As Election Day approaches, Republicans are beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately for them, that light increasingly resembles an oncoming train.
Election modeling by The Argument and Split Ticket has long forecast this outcome. And now, on the day before the election, disaster looks hard to avoid for the Republican Party. In the Senate, where the odds of a Democratic takeover once looked fantastical, Democrats now have a 77% chance of flipping the chamber, with a projected gain of six seats. If that comes to pass, Democrats will hold 53 seats to Republicans’ 47.
The House has long been projected to flip to Democrats. Some once thought midcycle gerrymanders in Texas and Florida would give Republicans a real shot at holding it, but the new maps haven’t insulated the GOP nearly enough.1 As a result, Democrats have a 92% chance of flipping the House of Representatives, with a projected net gain of 24 seats.
Republicans’ Senate odds have devolved rapidly, and it’s worth walking through the map in some detail.
How the Senate got away from Republicans
North Carolina’s Senate seat is the most likely on the map to flip. Former Gov. Roy Cooper has opened up a lead large enough for both parties to triage the race well ahead of the election. Our model rates his chances of winning at 98%. The real question is whether Cooper’s margin of victory will exceed incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff’s in Georgia.
In Texas, James Talarico continues to hold on to a lead, even in the face of a fire hose of Republican spending bankrolled by Elon Musk. Talarico remains a favorite to flip the Lone Star State blue for the first time in over 30 years, thanks to a historically terrible opponent in state Attorney General Ken Paxton, plus a Hispanic rebellion against the GOP. As a result, our final model gives Talarico an 81% chance of winning, with the race rated Likely Democratic.2
His odds have only increased as the cycle has gone on. Several high-quality pollsters find a pretty sizable Talarico lead in its final survey — YouGov had him up by 4, CNN/SSRS found him leading by 6, and the latest New York Times/Siena College poll found Talarico leading by 7.
Megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton, the Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas, has led consistently in polls over the last month. What should have been a safe Republican hold is now looking like a potential flip, thanks largely to a series of scandals: Questions have swirled about whether Marshall actually lives in Kansas or Florida, whether he’s using taxpayer funds to run his campaign, and whether he sued patients at his OB-GYN practice for small, unpaid debts.
As late as a few days ago, our model thought this race was a coin flip. But with the latest high-quality polls from CNN/SSRS and The New York Times/Siena College showing a clear Hamilton lead, the model now predicts Hamilton is a narrow favorite to win a Kansas U.S. Senate seat for the Democrats for the first time since 1932.
In Iowa — a state 3 points bluer than Kansas in our modeling — Republicans have nominated a strong candidate in Ashley Hinson. Though she’s facing a tough challenge in Democrat Josh Turek, we consider the race a complete tossup.3
In Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown has seized upon hostility to AI and data centers, allowing the Democrat to open up a small lead over appointed incumbent Republican Jon Husted. While polls in Ohio usually overstate Democratic support, Brown’s lead has shown up even in surveys done by Republican pollsters, who typically correct for that skew. We think the race leans Democratic — and virtually every poll and model agrees.
Maine and Alaska also lean blue, with Democratic odds settling in very similar places in both states: 71% in Alaska, 73% in Maine. It’s worth going into detail in both states.
Let’s start with Maine. A lot of liberal readers will have PTSD from years of Susan Collins victories, even in blue environments — and it’s true that polls have historically overshot Democrats in Maine.
But our model picks up on two important factors that look like they push Troy Jackson over the edge.
First, our generic ballot model shows that Maine is effectively a D+14 state right now. That’s the bluest it’s ever been.
Second, candidate quality for overperformers like Collins decays over time, especially as partisanship accelerates. Today, we have Collins performing 9.7 percentage points better in margin than an average Republican incumbent would, which is 3 percentage points worse than her 2020 overperformance. While this would still be more than enough in almost every other swing state, it’s not enough for Maine. High-quality surveys agree — YouGov, CNN/SSRS and The New York Times/Siena College all have Jackson ahead by a modest but notable amount.
In Alaska, meanwhile, our model predicts a flip, but I’m not so sure. In recent weeks, Democrat Mary Peltola has been dogged by an unfriendly wave of headlines: From allegations that she mistreated her staffers (which I don’t think matters) and the revelation that her campaign propped up a spoiler candidate with the same name as incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan (which I do think matters), my guess would be that Peltola slightly underperforms the model’s margins.
The long shots
That leaves two stretch states for each party to hope for an upset win: South Carolina and Nebraska for Democrats, and Michigan and Minnesota for Republicans.