potential problem for Republicans that IA-2 merits being a Toss-up, too. We are holding the Senate race as Leans Republican, at least for now, as IA-2’s current incumbent, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R), tries to fend off state Rep. Josh Turek (D). Just as with MI-4, IA-2 has also been an early magnet for outside spending (California Target Book analyst Rob Pyers has resumed his every-other-year practice of aggregating this spending and updating it frequently on X, for which we are grateful).

— Speaking of “Leaning” Senate races, some other race raters have recently moved the open New Hampshire Senate race from Leans Democratic to Toss-up. We understand the impulse—there have been close polls, former Sen. John Sununu (R) has a great family brand name, and Republican outside money is pouring in—but we don’t share the assessment. While Republicans have done well in state races in the Granite State in recent years, Democrats haven’t lost a federal race in the state in the Trump era. It would be odd for it to happen in 2026, of all years—not impossible, but odd. We continue to view Rep. Chris Pappas (D, NH-1), who has been a decent electoral performer in the more competitive of the state’s two congressional districts, as a favorite.

— CO-5, based in Colorado Springs, is a traditionally bedrock Republican district that has nonetheless been getting more competitive in the Trump era. The district delivered roughly 20-point margins to Republican presidential nominees in the 2008-2016 range, although it also featured a high third party vote in Trump’s first election, presaging Trump’s margin dipping to 10 points in 2020 and 9 points in 2024 (putting it among the handful of districts where Trump did worse in 2024 than he did in 2020). Rep. Jeff Crank (R, CO-5) easily held this then-open seat in 2024 but faces a stronger challenge this time from veteran Jessica Killin (D), a former chief of staff to former First Gentleman Doug Emhoff. Republican outside groups, including No Going Back PAC (effectively a rebranded arm of MAGA Inc., the president’s Super PAC) are spending to defend Crank. This one merits a more competitive rating even as Crank is still favored, so it moves from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.

— Republican media consultant Dan Bayens tweeted a suggestion on Tuesday: “If you are a Republican incumbent and you haven’t polled your race recently, I suggest that you do.” Republican pollster Brent Buchanan added: “Even up to Trump +15 districts.” Things may end up bad enough for Republicans that we might see upsets in some places we don’t expect. Toward that end, we are expanding our Likely Republican column, where warranted. The foursome we are flagging in this update are Reps. French Hill (R, AR-2) in Little Rock and Mike Turner (R, OH-10) in Dayton, as well as the open seats NV-2, which covers Reno and northern Nevada, and NY-21 in the Empire State’s North Country. Of these races, Turner is in the most competitive district—Trump +8—but he has been an excellent performer even in tough years, so he’s not as vulnerable as the partisan topline might suggest. Retiring Rep. Mark Amodei (R, NV-2) has little good to say about veteran David Flippo (R), who won the GOP primary to replace him in this Trump +14 seat, and Flippo has a credentialed challenger in former state Assembly Majority Leader Teresa Benitez-Thompson (D). Hill recently benefited from about $400,000 in outside spending from a new Republican Super PAC, a development reported by Politico that raised our eyebrows a bit in a Trump +15ish district. And there’s even some buzz about the open, Trump +21 NY-21: businessman Anthony Constantino (R), who won a divisive primary, is only up 47%-42% in his own internal polling, per a Wednesday report from Punchbowl, a finding similar to dairy farmer Blake Gendebien’s (D) publicly-released internal polling showing Constantino up 47%-44%. This is retiring Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R, NY-21) district: Remember that she ended up losing out on becoming ambassador to the United Nations at least in part because of fears that Republicans could lose the seat in a special election, although one would expect it to perform more in tune with its partisanship in a general election. Again, these are all just deep sleepers, at least for now.

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.