Just when I thought I was done analyzing new shifts in the 2026 U.S. Senate battle, something pulled me back in!
That something is a new poll from New Hampshire. This poll, which is normally biased towards Democrats, shockingly shows that Republican former Sen. John Sununu has a 2-percentage-point lead over the favored Democrat, Rep. Chris Pappas, in that Democrat-leaning state.
This is big news. New Hampshire is one of the four Democrat-held Senate seats that are competitive. Although it is theoretically possible for the Democrats to lose one of these seats and still flip the Senate in 2026, in the real world, that is very unlikely to occur.
We are also waiting with baited breath to see if Labor Day, the traditional start of the full campaign, is going to end the “summer polling bump” for the Democrats. GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini did a study of summer polls and found a significant Democrat bias this year, again, which demonstrated a “9.6 percent shift to Dems from 2024.” This shift seems to have greater impact on red states/districts.
One state that this summer bump might be affecting is Texas.
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. Only once, in modern times, in 2010, did the GOP win three such seats.
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.
The GOP will have a huge money edge overall, although most Democrat candidates are outraising their Republican foes. However, President Trump recently promised to unleash his yuge war chest, which is “more than $400 million in MAGA Inc., which can spend directly on races, and another $450 million in a nonprofit arm.” Elon Musk has also started spending, and we are getting new reservations from the Senate Leadership Fund Super PAC.
In addition, the Supreme Court “has restored, for now, an FCC policy that could magnify Republicans’ party-level cash advantage by letting parties and certain joint fundraising committees get discounted broadcast ad rates for ads coordinated with candidates.”
But, on to the Democrat-held seats, where a single flip could crush Democrat hopes:
Georgia: Jon Ossoff / 50.61 percent D / Lean D
Sen. Ossoff has raised more than any other U.S. senator, $68 million, versus Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA-10), who raised just shy of $5 million. Ossoff has maintained his lead in the polling; the RCP average shows Ossoff up 50.7 percent to 43.2 percent. Ossoff has been pounding Collins on ethics charges, and on his ties to racist and antisemitic right-wingers, including Collins’ son-in-law. The NRSC and the SLF have gotten involved to provide some cover to Collins.
With Ossoff over the magic 50 percent, and likely to maintain his fundraising edge over Collins, and with at least some sort of national tide rolling against the GOP, this race stays at Lean D.
Michigan: Gary Peters (retiring) / Tilt R
Abdul El-Sayed, the crazed radical Muslim socialist, continues to have a horrific post-primary. El Sayed is up by 2.3 percent in the RCP average over former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers (MI-08), who narrowly lost the 2024 Senate race. However, Tony Fabrizio, who is conducting polling for Rogers, has found that “the polls released this month are over-sampling Democratic-leaning voters, specifically college-educated and Black voters.” We also saw this during the primary, when pre-primary polls over-sampled younger, white, college-educated lefties, showing big leads for El-Sayed, which did not materialize on election day.
El-Sayed also have increasingly exhibited “foot-in-mouth disease” by: picking an unnecessary and self-harming fight with the Vice President by attacking Vance’s family; refusing to distance himself from Hasan Piker; finding himself in an increasingly nasty argument with Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA); calling Egypt his “home”; and equating circumcision with trans surgery for minors on national television. Also, more offensive El-Sayed statements have been exposed, this time concerning the attacks on September 11, 2001. Jewish Democrats in Michigan continue to desert El-Sayed, including some big donors; this is dangerous because the 150,000 Jewish voters in Michigan are normally heavily Democrat. The Musk organization and the SLF are both targeting this race, and MAGA Inc. is likely to as well. The NRSC has already started carpet bombing El-Sayed.
Considering El-Sayed is a target-rich environment for Mike Rogers, and Rogers’ forces will likely have a spending edge, I continue to believe that El-Sayed can only win if Rogers makes a big mistake, or the Democrat tide gets too large and drags El-Sayed into office.
Minnesota: Tina Smith (retiring) / Likely D
Democrat Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is part Native American and very left-wing, is squaring off against former TV sportscaster Michelle Tafoya, who is Hispanic and a moderate. The RCP average has Flanagan up 46.5 percent to 41 percent. Tafoya’s “central attack” on Flanagan concerns her being Tim Walz’s understudy while Minnesota was “ground zero” for the massive defrauding of various federal welfare programs.
Minnesota is a light-but-consistently-blue state where there has been a long string of narrow GOP losses since 2006, meaning the Democrats still have a solid edge here.
New Hampshire: Jeanne Shaheen (retiring) / Lean D
This late-breaking race has Republican former Sen. John Sununu, the son and brother of popular Republican New Hampshire governors, who were ousted by Shaheen in 2008, running a surprisingly strong comeback campaign. Rep. Chris Pappas (NH-01), the Democrat who represents half of the state, only has a 2 percent edge in RCP average over Sununu. Both Sununu and Pappas still face primaries this Tuesday, although Pappas may be the more endangered, facing a DSA-flavored crazy who, if she wins, could dramatically upend this race in favor of the GOP. The NRSC is already involved in the campaign, and Elon Musk is about to jump in.
Although the UNH poll is eye-opening, New Hampshire is normally Democrat-leaning, and with at least some sort of tide rolling against the GOP, I will stay at Lean D.