The Final Senate Polling – As Divided As Ever and 2026 Senate Race Predictions

The final U.S. Senate election polling has come out, and, once again, there is a great divergence.

On the one hand, there are the New York Times/Siena Polls and Atlas Intel Polls. The former has the Democrats leading in all the Senate battleground states, including Texas, where they say James Talarico has a 50 to 43 percent lead. Atlas Intel also shows the Democrats leading the generic ballot by an unprecedented 14 percent, and Talarico up 52.2 to 46.2 percent.

On the other, there is Trafalgar and Emerson, which have tight races. The former shows Ken Paxton up 48.1 to 47.5 percent, while the latter has Talarico up 49.8 to 48.4 percent. 

So, which way do we go? 

Well, there are some interesting tidbits I (or others) noticed about the Times’ polling. Once again, in the Times' Texas poll, they oversampled younger voters and polled Texas as an even state, instead of the state that Donald Trump won by 14 percent. They also did this kind of oversampling in all the states. And The Times even acknowledges that Democrats are potentially being oversampled:

This cycle, Democrats are once again responding to Times/Siena polls at a much higher rate than Republicans. Across these final battleground polls, registered white Democrats were about 30 percent likelier to take the poll than registered white Republicans. That’s actually a bit higher than in the final polls in 2020.

Atlas also has issues. First, it is an all “adults” poll, when it should be “likely voters”. Second, the Atlas Texas poll has independents swinging 38 points for the Democrats, which is very unlikely. Third, it is important to remember that Atlas’ reputation is no longer sterling, because in late 2025 it had the New Jersey governors race as a dead heat right before the Democrats won it in a landslide. (I can’t forget that, since I relied on them for my own prediction!) Fourth, it seems strange to me that their poll has 46 percent of respondents naming “safeguarding democracy” as one of “the country's greatest challenges facing the United States today.” Only Democrats say this – they project their sins onto Republicans – which leads me to believe there has been an oversample of them. Fifth, Atlas has Republican’s supporting Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vice President J.D. Vance for president in 2028 by a 45.6 to 32.9 percent, which strikes me as doubtful. 

So, this leaves me exactly where I was before. The Democrats will have a tough climb to win the Senate. As CNN’s Harry Enten has reported: 

Harry Enten looks over the 'spooky data' for the Democrats heading into the 2026 midterms:

Harry Enten: "They need to win in states that Donald John Trump didn't just win two years ago, but won by double digits.
Senate flips in states that the party lost by ten or more points… pic.twitter.com/pQ7A7fbFMk

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) October 31, 2026

2010 was the last time the opposition party – the Republicans – carried three states where two years before the president’s party – the Democrats – had won the states by double digits. But there should be an asterisk for that year. The three states in question were Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were indeed double digits for Obama in 2008, but that vote was very much an aberration. Normally they are very competitive. Only in the aftermath of the political disaster of the Bush administration and the terrible 2008 McCain campaign did they break so heavily for the Democrats. 

In 2026, the double-digit Senate seats are all very consistently and heavily Republican. 

The only two states on the tossup board that are considered to be in states less than R+11 are Michigan and Maine. Everything else voted for Trump by 11-16 points. Even in the blue year of 2020, the states were all 6-14 points in his favor.

The Republicans have a 53-to-47-seat majority, with 35 seats up. The Democrats need a net pickup of four seats. 

RealClearPolitics’s congressional generic vote shows the Democrats have an 8.9-point margin (after a big bump up from the Times and Atlas polling). This public polling is in "blue wave" territory. The RCP polling, minus Rasmussen, also shows that Republicans may lose independents by an average of 22 points on the generic congressional ballot. For that to happen would require this to be the worst midterm environment for Republicans of modern times. 

Meanwhile, some of these same polls are showing a boost in President Trump’s approval rating, and one of them has the Republican Party with a higher favorability rating.

Finally, the early vote is in, and it is almost identical to the early vote of 2022.

But now it is time for the final Senate prediction.

As I stated in my last column, my best guess is that there will be an average of 2 percent Democrat over-estimation/Republican under-estimation in the RCP average this year. This occurred in 2024’s races, and during other years as well. (This 2 percent number may be increasing with the latest polling.) There should be an even greater overestimation of the Democrats in the Senate races of Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio, where the average polling miss since 2016 is above 6. Also, there will be some sort of extra GOP polling bonus in Nebraska and Kansas. 

Together, I believe this means that the Republicans will sweep most of the Senate battleground seats. I am with Article III Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain, who believes that the GOP will likely lose North Carolina, will flip Michigan (Abdul El-Sayed has literally run one of the worst campaigns I have ever seen), and will hold onto all its other seats, to maintain its 53-to-47 seat margin.

But I guess “We’ll (Just Have to) See What Happens.” 

And tonight, we finally will get to see what happens.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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