Democrats show strength in final days of race for US senate – polls

Democrats are ahead of Republicans in almost all of the seven battleground states that will determine which party controls the US senate, according to a final set of polls before Tuesday’s midterm elections.

The New York Times and Siena University surveys found that Democrats hold sizeable leads in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to the senate since 1988, and Kansas, which has not elected one since 1932.

To win a senate majority, Democrats need to defend all the seats they currently hold and flip at least four seats currently held by Republicans. It has been seen as an uphill battle because many of the seats they need to win are in Republican strongholds.

But the new polls found Democratic candidates ahead in five states that now have Republican senators and effectively tied in a sixth. They hold leads in Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas and a narrow edge in Alaska. They are effectively tied in Iowa.

In Michigan, the lone top senate battleground already held by Democrats, the poll found the Democratic candidate leading by double digits. (It was conducted before a Democratic feud erupted in Michigan this past weekend.) The surveys did not include North Carolina, where polls have long found the Democrat leading and Republicans have pared back their campaign spending.

[ What are the US midterms and what do they mean for Donald Trump?Opens in new window ]

Dissatisfaction with US president Donald Trump and frustration over his management of the economy are dragging down Republicans, according to the polls. Just 38 per cent of likely voters approved of the president’s job performance in the seven states in the poll, a strikingly low figure given that Trump had won five of the states by double digits just two years ago.

The newfound Democratic strength was powered by growing trust in the party to handle the economy – the key motivating issue for voters this year.

Democrats hold a nine-point advantage on the cost of living across the battlegrounds, and they led on this crucial measure in every single state.

If the polls are accurate and these trends hold, Democrats would win control of the senate.

But there were some reasons for Democratic concern: there are still some undecided voters, and voters who decided only in the last month favoured Republicans by a nine-point margin.

In the senate race in Texas, James Talarico, a Democratic state legislator, held a seven-point edge over Ken Paxton, the Republican state attorney general, 50 per cent to 43 per cent among likely voters. Paxton had the worst image of any candidate included in the survey – by far.

In Maine, senator Susan Collins, the last remaining Republican senator in New England, is trailing in her reelection campaign behind Troy Jackson, a Democratic former state senator. Jackson leads 51 per cent to 45 per cent among likely voters.

Polls are imperfect. Six years ago, Collins had trailed in every survey before the election – and she won reelection comfortably.

But the new polls revealed a series of flashing warning signs for Republicans – about their candidates and the broader political environment.

In every state but Maine, the Democratic Senate candidate was viewed more favourably than the Republican candidate.

And likely voters were unhappy with the leadership of Trump across the board, and said that they believed Democrats would do a better job handling the cost of living and foreign wars and doing what is best for ordinary people.

Trump has been barnstorming Republican states in a bid to re-energise his base in the final weeks before election day, but the polls suggest that enthusiasm for the president is slipping even within his party.

In Ohio, where 82 per cent of Republicans approve of the president, the share who approve “strongly” has fallen to 51 per cent, down from 63 per cent in June. In a Times/Siena poll last week, the senate race was tied in heavily Republican South Carolina.

One key advantage for Democratic candidates is that they are leading with independent voters in every state surveyed. That includes Iowa, where Josh Turek, a Democratic state legislator, was effectively tied with Ashley Hinson, the Republican nominee.

The polls found that the Democratic resurgence was powered by a renewed strength among younger voters and Latinos, as well as the relative weakness Republicans have among the party’s base of white, working-class voters.

Trump had made gains among Latino and younger voters in 2024. But this year, his party’s senate candidates were winning only about one-quarter of younger voters and Latino voters.

Crumbling trust in Republicans on the economy – and in Trump in particular – helps to explain how Democrats are competitive in a state like Kansas. Trump won Kansas by the widest margin of any of the seven states polled, and the state has not elected a Democratic senator for nearly a century. But diesel prices that rose after the Iran war, and the administration’s decision to drop import tariffs on foreign beef, have dismayed farmers.

Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee and pastor of the largest church in the state, leads senator Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent, 49 per cent to 44 per cent.

Hamilton also has the support of 13 per cent of Republicans, including James Gerety (52), a retired National Guards member living in Meriden, Kansas, who said that he saw Hamilton as “a lot more genuine” than Marshall.

“I had reservations at first, with him being a pastor,” said Gerety, a registered Republican who considers himself more of an independent. “I get squirrelly with religion being brought into politics. But Hamilton is trying to lower prices, to get us out of this war with Iran. He’s trying to bring inflation down.”

Marshall has faced criticism after the Times reported that he sued patients for unpaid medical debt, leading to arrests in some cases.

The Times previously polled all seven states in September. The Democrats improved in six of the states in the final poll (Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas) and lost ground in only one (Alaska).

White working-class voters have been the backbone of Trump’s coalition. In 2024, he won an estimated 74 per cent of white voters without college degrees, according to exit polls. Now, in these seven states, Republicans were winning just 56 per cent of these voters.

Blue-collar white voters have proved particularly hard to reach in polls, and polling error has previously been among the highest in that demographic, a large group in all seven states.

In Michigan, the lone Senate seat in the survey currently held by a Democrat, the poll showed Abdul El-Sayed ahead by a wide 11 percentage points over Mike Rogers, a Republican former congressman, who narrowly lost a Senate run in 2024.

El-Sayed, who has relished political combat in a way few other Democrats do, has performed especially well with men, a group that historically tilts Republican. He is running roughly even with the group, an improvement from September.

But in the Democratic primary, polls overestimated El-Sayed’s strength. And he has been embroiled in a bitter public feud with his primary rival, Rep. Haley Stevens, who endorsed Rogers on Sunday in a rare cross-partisan embrace that has given Republicans hope. Still, El-Sayed is ahead by a wide margin on every issue in the poll, including immigration, a traditional Republican strength.

[ Race narrows between a ‘radical Democrat’ and ‘the most corrupt politician in Texas’Opens in new window ]

In Ohio, former senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, leads senator Jon Husted, a Republican, 49 per cent to 44 per cent in a race that has drawn half a billion dollars in spending, with Republicans spending $80 million more on ads, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking service.

In Maine, Jackson, the Democratic challenger, has improved his image since September, though he is still seen unfavourably overall. Critically, he is running in the most Democratic state on the battleground map, and he remains much more popular than Trump.

In Texas, 49 per cent of likely voters view Talarico favourably, while 39 per cent view him unfavourably, giving him a 10-point-edge on favourability despite an enormous, very negative ad campaign against him funded chiefly by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person.

Paxton has seen his image decline in recent months. Fifty-four per cent of likely voters there now view him unfavourably, while only 33% view him favourably.

[ Mississippi turning? Democrats point to Republican ‘panic’ as Donald Trump flies inOpens in new window ]

Here are the key things to know about these New York Times/Siena polls:

Interviewers spoke with 610 voters in Alaska, 705 voters in Iowa, 714 voters in Maine, 717 voters in Ohio, 736 voters in Kansas, 1,011 voters in Michigan, and 1,215 voters in Texas from Oct. 23 to Nov 1, 2026.

– The polls were conducted by telephone using live interviewers. Overall, nearly 98% of respondents were contacted on their mobile phones.

– Voters were selected for each survey from a list of voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For these polls, interviewers placed more than 915,000 calls to more than 400,000 voters.

– To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree.

– The margin of sampling error among likely voters ranges from plus or minus 4.8 percentage points in Alaska to plus or minus 3.3 percentage points in Texas, and plus or minus 1.5 percentage points when the seven states are analysed together. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error.

– Polls of Maine in 2026 were conducted in collaboration with the Portland Press Herald and sponsored in part by The Maine Trust for Local News.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.