Tipsheet

SENATE LATEST: GOP Leads in Key Races, Exactly Tied in Others

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 01, 2018 10:25 AM

Fox News' bipartisan pollster released a big batch of pre-election polls of important Senate races last night, containing some positive news for each party.  The statewide surveys polled likely voters in five battleground states -- Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee.  Let's start with the top-line results, followed by a bit of analysis, and a peek at some other polling:


These numbers suggest that North Dakota and Tennessee may be in the bag, barring collapses in Republican turnout (more on the Blackburn race below).  Arizona and Missouri are as close as can be.  The good news for the GOP is that Martha McSally and Josh Hawley still have significant room to grow by simply consolidating Republican and pro-Trump support.  In the desert, just 81 percent of Trump approvers are on board with McSally at this point.  In the Show-Me State, Claire McCaskill has hit her approximate ceiling with Democrats (93 percent), but Hawley only commands 83 percent of Republicans.  If right-leaning voters turn out and "come home," both nominees will benefit.  As a side note, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey is up nearly 20 points in the gubernatorial race in Arizona.  If McSally can attract a segment of those "gap" voters, she'll have a good chance to win.  The biggest surprise number in this data set is Democrat Joe Donnelly's seven-point lead in Indiana.  Recent polls have shown Mike Braun pulling ahead by three or four points.  One consistent factor: Donnelly is stuck in the low-to-mid 40's, which isn't a healthy spot for an incumbent.  In short, there's a reason why President Trump will visit both Missouri and Indiana twice before election day.

Beyond the Fox numbers, we've seen some additional numbers over the last 24-to-48 hours.  As we've discussed before, Democrats' best shots at flipping GOP-held seats are in Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas.  Arizona looks like an ever-so-slightly Democrat-leaning tossup, with Nevada appearing to be a fractionally Republican-tilted tossup (regardless of outcome, incumbent Dean Heller's resilience has been one of the most interesting storylines of this campaign cycle).  For what it's worth, Reuters' new numbers put McSally up by two points over Sinema, and Heller up by six points.  Then CNN swooped in with their own data dump giving Democrats Krysten Sinema and Jacky Rosen four- and three-point leads, respectively.  These contests are jump balls.  The best news for Democrats in Nevada is that it's gone blue in presidential elections since 2008, and the Harry Reid/organized labor machine has been known to help pull candidates across the finish line, even after trailing slightly in public polling.  The best news for Republicans in Arizona could be the early voting totals, in which Republican ballots are outpacing Democratic ballots by ten percentage points -- a stronger margin than in the red wave of 2014 (the GOP gubernatorial candidate won by double digits that year).

Meanwhile, just a few months ago, Tennessee was looking like a plum opportunity for Democrats, who landed their preferred recruit to run for Bob Corker's open seat.  But the Volunteer State is heavily Republican, and President Trump is pretty popular among the electorate.  After the Kavanaugh fight, a trio of polls showed GOP nominee Marsha Blackburn pulling into the lead, outside the margin of error.  A single survey then showed the Democrat up by one point.  Was that race moving back toward a tie?  As Leah mentioned yesterday, two consecutive (pre-Fox) polls gave Blackburn the advantage, by five and six points respectively.  It's looking much closer than it "should" be in that state, and Trump is heading back there this weekend for a reason.  But you'd certainly rather be Blackburn than Bredesen at this point.

Down in Texas, where national liberals and the national media have been positively giddy over the possibility that Beto O'Rourke could pull off a huge upset against Ted Cruz, various press organizations have run an almost comical number of polls, even as the status of other critical races around the country remained relatively unexplored.  For weeks, the results have been various iterations of the same: Cruz by mid-to-high single digits, with the incumbent clearing 50 percent.  But the media has a fever, and the only prescription is more Texas Senate polls.  Alas, they won't like this latest one:

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Note that the same survey gave Gov. Greg Abbott a whopping 26-point lead over his liberal challenger.  I'll leave you with my recent breakdown of President Trump's 'final stretch' campaign schedule with Bill Hemmer, with a particular emphasis on the three states he's visiting twice between yesterday and next Tuesday:


One more parting thought: Perusing these numbers would reasonably lead one to conclude that the West Virginia Senate race is over.  So why are national Democrats increasing their last-minute ad buys on behalf of Joe Manchin?