Trump’s favorite CNN pollster delivers devastating news just before midterm elections - The Independent
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A fresh round of polling data in the final hours before Election Day shows Democratic candidates leading virtually every battleground state that will likely determine which party controls the Senate.
Democratic candidates are up in Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas with an effective tie in Alaska and Iowa, according to the latest polling from The New York Times/Siena.
CNN data analyst Harry Enten, who President Donald Trump has called the “best person on CNN,” called the latest findings an “earthquake” for the president and Republicans.
“Just within the last few hours, we had the equivalent of a polling earthquake, a polling earthquake,” Enten said Sunday, appearing alongside anchor Jessica Dean. “And to keep up with the weather metaphors... it tends to point to a blue wave.”
If voters in each of those states vote for the Democratic Senate candidate, the party is expected to collect 54 seats in the upper chamber of Congress from their current 47, definitively seizing back the majority. If Democrats win control of one or both chambers of Congress, it could lead them to block many parts of Trump’s agenda for his final two years in office.
“That’s a net gain of seven seats,” Enten said. “My goodness gracious.”
The pundit struck a note of caution, however, pointing out that polling in the Trump era has tended to underestimate the conservative turnout, with the GOP outperforming the final Senate polling average in states won by Trump in the presidential election prior by an average of 4.1 percent.
Should that happen again, the Republicans could just about hold onto control of the upper chamber. “The bottom line is this,” Enten hypothesised. “Democrats probably in the catbird seat but Republicans still in the game.”
Trump, who routinely rages against what he calls “fake” polls that don’t predict Republican victories, has previously praised Enten because “he was willing to show that Donald J Trump is six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or any other president.”
“He’s got Credibility (Don’t fire him!)” Trump wrote on Truth Social in September.
Democratic candidate Mary Peltola is one point ahead of Republican incumbent Dan Sulivan – Enten said Sunday, citing the NYT/Siena data – so there’s “no clear” leader statistically and the race is “way too close to call.”
The race was thrown into chaos last week after Trump’s Department of Justice attempted to open an investigation into allegations that Peltola’s campaign deliberately encouraged an independent candidate to run with precisely the same name as the Republican in order to confuse voters.
Precisely the same close call is in play in Iowa, where Senate Democratic contender Josh Turek is up by just one point on Republican Ashley Hinson, drawing the same verdict from CNN’s pundit.
Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton, a former Methodist pastor, is polling at 49 percent to Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall’s 44 percent, a lead that has not been seen in the Sunflower State for some time.
A Hamilton victory would make him the first Kansas Democratic senator elected there since 1932. “That’s so long ago,” Enten observed. “That is when Babe Ruth called his shot back in the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field.”
The Pine Tree State could likewise be facing a major upset as Democrat Troy Jackson, a late replacement for the scandal-marred Graham Platner, is six points up on the long-serving Republican Susan Collins.
Collins, the Republican incumbent, is seeking a sixth term and has long prided herself on her record of winning funding for Maine from Capitol Hill, but is currently on just 45 percent to Jackson’s 51, suggesting there could be a real appetite for change there.
The widest gap among the seven battleground states this year is in Michigan, where Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed is polling ahead of Republican Mike Rogers by more than 10 points – 53 to 42 percent. However, that polling was done before Democrat Haley Stevens’ surprise endorsement of Rogers. It has yet to be seen if that move will have any impact on how residents vote.
Veteran Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown is currently five points up on Republican Sen. Jon Husted, with 49 percent of the vote to 44, according to the new polling.
Brown previously represented the state and is “trying to get his old job back,” as Enten put it, and appears to stand a strong chance of toppling Husted, who has risen to unlikely international fame over the last week thanks to Trump’s newfound habit of speaking admiringly about his physique at rally appearances across the country.
Trump-backed Republican Ken Paxton is trailing Democratic candidate James Talarico by roughly seven points, 50 to 43 percent, in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in roughly 40 years.
