Axios, the junior varsity league version of Politico, has a triumphant article gushing about how the Democrats may finally demolish the GOP’s U.S. Senate winning streaks in Kansas, Maine, South Carolina, and Texas:
Democrats are running surprisingly competitive races in traditionally Republican territory across the country this midterm election cycle, and it's putting GOP winning streaks at risk that stretch as far back as the 1930s.
These streaks are indeed long. Kansas has had almost 100 years of Republican Senators, and the other three – with the Maine caveat – are each over a quarter of a century.
The normal introduction: in the upper chamber, the Republicans have a 53-to-47-seat majority, with 35 seats up. The Democrats need a net pickup of four seats to win control. But only two Republican seats, Maine and North Carolina, are in competitive states. The other 20 GOP seats are in states Donald Trump won by double digits. Picking up a double-digit seat for the opposite party rarely happens, let alone twice.
In the 2025 Virginia elections, the Democrats won in a landslide, but they didn’t carry a single state legislative district where Trump won with that margin.
Even during the "blue wave" of 2018, the GOP picked up Senate seats, including ousting a sitting Democrat incumbent.
President Trump’s RealClearPolitics approval average is at 38.9 percent, with 59.3 percent disapproving. The congressional generic vote shows the Democrats have an 8.3-point margin, 50.7 percent to 42.4 percent. This public polling is in "blue wave" territory.
Of course, all this public polling has a bias towards the Democrats, thanks largely to the likely over-sampling of leftist voters and the under-sampling of right-wing voters. Echelon Insights’ Patrick Ruffini (a Republican) recently confirmed this.
But let’s look at these Axios races, minus Texas, shall we?
Kansas: Roger Marshall / 53% R / Lean R
Sen. Roger Marshall, a one-term incumbent Republican senator who previously served two terms in the U.S. House, is being challenged by Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor from a large church. The RCP average has Marshall up 46.5 to 45 percent. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, when FDR was winning a national landslide.
This brings up an interesting fact about Kansas – many voters who would normally be Democrats in other states have chosen to be Republicans instead. They do this to have a say in the GOP primary elections, which often are the crucial elections. This has resulted in two GOP factions developing – a "conservative" faction and a "moderate" faction. The moderates have sometimes won Senate races – see Nancy Landon Kassenbaum – and more frequently have won the governorship. The moderates have also shown a willingness to vote Democrat occasionally, most recently twice for the two-term incumbent Democrat governor.
Sen. Marshall, who did not crack 53 percent in 2020, seems to have been caught napping near the end of this campaign. Kansas is an agriculturally dominant state, and many Republican voters are not fond of tariffs and are uniquely affected by oil and gas prices. Hamilton also has the benefit of being a pastor in a heavily Protestant state, which creates a presumption that he is a moderate Democrat. But that is not the case.
The spending between the two has, so far, been narrowly pro-Hamilton, but the GOP can be expected to take the lead in the future. Recently, President Trump appeared at a rally for Sen. Marshall. In the interview with Politico, Ruffini specifically notes that Kansas is a place where he expects a significant underestimation of the GOP vote. Considering that, and that the GOP is now outspending the Democrats, that Hamilton is seeing his negatives exposed, and that most of the undecided are going to be Republicans, I would expect Marshall to hang onto this seat.
Maine: Susan Collins / 50.98% R / Tilt R
Republican Sen. Susan Collins is being challenged by Democrat former state Senator Troy Jackson, the replacement for the "Oyster Führer," Graham Platner. Jackson leads Collins in the RCP average by 48.8 to 47.2 percent. Yet, Jackson has his own issues – although originally more moderate, he is now far to the left. And Jackson is a controversial figure in Maine politics, with a nasty temper and a son who has allegedly mooched off his father as a lobbyist.
In his debates with Collins, Jackson demonstrated his lack of issue knowledge, poor manners, and inappropriate aggression, most especially by burping, eye-rolling, and telling Collins to “shut up” during the final debate. Jackson then kept digging his hole in a CNN interview. Janet Mills, the Democrat governor, has refused to endorse Jackson.
Jackson foolishly joined the socialist hate campaign against billionaires, claiming “there's no billionaires funding me,” only to be exposed as a liar. Sen. Collins, as Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has been directing substantial sums of money to her home state, and promises much more if she is re-elected. Perhaps as a result, she has made history by getting her first tribal endorsement in her Senate career. Former Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) has also endorsed Collins and is campaigning with her.
The most important fact to know is that in Maine there is a substantial "hidden" Susan Collins vote. In 2020, when Collins faced off against a stronger Democrat, despite trailing in every single public poll, Collins won by eight percent, even as Joe Biden was carrying the state by nine points. Considering that the GOP has been substantially outspending the Democrats, and will continue to do so, and that Collins is in many ways stronger than in 2020, and her opponent is weaker, I simply refuse to bet against her winning a sixth term.
South Carolina: Darline Graham / Appointed / Leans R
Republican Sen. Darline Graham Nordone, the late Sen. Lindsay Graham’s younger sister, leads Democrat Annie Andrews in the RCP average by 48 to 45.3 percent. Nordone was appointed by the governor and then won a competitive primary. But during the primary debate and on the campaign trail, she made several mistakes that are typical for a newbie candidate.
Andrews has run for Congress unsuccessfully before. She has been advertising nationally, like Texas Democrat Senate nominee James Talarico, for quite some time; as a result, she raises large sums of money, but much of that money is then used to raise more money.
The two general election candidates, plus a libertarian, debated once, largely to a draw. In her earlier congressional loss, it was shown that Andrews has issues with the trans agenda, which were exposed then and will be now again. It is important to know that in 2020, public polling showed Sen. Lindsey Graham in a competitive race, with a Democrat who raised prodigious sums of money, but he ended up winning in a landslide. Considering that, and that the GOP is now outspending the Democrats, and that Andrews is seeing her negatives exposed, and that most of the undecided are going to be Republicans, I would expect Nordone to hang on to this seat.