Midterm Polls 2026: Democrats Lead Senate Races in Five Republican-Held States in the Final NYT/Siena Surveys
Democrats are ahead in Texas, Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Alaska, with Iowa virtually tied, according to the final New York Times/Siena polling - and the BBC, surveying the same numbers, warns that polls have let Democrats down before, most recently in Michigan's primary.
The last full set of battleground surveys before Election Day puts control of the Senate genuinely in play. According to the New York Times/Siena University polls reported on Monday, Democratic candidates are ahead in five states with Republican senators - Texas, Kansas, Maine and Ohio, as well as Alaska - while the contest in Iowa remains virtually tied, and Democrats also lead in Michigan, a state where the party currently holds the seat. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control of the Senate, and three to take the House, where all 435 seats are on Tuesday's ballot alongside 35 Senate seats.
The individual numbers are the kind that redraw maps. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico leads Republican Ken Paxton 50 percent to 43 percent; Texas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. In Kansas, Democrat Chris Hamilton is ahead of Republican Senator Roger Marshall 49 to 44; Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. In Maine, Democrat Graham Platner leads Republican Senator Susan Collins 51 to 45, and in Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown is ahead of Republican Jon Husted. Across the seven surveyed states, only 38 percent of likely voters approved of President Donald Trump's job performance, and Democrats hold a nine-percentage-point advantage on the cost of living - the issue the surveys put at the center of the campaign.
The caution is part of the record, and the BBC's midterm-eve assessment states it plainly: Democrats enter Tuesday backed by months of encouraging surveys, a Republican president with historically weak approval ratings and an electorate frustrated by the rising cost of food and household bills - and polls have let them down before. Earlier this year, surveys pointed to Democrat Abdul El-Sayed winning Michigan's Democratic Senate primary by a double-digit margin; he won it by a single percentage point. Every individual survey carries a margin of error tied to its sample size, and averages across many polls tend to be more reliable than any single result - a warning that cuts in both directions, and the reason Tuesday's count, not Monday's surveys, will settle who governs Washington.
