Watch this video on gelliottmorris.com.
On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott Morris and David Nir walk through the current electoral state of play just over one month out from the 2026 midterm elections.
This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast.
A few big takeaways from the conversation:
The House at 99% is in “spooky probability territory™,” but the seat-level math adds up. In Elliott’s forecast model at FiftyPlusOne, Democrats need only about a 3.5-point national margin to win the majority, and they're polling 5 to 6 points better than that. For Republicans to hold on, the polls would have to move about five times more than they historically do in the last month, or miss by roughly twice the usual error.
Democrats have a 73% chance at the Senate because of the long shots, not the toss-ups. If you only look at the competitive seats, the Senate looks like a coin flip. But election forecasting models also pick up on Democratic upsets in the 20-to-30% zone (Florida, South Carolina, Kansas, Nebraska) that drag their median up to 52 seats.
David makes the case that red-state Republicans have forgotten how to campaign. In states like Kansas and Texas, GOP candidates are making big missteps that would be unlikely for someone accustomed to running competitive races. Can you lose your general election campaign muscles?
Elliott and David answer listener questions about cross-over voting and modeling polling errors.
Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week!
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