Note! Two reminders as we near Election Day. First, I’ll be doing an election-night live stream here on Substack (and simulcast on YouTube) with David Nir of The Downballot starting around 7:00 PM ET on Tuesday, November 3. We’ll have commentary and recaps and, if everything goes according to plan (it never does), some sort of model that updates the pre-election forecast from FiftyPlusOne with House and Senate calls and results throughout the night. Be there or be square.
Second, Founding Members are invited to a private pre-election briefing with Strength In Numbers and The Downballot on Tuesday, October 27, at 6:30 p.m. ET. Details here.
Early voting updates coming on the early voting live blog tomorrow! As I’ve been stressing, read EV numbers with some caution, but so far I’m not seeing anything that conflicts with the idea of a big blue wave in November.
1. Trump is shoring up support in the states he won by double digits
Last week, Mike Johnson said on Fox News that all the polls are wrong and Republicans are going to hold the House. He said this from a TV studio in San Antonio, Texas — which, as I pointed out on Bluesky, shows he holds a different outlook on the election than the one he’s parroting to voters.
On the one hand, you never admit you’re down before votes are counted. On the other hand, if you’re doing campaign events in Texas, a state Donald Trump won by 14 points, you’re in deep shit.
Over the last month, Donald Trump has held rallies from deep-red Oklahoma to Alabama, Texas to Tennessee. He was in Omaha, Nebraska last week and on Monday he heads to Wichita, Kansas for Sen. Roger Marshall, in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since the 1930s. Iowa GOP chair Jeff Kaufmann says Trump will be in Iowa on October 22 and again on November 1.
This is not the campaign map you’d see from a party about to hold the House. This is how you campaign when you’re 10 points down and trying to stem the losses. My Occam’s Razor conclusion is that Trump is saying the polls are wrong not because he believes it (since he’s not acting like it), but because he’s setting up narratives to claim mass voter fraud on Election Day.
In the FiftyPlusOne polling averages as of Sunday morning, October 18, Democrats lead in Ohio (D+4.2), Texas (D+4), Alaska (D+2.4), Kansas (D+1.4) and Iowa (D+0.8), and independent Dan Osborn trails by just a point in Nebraska. As I wrote on Friday, there’s a lot of competitive territory that will decide which party holds the Senate.
One of the popular explanations for Trump’s poor numbers is that his policies have hurt everyday Americans, particularly in red states. Your Iowas, Ohios, Kansases and Nebraskas, for example, are over-exposed to rising diesel prices and punishment from international tariffs. Can we see that in the data?
Today I’m sharing new data from my polling firm, Wave Polling and Research, that points to a soft spot inside his own party: Republicans who say they’re worse off financially.