Poll Watch: Republicans Are Running Out Of Time to Change Public Opinion

In the penultimate week of the midterm elections, the chance for Republicans to turn things around is slipping, as polls are continuing their drift towards Democrats. 

In the generic ballot, Democrats’ lead has held steady over the past week, remaining at around 8 points on average, according to the polling average for Race to the WH. However, there have been a few outliers indicating that things could break even more towards Democrats in the final week.

A recent New York Times and Siena College poll found Democrats with an 11-point lead, while a Verasight survey found Democrats  with a 12-point advantage and a CNN and SSRS survey found Democrats with a 10-point cushion. Other surveys have found smaller leads for Democrats, like an Echelon Insights survey that found their lead at just 5 points, so the average hasn’t shifted dramatically despite these double-digit leads in some big-name polls. 

Forecasts, however, have begun to shift, namely because the strong, Democrat friendly environment appears to be holding, which serves as an indicator that things are more likely to break in favor of Democrats on Nov. 3 than for Republicans.

Miles Coleman, the associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told The Caucus that this is one of the reasons why they shifted 28 House race ratings in favor of Democrats on Wednesday. 

“At the end of the cycle when we make our final prediction, we move all of our toss-ups to one side or the other. In a lot of these seats that we moved, we had a hunch for some time that we were going to pick the Democrat anyways based on the trajectory of those races,” Coleman said. 

It’s not just an nationally unfavorable environment for Republicans however, that is pushing these races towards Democrats, in Coleman’s view. It’s also some of the spending triaging happening on the GOP side of things, where the party and its associated committees are shifting money to defend districts that should be easy for Republicans to win. 

For example, Republican-aligned groups have invested significant resources in districts like Texas’s 35th, a district that Republicans specifically redrew last year to give themselves an advantage – and which is now soaking up millions of dollars. 

“Republicans are spending a lot of money in like Trump plus-five, Trump plus-10 seats, trying to salvage as many of those as they can. This tells me that they're probably not as well positioned in some of these seats, which you could call low-hanging fruit,” Coleman said.

The example Coleman pointed to as potential “low hanging fruit” for Democrats is Pennsylvania’s 10th, where GOP Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) held on by just a point in 2024.

At the same time, Republicans are simply running out of time to change things, which is being reflected in the expectations of forecasters. Geoffrey Skelley, the chief elections analyst at DecisionDesk HQ, explained that their forecast is “reflective of a worsening environment for Republicans as we've gotten closer election day, which doesn’t always happen.”

As it stands DDHQ’s projection has Democrats favored to win the House with a 237-seat majority and has Democrats favored slightly to win the Senate, with a projected 51-seat majority. Part of this is driven by the fact that polling becomes more predictive of an election result in the final weeks of a campaign, and at this juncture, House polling looks highly favorable for Democrats, even as the Senate remains close. 

There are other factors, however, at play. And, while spending in the House seems to suggest Republicans are trying to stem their losses in the lower chamber, Senate ad reservations show a live battle for the upper chamber.

“Spending there reflects the danger Republicans are in because you see them having to spend money in places like South Carolina and Kansas that, on paper, they shouldn't be having to spend money in. That’s a good sign for Democrats,” Skelley told The Caucus. “At the same time, though, Republicans are pouring in all kinds of outside money into a lot of those other critical races, and the only abandonment that has really occurred is in North Carolina where you’ve seen some money pulled out. But North Carolina was never going to decide this.”