In 2020, Democratic candidate Sara Gideon was ahead of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in multiple polls leading up to election day but lost by almost 10 percentage points. Now, Senate Democrats are worried that polls, which currently favor them, may be flawed.
During the 2016 US presidential election, experts failed to accurately gauge support for Trump in battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – considered the worst polling failure in recent years.
According to political handicappers, Democrats are favored to keep their majority, with their chances looking “much better” than they did before the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) said she feels “good” about Democrats’ chances but also acknowledged that polls in the weeks before Election Day can’t be counted on.
“If the election were held today, I believe we would pick up seats,” she said before cautioning that spending by outside conservative groups in the final weeks of the campaign, which is expected to exceed $9.3 billion, could change the picture.
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) pointed to Republican cash flows forming from “Republican-allied” dark-money groups and super PACS.
“Republican candidates don’t really feel like they have to fundraise anymore. If you look, our candidates are outraising them but they don’t care because they have the dark money and it’s so massive.”
Kaine, who predicts that Senate control will be decided by only “a few points in a handful of races” expects the upcoming election night, slated for November 8, to be a long one. As he explained, polls are not always reliable because they can’t factor in voters who decide to participate last minute:
“What polling does not necessarily show you is who is like, ‘By God, I’m turning out to vote.’”
The odds look good now, but as Nate Silver, founder and editor-in-chief at FiveThirtyEight, points out, there are still several reasons why Democrats should be concerned about the midterm elections, including the fact that President Joe Biden remains fairly unpopular.
David Bergstein, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign, pointed out that Republicans seem to be in “defense mode”:
“All cycle long we’ve been preparing for our battleground races to be extremely competitive, and in the final month we’re going to continue taking nothing for granted.”
Biden’s approval rating is currently in the low 40s, and it is normal for a president’s party to lose seats in midterm elections. However, current polls show Senate Democratic incumbents leading in several battleground states.