Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen a mixed bag of polling, with some good results for the GOP, some good results for the Democrats, and some big sources of uncertainty. I’ve been running all these polls through SwingSeat, our Senate prediction machine, and I’ve gotten some interesting results. I’ll run through the most important state by state polls, unpack what they mean, and then talk through the overall race for Senate control.
Florida: Rick Scott, MVP?
Two recent polls—Mason-Dixon and Florida Atlantic University—show Republican governor Rick Scott ahead of Democratic senator Bill Nelson by three points and four points, respectively. Those are good polls for Scott. Nelson held a modest lead earlier this year, but Scott’s more recent gains have erased that advantage and pushed the race to almost exactly 50-50.
Scott is currently one of the GOP’s most valuable players in the Senate map. The fundamentals of this race (a purple state where an incumbent Democrat is running in a highly Democratic year) strongly favor Nelson. But Scott has managed to keep this race close. If Scott ends up winning this race, it’ll be tough for Democrats to take the upper chamber. They’ll have to take both Nevada and Arizona while grabbing Tennessee, Texas or some other highly red state.
In other words, Scott is making Flordia, a state that should be on the periphery, front and center. By doing so, he’s expanding the battlefield in a way that helps the GOP.
Nevada: Heller Gets a Good Poll in a Close Race
Republicans also got a favorable poll in Nevada. According to Suffolk University, Republican senator Dean Heller leads Democratic representative Jacky Rosen by one point (though there were a lot of undecideds in the poll, which adds uncertainty). Nevada polling has been more sparse than Florida polling, so this poll moved the SwingSeat estimate to a 59 percent probability of a Democratic win (Rosen led in some earlier polls).
Basically the model thinks that Rosen is the modest favorite, but it doesn’t believe that her lead is safe. And the Suffolk poll pushed the model to the right.
Arizona: The Best Democratic Pickup Opportunity
A recent OHPI poll puts Krysten Sinema ahead of Republican Martha McSally by four points. This isn’t the first poll that’s shown a reasonably close race in Arizona (Gravis showed a four point lead for Sinema in late June), but other polls (e.g. Emerson, NBC News, YouGov) pull the average strongly away from Sinema. The result is that Sinema has a roughly 80 percent win probability in the model.
But there’s a key moving part in this race: the primary.
Right now, the model assumes that McSally will be the GOP nominee. But if she loses to Kelli Ward (who hasn’t been polling well in the general), the model will immediately shift toward the Democrats. And if Joe Arpaio (who has been polling much worse than both) manages to win the primary, the race will shift even further left. And the eventual primary winner might see a bump in their poll number post-primary as their party unites behind them.
But for now Arizona seems to be the best Democratic pickup opportunity on the map.
Texas Polling: Cruz is Still Ahead
Yesterday, both Texas Lyceum and Quinnipiac released polls of the Texas senate race. Texas Lyceum found that Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was only ahead of Beto O’Rourke by two points (more on that here) and Quinnipiac found that Cruz was ahead by six points among registered voters.
These polls didn’t move the model’s overall estimate in Texas too much (it’s still roughly four-to-one in favor of Cruz) because it already had a pretty good idea of where public opinion was at. We’ve had a solid number of polls in Texas over the last few months, and most of them put Cruz’s advantage in the mid-to-high single digits. The model currently takes a reasonably long view of the polling (i.e. early polls still get a decent amount of weight), so those polls matter and the model still thinks Cruz has a solid lead.
Tough Numbers for the GOP in The Upper Midwest
NBC/Marist recently found Democratic senators in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin (Tina Smith, Debbie Stabenow and Tammy Baldwin, respectively) leading all potential Republican opponents by double digits. Smith, Stabenow, and Baldwin all have a significantly greater than 90 percent win probability, so there’s not a ton of suspense here.
It’s possible to imagine Trump or a statewide GOP candidate winning in some or all these states in 2020 or 2022 (he won two of them in 2016 and got close in Minnesota). But for now, the national environment is pushing them left. You might think of these states a little bit as what could have happened (and could still happen) in Florida: a swing state made mostly noncompetitive by incumbency and the national environment.
The Bottom Line: The GOP Still Has a Solid Advantage
These polls were interesting, but they didn’t change the overall outlook much. That’s because the basic underlying dynamic (a great Republican map pushing against a highly Democratic national environment) still basically persists. Some of these polls didn’t move estimates much because the model already had a good idea of where public opinion was (e.g. Texas, Arizona). And in other cases, the model didn’t move much because new polls basically agreed with what we’ve already seen (e.g. the Upper Midwest).
Overall, Republicans have roughly 3-to-1 odds of controlling the chamber. That’s meaningfully different from a toss-up race, but it’s not a guarantee for the GOP. Republicans start with a lead, but we’re still in the early phases of election season.
