Final NYT/Siena polls: Democrats lead in all seven Senate races
On Sunday morning, a sitting Democratic congresswoman walked into a Detroit church beside the Republican Senate nominee and endorsed him. By Sunday night, the final New York Times/Siena polls were out, and Democrats led in all seven Senate races they surveyed, Michigan included.
The final polls
The New York Times and Siena University released their final midterm polls on Sunday, taken Oct. 23 to Nov. 1. Democrats lead in every Senate race surveyed:
Michigan: El-Sayed 53, Rogers 42
Texas: Talarico 50, Paxton 43
Maine: Jackson 51, Collins 45
Ohio: Brown 49, Husted 44
Kansas: Hamilton 49, Marshall 44
Alaska: Peltola 48, Sullivan 46
Iowa: Turek 48, Hinson 47
In 2024, NYT/Siena’s final polls overestimated Democrats by about 4 points on margin on average. Their final Texas poll had R+10, and the result was R+13.7. Even with a similar miss this year, Democrats would still win 5 of the 7 races. Alaska and Iowa would flip, but Michigan, Texas, Maine, Ohio, and Kansas would hold, some narrowly.
Republicans shouldn’t count on a polling error to save them, though. NYT/Siena updated their weighting model, and they say it would have been 1.6 points more accurate on their 2024 polls. In other good polling news for Dems, AtlasIntel, which Nate Silver rated the second-best pollster of 2024, just released a poll showing Talarico up 6 in Texas and Democrats winning the generic ballot by 14.1 points among adults.
Democrats won the 2018 House popular vote by 8.6 points and took 235 seats. Redistricting has made the map harder for them this time, but a D+14 environment would still push them well past 235. You can trade on how many House seats Democrats will win: currently they are 59% to win 240 or more.
Michigan
Traders give Abdul El-Sayed an 82% chance of winning. The NYT/Siena poll was taken before Rep. Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the August primary to El-Sayed, endorsed Mike Rogers on Sunday. El-Sayed dropped from about 80% to 70% after the endorsement, then rebounded to 82%, likely on the good poll and a wave of Democratic support in response to Stevens’ endorsement, including what his campaign says was $1.2M raised in 4 hours.
Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, the only Michigan House Democrat in a Trump-won district, now says she’s voting for El-Sayed and urges others to. She hadn’t backed him specifically before. Other House Democrats are angry: Rep. Marc Veasey of Texas, who says he was the first House Democrat to hold a fundraiser for Stevens’ Senate campaign, says he’d be the first to make a motion to remove her from the House Democratic Caucus, which has a rule against campaigning for non-Democrats in federal elections.
There’s little time left for the endorsement to change minds, though. As of Oct. 30, 1.86m people had voted early, compared with 1.52m at the same point in 2022, a 22% increase. With 4.4m votes cast in the 2022 governor’s race, that’s already over 40% of the 2022 total.
One factor getting little attention is religion. In an August Michigan poll from Michigan State University, 31% said they were much less likely to vote for a Muslim candidate and 7% somewhat less likely. That’s a hit before anyone even looks at his policies, though plenty of those voters probably weren’t going to vote for a Democrat anyway.
It also means that underperforming Benson, the Democratic nominee for governor, doesn’t automatically make El-Sayed a bad candidate or too far left. In 2018, incumbent Debbie Stabenow, a standard Democrat, ran 3.1 points behind Gretchen Whitmer in margin on the same ballot. Benson and other more moderate candidates also haven’t had to deal with a primary opponent who supports their opponent.
I’ve created a market on how El-Sayed will perform relative to Benson. You can also trade El-Sayed’s winning margin, but traders aren’t buying the NYT poll just yet: there’s currently only an 8% chance he wins by 11 points or more.
The other Senate races
The poll moved the odds, with some sharp shifts shortly after release.
Maine: Troy Jackson’s (D) chances rose from 68% to 73%. Susan Collins is concerned.
Kansas: Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat here since 1932, but Adam Hamilton’s chances rose from 50% to 61%. His main attack on incumbent Roger Marshall (R) is that Marshall, an obstetrician, sued former patients over medical debt. Marshall released a video defending it as common practice he did to keep the lights on, while often providing free care. According to the NYT, his own team advised him against releasing it. About 750 Kansas medical professionals signed a letter criticizing his debt collection, and a class-action lawsuit filed Oct. 29 alleges his practice’s 18% interest rate broke Kansas’s 15% legal cap. Marshall’s chances have fallen from 90% to 39% since the start of the year.
Texas: James Talarico (D) rose from 70% to 75% on the poll and strong early voting data for Democrats. Ted Cruz has said Republicans could lose every statewide office in Texas, that Republicans shouldn’t think the polling is all wrong, and that Democrats are “massively out-turning out” Republicans.
Ohio: Sherrod Brown (D) has a 76% chance. He lost in 2024 as an incumbent but hopes to return to the Senate now.
Alaska: Mary Peltola (D) is at 78%, about where she was before the NYT Dan Sullivan story dropped.
Iowa: Still close, with Josh Turek (D) at 46%.
After the midterms
I’ve created two markets on how new Democratic senators will vote next year:
Which senators will vote as left-wing as Elizabeth Warren? El-Sayed, Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota) and Troy Jackson are the current favorites, with Angie Nixon level with Jackson at 70%.
Which senators will vote for at least one Trump judicial nominee in 2027? Of the 47 current Democratic senators, 20 have voted for a Trump judicial nominee since he returned to office.
It will be interesting to see which newcomers resist Trump and which help keep confirmations moving. If Democrats have a good night, some of these senators will represent states Trump won by 10 or more, and most won’t face voters for six years. Do they spend two years resisting Trump and turn bipartisan once he’s gone, or confirm judges now and risk upsetting the Democratic base?
The ‘26 Midterm Contest
The Michigan margin market is one of 40+ in the contest. When they all resolve, the top 12 traders on the leaderboard win mana prizes, with 6k mana for first. Examples of markets:
Will Ossoff and Roy Cooper’s combined margin be 25 points or more?
How quickly will the Associated Press call the Georgia Senate election?
Will Republican chances to win the Senate go back above 50%?
Check out the rest of the markets here.
Also on Manifold
There’s a new perpetual market tracking inflation plus unemployment, built on Adjacent Markets’ Misery Implied Index (market-implied U-3 unemployment plus market-implied CPI-U inflation).
Adjacent also runs political indexes, including a BLUE Index for Democrats’ 2026 and 2028 chances, which has kept rising with their polling, and a RED Index for Republicans.
Check out the Manifold market on the BLUE index here.
- Jack
