A number of Senate races are too close to call — defying expectations and upsetting established political affinities within certain states. What does this say about the midterms and the direction of American politics?

Guests

Tim Carpenter, senior reporter for the Kansas Reflector.

Jessica Taylor, senate and governors editor for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.

James Brooks, reporter for the Alaska Beacon.

Jeremy Pelzer, chief politics reporter at cleveland.com.

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Part I

DONALD TRUMP: I love you, Kansas, but I’m here for a guy named Roger Marshall.

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: President Donald Trump at the Heartland Credit Union Arena in Park City, Kansas just last night. He was there for a rally to support incumbent senator, Republican Roger Marshall.

TRUMP: In 15 days from now, the people of Kansas are going to reelect a great, a truly great person, a great senator, one of the greatest senators we have.

CHAKRABARTI: Marshall should be a shoo-in for Kansas. The state has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932. In 2014, there wasn’t even a Democrat on the general election ballot. When Senator Marshall won his last election in 2020, he handily beat his challenger by more than 10 points. That year, President Trump also won Kansas’ presidential votes by more than 14 points.

So this is not really a state that Trump should feel like he needs to spend time in right now, just a couple of weeks before the 2026 midterms. And yet there he was, practically begging Kansans.

TRUMP: And in this election, I’m asking you to pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. Just pretend.

CHAKRABARTI: Why? At this point, the Kansas Senate race is a toss-up.

Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton is the founding and senior pastor of the Church of Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, the largest Methodist congregation in the country. And some polls have Hamilton leading Marshall by as many as five points. Others find the incumbent Republican up by three, so on average, the polls right now are showing that these two men are closely tied.

Right now, no one really knows which way Kansas will go, something that hasn’t been said about a Senate race there in a very long time. Remember, as I said, that state has not elected a Democratic senator in 94 years. Midterms are always a referendum on the sitting president, so today we’re going to take a look at several Senate races that are not only close, but surprisingly close given President Trump’s overwhelming dominance in those states just two years ago.

We’ll talk about what those close polls are saying, and given how wrong polling has been in several previous elections, we’ll also talk about what they’re not saying, too. So let’s stick around in Kansas for a while. Tim Carpenter joins us. He’s senior reporter and founding member of The Kansas Reflector, and he joins us from Topeka.

Tim, welcome to On Point.

TIM CARPENTER: Pleasure to be with you.

CHAKRABARTI: All right. So tell us a little bit about the president’s rally for Senator Marshall last night. What was the energy like there?

CARPENTER: So it’s maybe about 6,000 people were in the arena, not a huge arena, but they were very pleased to be in the president’s presence.

I’ve been to Trump rallies before. I know what to expect. But typically, even as a reporter, I get Trump in soundbites. But this was 90 minutes of attacks and name-calling. It was sprinkled with some interesting policy issues, some GOP endorsements, and a long list of the president’s accomplishments.

CHAKRABARTI: Sorry, Tim, I didn’t mean to interrupt you there. But so this was … when you say … But that sounds, what you just described to me sounds like a typical Trump rally, right? Because he talks a lot, right? That’s what people come to see. That’s what his supporters come to see.

But you said it was still felt different. What’s actually the difference other than the soundbites? Versus the 90 minutes of Trump?

CARPENTER: Let’s just compare it when I saw him in Topeka, Kansas eight years ago. There was a lot of rah-rah politics, but I just don’t think the toxicity level was there.

And the one thing that sticks with me is that I’m not sure that’s really what Kansas politics is about. That might really work in other areas, but I think it just goes a little bit beyond what Kansans would like to see out of their politics, and I think that actually plays into the way the U.S. Senate race in Kansas is being handled this year.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so the toxicity that you saw last night from the president wasn’t there in previous rallies, just to be clear.

CARPENTER: Yeah, not, I just didn’t sense it was as great.

CHAKRABARTI: Got it. Okay, so if I might ask, Tim, what kinds of things was the president saying about Hamilton, and why do you think that may not be landing with Kansans right now?

CARPENTER: He certainly implied that if you elect Adam Hamilton, the communists are coming, and they’re going to take over the government. He suggested due to a controversy that actually exists in this race, that suggested that Adam Hamilton could be a pedophile defender. It was really beyond the facts in question here.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Tell us a little bit about Adam Hamilton. We’ll talk more about Senator Marshall’s record in the Senate in just a few minutes, but for people who have not heard of Hamilton, who is he, and why has he seemed to caught fire as a Democrat in Kansas?

CARPENTER: Yeah, Adam Hamilton, as you said, is a church founder.

The church has about 24,000 members. He has no previous political experience. He’s really tried to suggest to voters that he’s a centrist, that he wants to be a bipartisan U.S. senator and work with Republicans on important public policy issues. He comes from a hotbed of moderate politics in the Kansas City area.

There’s a county called Johnson County. It’s a very voter-rich area, and they can really tip the scales, and so that’s where he’s from. There was a huge primary field among the Democrats, and once he entered the race, he just swept it up, in part because he has tremendous fundraising capabilities, and so he just buried his rivals in that primary.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So Tim, as we know, centrist, progressive, conservative, MAGA, these all mean different things to different people, right? That’s the nature of our politics today in America. So when you say he’s a centrist Democrat for Kansas, what exactly does that mean on certain policy issues?

CARPENTER: Yeah, you’re right. To say centrist or moderate in Kansas is not like saying those same words if you’re standing in New York City or in LA. So I think a lot of politicians across the landscape … lean conservative, I think, and I think Adam Hamilton would echo that. I do think a lot of what he’s spoken about is that it’s time for the federal government, the United States Senate, to just be in rational conversations, the members, rational conversations with each other about how to address important issues facing the country, the economy, immigration, international affairs, you name it.

And that’s not the approach that U.S. Senator Roger Marshall has taken. He’s really doubled down on his affinity for the president and praises the president at every turn over the last six years, and he’s really anchored his campaign on that Trump agenda.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Interesting. So let’s hear a little bit from both of the candidates in Kansas on issue number one in the minds of almost every voter in the United States, and that has to definitely be affordability right now.

So here is Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton. And he has called Senator Marshall a mouthpiece for the president, claiming that neither Marshall nor President Trump are serving the needs of Kansans.

ADAM HAMILTON: People in Kansas are suffering. You’ve got folks, farmers, we’re a huge ag state, and when people are paying record diesel prices for their fuel, when they’re really being affected by the tariffs in terms of the $150 a month tariff tax, the hidden tariff tax, you got between those two, just for an average Kansan, it’s $250 a month more they’re spending this year than they were last year. And if you’re living paycheck to paycheck and suddenly your life costs $3,000 a year more, it’s a disaster.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so that’s Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton in Kansas. So let’s just listen to … incumbent Senator Roger Marshall, Republican. He says that the gas and affordability woes facing Kansans are a result of the Biden administration.

ROGER MARSHALL: The average price of gas today or over President Trump’s two years is still less than what it was under Joe Biden. The good news is when this Iran war is over, and I want it to be over as soon as anybody else does, that those prices are gonna come down, that we’re gonna see the cost of gasoline come down when this war is over.

But if Democrats are in power, those prices will never come down. And of course, that price of gas impacts the cost of groceries. You think about what’s really driving inflation, and it was the cost of housing and health care and childcare. They went up 50% under Joe Biden, and we’ve attacked each one of those.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so we’re going to fact-check both the candidates here in just a second, but I want to bring Jessica Taylor into the conversation first. She’s Senate and Governors editor for the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, and Jessica joins us from Washington. Welcome to On Point, Jessica.

JESSICA TAYLOR: Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: So it’s the Cook Report that I actually quoted earlier when saying that Kansas is now seen as a toss-up. Tell me about how, is that unexpected or surprising? What’s your take?

TAYLOR: Given that this is a state that Trump carried by 16 points, it’s incredibly surprising. At the outset of this cycle, this was in the solid Republican column.

We moved it a few months ago into likely Republican when Adam Hamilton won that nomination, just because he was such a strong candidate. But this is a situation where Democrats had to have a perfect storm to make this competitive, and that might be what is happening here. But we began this cycle with Republicans talking about maybe taking on Jon Ossoff in Georgia and maybe even growing their majority and defending a seat in North Carolina.

We have both of those races now rated likely Democrat for a Republican pickup in North Carolina, and Democrats expect it to easily hold onto Georgia at this point. So the fact that we’re talking that … the Democrats have been able to reach into such a deep red state in Kansas, it speaks to, I think, both the quality of a candidate that Adam Hamilton is, the poor political environment driven by Donald Trump at the top, and the way that the agriculture industry in particular has hurt Kansas, and Marshall’s weaknesses as a candidate.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so we’re going to talk more about all of those things in a second, but let me turn back to Tim. Tim, on the affordability issue, that is one of the primary drivers of President Trump’s right now historically low approval ratings. I think the most recent number I saw from yesterday was 31% of Americans approve of the job that the president is doing.

With the agriculture piece in mind, how are affordability price crises hitting Kansans right now?

CARPENTER: You’ve touched upon a couple of these areas. I think in rural Kansas, agriculture is suffering greatly. These fuel, diesel fuel costs have been bad, crop prices have been mediocre, and the cattle industry has been strong, but the president decided because the cost of meat at the grocery store was too high, he was gonna import more beef.

That enraged Kansas ranchers, enraged them, and I think that kinda thing is driving some of those conservative Republicans to say, “I’m just gonna stay home on Election Day.” Not that they’re gonna run out and vote for a Democrat for the first time in their lives, but they just may stay home, and that will hurt Roger Marshall.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Jessica, I want to return to the affordability question for another second because we played incumbent Senator Roger Marshall, Republican before the break talking about how he says that the average price of gas today or over President Trump’s two years, is less than it was under Joe Biden.

Now, there’s a lot of different ways to slice the gas price number to get at the comparison one wants. I’m just gonna pick diesel right now because we had a major diesel surge both under President Biden and obviously under President Trump. During President Biden’s term, diesel peaked at about $5.80 a gallon.

That was in June of 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Right now under President Trump diesel is surging. It’s climbed to about $6.50 per gallon. That has to do … a lot to do with President Trump’s launching of the war against Iran. Gas prices are just, they’re more than just a vibes-based sentiment for voters.

They really are a core economic question. So tell me how you think, Jessica, this the the reality of energy prices is playing out in this race.

TAYLOR: Gas prices is one of the singular drivers of this election. Just think about when you’re driving around. You may be driving around right now listening to this show.

Look out your window. There’s a good chance you’re passing a gas station, and if you’re like me, you’re watching to see which one has the lowest prices. You are very cognizant of what these prices have been in the past few days. Have they gone up? Have they gone down? And voters are tying a spike in gas prices to the beginning of the Iran war.

They know that when this war was launched in the spring, they started paying higher gas prices, higher diesel prices, that those diesel prices are making goods cost more because they have to go on trucks to get to the places that they’re going. The war has driven up fertilizer prices. That’s hitting the agriculture industry in places like Iowa, another state that is in play for the Democrats or the Republicans are defending, and in Kansas.

It is hurting everyone up and down the ballot, and I think that voters don’t really care about statistics or blaming who came before. They want who’s in power now.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so Tim, this brings me back to how Senator Marshall is aligning himself with President Trump. He has historically been very loyal to the president.

In that clip that we just heard, he continues to do so. He says when the Iran war is over, gas prices are gonna come down. He didn’t necessarily say, “And I want President Trump to end the Iran war right now,” which he could. So can you talk a little bit about how Marshall’s alignment with with the president has either maybe helped him in the past but may not be so helpful right now?

CARPENTER: I think leading into his first reelection bid in the U.S. Senate, he basically glommed onto pretty much any public policy issue that the president offered, and that was a good strategy in Kansas, I think, until this year and until Hamilton entered the race. I think there’s issues that Marshall’s campaign strategy is to first speak about the big, beautiful bill and the tax ramifications.

He praises the president for dealing with immigration at the border and praises the president’s desire to strengthen the military. Those are key issues that he thinks resonates with voters. What’s interesting is that he doesn’t frequently talk in that speech about the cost of living issues, which are at the forefront of people’s minds.

And I think if you get out into rural Kansas and you have to drive your kids 50 miles each way to school, those gas prices really matter. That’s a daily occurrence. You see it every day when you drive by a gas station, and I think that resonates with voters a lot in Kansas.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. What about Senator Marshall’s argument, which I’m sure he’s making on the stump in Kansas, that he has delivered for Kansans by being so closely aligned or allied to the president?

Is there evidence for that? Is it convincing to voters in these midterms, Tim?

CARPENTER: I think Trump is very popular in many areas of Kansas. Gotta keep in mind, there’s 900,000 Republicans in Kansas, 580,000 independents, and 520,000 Democrats. 900, 580, and 520, so the Democrats are in a distinct minority.

This middle ground will decide this race and Republican turnout as well. So I think these economic issues are weighing heavy on people, and I’ve been to rallies, I’ve been to stump speeches by these candidates, and you can feel it. State fair debate, I was on the panel of journalists that asked the candidates questions for U.S. Senate, and the crowd was very boisterous in support of Adam Hamilton, and sharply critical of the senator.

However, when Hamilton was speaking during that debate, it seemed like the Republicans in this crowd just became quieter because they were interested in hearing what this guy was about. And so I think all of these factors are rolling into one, and are making it tougher for Marshall to win reelection.

Hamilton has claimed that Marshall has voted against Kansas’ interest in Washington. That would be on health care and on affordability issues. So all of this is pulling together to make it a tough reelection for him.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Jessica, I want to go back to you here, but vis-a-vis a particular issue that seems to be dogging Senator Marshall right now, because he talked about weakness as a candidate this time around.

So during a Senate debate in September, Senator Marshall was asked about, he’s a doctor, and he was asked about his choice to sue 700 of his patients for not paying their medical bills during an affordability crisis, and here’s what he said, and response from folks in the audience.

MARSHALL: Those are common business practices. We would go a year before we’d ever send somebody over.

CHAKRABARTI: Jessica, do you wanna talk about this for a second? ‘Cause it’s an interesting aspect of this race. It certainly is.

TAYLOR: This comes from a New York Times report. They reported that again, Marshall, who is an OBGYN, had sued patients at a pretty high interest rate as well, about 18%, I believe. And I think that at the time where this is coming, when people are just so cash-strapped and people have medical debt, I think this is just a story that a lot of average Kansans can relate to.

They’re struggling to pay their bills, and then you add on that interest on top of it that just makes it hard to get out of debt. And you have Marshall, who is wealthy, who he’s been hit for having previously had a second home in Florida. I think that there’s an approachability, I think, that Hamilton has and has hit Marshall over, has effectively hit Marshall over these allegations, and they’ve become really a defining feature of the race.

CHAKRABARTI: Tim, I’ve got one more question for you before we move over to Alaska. But when I look at polls, I do hold a little bit of skepticism in my mind, not that pollsters aren’t trying hard to get things right, but we’ve seen them miss in the past couple of elections. And part of the reason why is some voters are just kind of hard to get to, or they won’t respond to pollsters.

And I wonder if you have a sense, is there a quiet Trump vote out there in Kansas right now that we’re not necessarily hearing from? Because they’re not the rally types, but they may show up at the polls for Marshall?

CARPENTER: Yeah, I think polling in Kansas is pretty awful, and I’m a huge polling skeptic.

The only one that really matters to me will be on November 3rd. I think if Roger Marshall is twisting arms, as you heard in the rally last night, twisting arms to get Republicans to go to the polls, and that will in fact be what saves him perhaps and gets him, sends him back to Washington.

I think the default vote for a lot of people is to vote Republican, and if a bunch of Republicans stay at home and Hamilton can really drive Democrats and independents to the polls, he may win.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Tim Carpenter, senior reporter at The Kansas Reflector, joining us today from Topeka. Thank you so much, Tim.

CARPTENER: It’s my honor. Thank you.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so another interesting and surprisingly close race happening in Alaska between Republican Dan Sullivan and Democratic Mary Peltola. Here is an interaction, let me put it that way, between the two in a recent Senate debate where Sullivan called into question Peltola’s work as a member of the House in Washington, D.C.

SULLIVAN: There’s nothing more rigged than a member of Congress getting fired and then immediately walking through the revolving door to cash in. She made almost a half a million dollars last year as a D.C. lobbyist.

PELTOLA: I would like to rebut that claim.

SULLIVAN: Quit interrupting, selling her knowledge of D.C.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so let’s turn to James Brooks now.

He’s a reporter for the Alaska Beacon, and he’s with us from Juneau. James, welcome to the program.

JAMES BROOKS: Hello, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so tell me a little bit about this race because in previous years having things be close between a Democrat and a Republican in Alaska, I guess we’re not really familiar with that scenario.

BROOKS: It doesn’t happen very often. Alaska last had a Democrat in the U.S. Senate in 2008, but Peltola’s polling numbers are pretty good, and she is viewed positively by a large proportion of Alaska voters. Sullivan’s approval rating is significantly lower, and that plus the whole national environment is making this a competitive race.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay to be clear here, because I wasn’t as specific as I should be before, Senator Sullivan is the Republican incumbent. Mary Peltola served, represented Alaska in the House and now running as a Democratic candidate for Senate. I have got to ask you, James about the affordability question, because we talked about fuel prices in Kansas.

How is that playing out in Alaska?

BROOKS: Yes it’s a big issue here, not just with diesel prices, but with heating fuel and even natural gas because that’s the main heating source, energy source for South Central Alaska, and supplies of that are running short in South Central Alaska, so people in that region are seeing prices rise.

In parts of rural Alaska, you have heating fuel prices that are at or exceeding $12 per gallon, and this is as we’re going into winter. Now, some of those communities locked in lower prices earlier in the year, but we’re still seeing $9 a gallon, $10 a gallon in parts of rural Alaska.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s a lot, to say the least.

And so how are the candidates talking about that then as they’re trying to win Alaskans’ votes?

BROOKS: Yes. Peltola has been talking about this quite a bit on the campaign trail. And was campaigning in rural Alaska for most of the last month, basically trying to make the case that Dan Sullivan supports Donald Trump.

Trump’s tariffs, Trump’s war in Iran have caused these high prices, so you shouldn’t vote for the person who’s causing your prices to rise. At a rally here in Alaska, Sullivan and Trump tried to make the case that these higher prices are worth it, that the war in Iran is intended to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, and so this is a small price to pay, and prices will soon go down.

That was their argument.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, Jessica what’s the Cook Political Report’s take on Alaska?

TAYLOR: This is a true toss-up. This is a seat that I do not think this race would be as competitive had Democrats not convinced Mary Peltola to run here. She had the chance to probably be in the governor’s race, although that race very well could flip to Democrats as well.

But she has a history of over-performing the top of the ticket. Even though she lost in 2024 when Kamala Harris also lost the state, she heavily over-performed Harris by double digits. And so she is a unique candidate that has put this race more into play. And as he was saying, these high rural, high gas price, high gas prices in rural areas have hurt the fishing industry, have hurt just people heating their homes right now as we head into winter.

I think that this Alaska is such a unique state given just its vastness and its rural nature, that it’s experiencing, I think, these high prices and the just the cratering of the economy and the impacts of the war so uniquely.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so let’s listen to a little bit more from both candidates.

Here is Mary Peltola accusing Dan Sullivan of enriching himself in Washington, D.C.

PELTOLA: Dan’s been in D.C. for 12 years and gotten richer every single one of those years. That’s the corruption that Alaskans are really sick of, and that’s the corruption that I’ll fight against. Dan went to D.C. with $3 million. He now has $8 million. Dan’s doing just fine watching out for himself.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, and here’s Dan Sullivan attacking what he sees as faults in Mary Peltola’s character. He’s citing a New York Times article that claims she blew up at staff members.

SULLIVAN: She treats young Alaskans horribly. 25 staffers quit on Mary Peltola because she abused them physically and emotionally, and then she slanders every other group, African Americans, special needs individuals. … It is a character flaw of my opponent.

CHAKRABARTI: James, let me ask you. I’m actually looking at a report from the Alaska Beacon about the most recent Senate debate. It’s acrimonious is the word that the Beacon used. Is that kind of par for the course for Alaska senatorial debates, or is there something like really different about the tone this time around?

BROOKS: It’s gotten more acrimonious as time has gone on, and I think that may be part of a deliberate strategy as well because folks in Alaska know these two candidates very well. Their name recognition is pretty much at 100%, and also voters have their opinions locked in. And so the goal is to either encourage or discourage voters to come out to the polls, and that’s where I think this election ends up getting decided by who turns out to vote.

We had early voting open yesterday, and seems to be pretty brisk, mirroring nationwide trends. But as I had said earlier, Peltola’s approval rating is pretty high. Sullivan’s is pretty low. So the tactic, as I understand it, as has been explained to me, is to make Peltola look bad and bring her down into the mud with Sullivan, and that would discourage Democratic voters, independent-leaning Democrats from voting for her.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Let me ask you, though, right now, across the state of Alaska is partisanship as strong and as pointed as it might be in other states?

BROOKS: Not quite, but it’s getting there. I tend to say that Alaska trails the rest of the country by four to six years in terms of political trends. For example, the Alaska Legislature, both houses are controlled by coalition majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.

So the bipartisanship hasn’t gone away completely, but in federal races particularly, partisanship is definitely there.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: We were in Kansas, then Alaska. We’ll go to Ohio in a second.

But Jessica, I keep using this phrase surprisingly close but is it really surprising? And here’s why I ask. I’m hoping that you’re also old enough to remember November of 2010. Yes?

TAYLOR: Yes, very much I was working at the time. Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. That gave us a word which went down in political history.

It was uttered by President Obama. You remember that one?

TAYLOR: Shellacking.

CHAKRABARTI: Shellacking. Exactly. And the reason why I bring up the 2010 midterms is just for folks who aren’t old enough to remember the Democrats really were wiped out in that first midterm election in President Obama’s first term in office.

In October of 2010, Obama’s approval rating touched a low of, according to Gallup, of 41%. Obamacare was in the works. He actually, he had passed it by that time, but it was historically unpopular, especially amongst Republicans. The president also acknowledged after the shellacking that he even said that there’s, quote, “An inherent danger of being in the White House and being in a bubble,” he said, talking about the frustration that people were feeling, not just amongst Tea Party Republicans, but amongst more Americans in general about a lack of speedy recovery following the 2008 financial crisis.

All these things together, Democratic wipeout in 2010. So I’m looking back on that example and saying at least thematically, it’s a really familiar story, what we’re seeing in 2026 with President Trump. Very unpopular, even more 31% according to a Reuters poll I’m seeing here.

Affordability, war, et cetera. So should we be surprised that this referendum on the president is going as badly as it is for him and his party?

TAYLOR: We shouldn’t be surprised about the House because that’s only a three-seat majority, and of course, all 435 seats are up. But it matters which third of the Senate is up.

And even in 2010, as Democrats got that shellacking, they still held onto the Senate. And we started this cycle, I wrote at the beginning of this cycle in January of 2025 that Democrats’ task to take back the Senate was Herculean, and that was because it ran through such red states, and we are a more polarized, partisan country than we were even in 2010, than we were in 2006, which is when another president had a shellacking, when President Bush did in his second midterm election.

And so I think that you have to look at it through that type of lens, is that it’s very with the limits of partisanship, the fact that you have states like Ohio that are a Trump plus 11 state, like Alaska and Iowa that are Trump plus 13 states, Texas Trump plus 14. These double-digit states that are in play, that’s what’s surprising.

And, again, everything had to go right for Democrats to be in this position. They had to have a bad national environment, check. They had to have really strong candidates in some of these races, check. And will they pull it off? It’s still very much a toss-up. I would actually probably rather be Democrats right now, just given the environment and the trajectory, and Republicans that I have talked to in recent days are very, morose is a good word for how a lot of these Republicans have been sounding to me about not just the state of the House, but increasingly the state of the Senate. But it’s still going to be very close.

CHAKRABARTI: On the other hand I’m gonna just go out there and take a risk and say that Democrats also have a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

TAYLOR: They do. I think with Texas in particular, I was talking with the Lucy and the football is the analogy that I feel like the most. That Democrats get their hopes up in these places, and then they increasingly feel that, yeah, they’re snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And I’ve met Democrats recently who are almost having to fan themselves, they’re so overheated with excitement about the possibility of reclaiming Congress.

But on the other hand, as we heard Tim especially, in Topeka, Kansas say, the question I would say not just for Republicans but for Democrats, is turnout. Because most folks already do know who they’re going to vote for. There’s always that influential slice of independents in the middle.

But ultimately, the GOTV efforts for both parties, isn’t that what’s gonna be the deciding factor?

TAYLOR: It is. And when you were talking earlier about the polls, this is where I worry because there are just functionally by math, there are more Republicans in a state like Iowa, in a state like Kansas, in a state like Ohio, and if those Republicans come out, then Republicans can still win.

But we see Democrats as more energized, they’re winning independent voters, but they still have to win over some of these Republican voters. So if Republicans are able to get their voters out, then that’s why these races are so close, that they are in the toss-up column, that there is still a path to victory for Republicans because these states are still fundamentally red.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So Jessica, let’s move now to Ohio, where Ohio Republican senator John Husted has aligned himself very closely with President Trump on just about everything, including the war in Iran. But according to CNN’s polling, only 26% of Americans approve of the war.

HUSTED: I want the war to come to an end. I want the Strait of Hormuz to be open, and I want gas prices to drop. But we need to make sure that we bring the war to an end as soon as possible, but on America’s terms with America’s interest at heart.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, on the Democratic side in the Ohio senator race, we have a familiar name, former Senator Sherrod Brown. He’s talking about data centers as well as an issue that directly relates to the affordability crisis and how squeezed Ohioans are feeling financially.

HUSTED: People’s tax dollars shouldn’t go to these billionaire data center owners and people locally need to have input in what these decisions are.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so let’s bring Jeremy Pelzer into the conversation. He’s in Columbus, Ohio. He’s the chief politics reporter for cleveland.com. Jeremy, welcome to On Point.

JEREMY PELZER: Hi, Meghna. Great to be here.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so how would you characterize the Senate race going on in all-important Ohio right now? Because anything that happens in Ohio, the entire nation kind of watches, we’re on the edge of our seats.

PELZER: Sure. As the old saying goes, “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.”

And, it’s almost to the point .. it is to the point of a meme that Ohio’s seen as this ordinary, kinda mayonnaise state where nothing, it’s not very unique. So I think if Democrats can really pull this out in Ohio, they can pull this out in other states as well. At the same time, as you and Jessica have been talking about, there needs to be some sort of reality check here.

As the old saying goes, “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.” Jessica Taylor

There is this gap, as Jessica said, of 11 percentage points, and we’ve seen this play out badly for Democrats before. JD Vance in 2022 beat an over-performing Democrat, Tim Ryan. In 2024, Bernie Moreno beat Sherrod Brown. And so it’s yet to be seen whether it’ll play out again this year.

Now, I will say that this is probably the put up or shut up time for Ohio Democrats because it’s not gonna get better for them than this. If John Husted wins this despite being appointed, he hasn’t run for Senate before, and you have Sherrod Brown, who’s in his mid to late ’70s, and he probably won’t run again if he loses, they don’t, they’re not gonna get a chance like this again.

So it’s really their put up or shut up time.

CHAKRABARTI: And I think that’s a common theme here in all the states we’ve been talking about, that perfect storm, whatever metaphor you want that comes to mind, this is a moment where if Democrats cannot actually deliver victories, like, when can they win, right?

In states like Ohio, Jeremy, is that what you’re saying?

PELZER: Yes, certainly for the near future.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Jessica, do you wanna talk about what going on in Ohio?

TAYLOR: That data center, that has become an issue in so many races across the country, and really Ohio was one of the first states that I saw this be play a major role in.

Sherrod Brown was able to tap, I think, into Brown’s long been sort of a populist champion, and I think there was this populist anger in local communities over these data centers because they it melded frustrations with big tech and fears about your affordability and your water prices going up and taking up water and your electricity prices and just forcing out local control.

And so he was able to hit Husted very effectively on this and really reframe the race in a way that I have seen it impacted, governors races across the country. It’s impacting the Ohio governors race there as well, which is also quite competitive. But this was the canary in the coal mine for me when I was looking at these races nationally that, hey, this data center issue is a big deal.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Actually, let’s listen to a little bit more of Sherrod Brown talking about the data center issues. He has painted his opponent John Husted, as the data center guy and has criticized the construction of more data centers.

BROWN: There are 225 data centers either built or in the process of being built in Ohio. They’re gobbling up farmland. They’re drinking up water. People have no say in their construction and the land and all that, and then they’re gonna pay higher electric bills. We have some of the highest electric bills in the state.

CHAKRABARTI: Data, potato, potata. Just as so listeners, I will always say data because Captain Jean-Luc Picard called his chief science officer Mr. Data. Okay? That’s what I’m going to do. But Jeremy, look, I actually think that what Jessica pointed out is really interesting because maybe a couple years ago, no one would have ever thought that something like data centers would actually be an issue that’s not only galvanizing people, but it’s really a grassroots issue that’s perhaps a tough one for politicians to address.

Because on the one hand, look, they do bring some jobs, they bring some economic development, but on the other hand, people really don’t like them. So can you talk about that in Ohio?

PELZER: You’re absolutely right. This is in an era when it’s easy to get cynical about Astroturf groups and fake manufactured political issues coming out, seemingly out of nowhere.

This was, by all accounts, a grassroots effort particularly among the kind of voters that Sherrod Brown and other Democrats need to win. These are from more rural areas. It’s almost a nonpartisan issue. There was an attempt in Ohio to actually put a ballot issue up on the ballot this year to ban large data centers, and while that didn’t happen, it shows that the passion behind restricting these facilities.

And John Husted is particularly vulnerable in this because for years he’s been a Chamber of Commerce Republican who has not been afraid to go in front of a camera and, use the big scissors and open data centers around the state. And until about a year ago, at least in Ohio, that wasn’t a problem.

That was something that just about every politician did, and suddenly everyone is trying to readjust to this new political reality.

CHAKRABARTI: Jeremy, I’d like you to actually talk a little bit more about Senator Husted, because his story seems familiar from, with all the states we’ve talked about today, that on the one hand, being very closely aligned with President Trump has produced significant dividends, political dividends in the past.

But on the other hand, now we have an ever-increasing number of voters and Republican voters saying, not just because of gas prices right now, but because of a bun- whole other host of issues. They’re not sure that this presidency has delivered for them in Ohio. But is Senator Husted afraid to put any daylight between him and Donald Trump because could that turn off Trump’s base in Ohio?

PELZER: Husted’s been in kind of a bind, and here’s why. When he was appointed by Governor Mike DeWine last year, he was seen as the acolyte, the heir apparent to DeWine, who is no-Trump Republican and actually has alienated a lot of MAGA conservatives here. So in order to prevent a primary battle and to clear the field, he has since really tied his wagon to Trump early and often, and as you said, it’s paid dividends.

Trump endorsed him very early on, and he’s come to Ohio. The president’s come to Ohio twice and even complimented Husted’s looks, particularly said nice things about his butt. And so but Husted then as a result of tying his wagon can’t, if he gets away from the wagon, he’s gonna be in the political wilderness.

So he has really made a decision to go with Trump, and now he’s just on this wagon, and we’ll see where the wagon goes.

CHAKRABARTI: Listeners, if you’re wondering what Jeremy’s talking about, you can just search for it on the internet. You will find it. The president used a shorter three-letter word rather than butt.

Okay, so let’s listen to Senator Husted here for a moment acknowledging that the economy is always an issue everywhere, and especially in Ohio. But he says there are ways that he can help make things affordable.

One, you help them earn more by creating good jobs and opportunity. You let them keep more of what they earn to spend and save on their priorities, and then you lower the prices of the things that they need to live and thrive. On the first front, Ohio has the most jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in Ohio history, and we’re seeing wages rise. Poverty rate is at the record low level. Secondly, with the Working Family Tax Cut plan, we’ve allowed families to keep more of what they earn to spend and save on their priorities, with no tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security, and a $2,200 per child tax credit, in which a family of four gets $4,400 in their pocket to help make ends meet.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, Jeremy, those are pretty concrete proposals. Are they resonating with Ohioans?

PELZER: First of all, he’s right. Ohio is doing fairly well economically, and he’s right that he can even help take some credit from that from being lieutenant governor and being …  Mike DeWine’s point person on economic issues.

At the same time, as we’ve talked about throughout this program, people are looking at things like gas prices, rising prices, and so even with jobs and with higher wages, people still feel uncomfortable about where they stand. At the same time too what he was just talking about, that it’s basically localizing the national Senate Republicans’ talking points.

Whereas Sherrod Brown has zoomed in on data centers and things like that. But it also shows that John Husted is not really … even though he is the incumbent, he’s not the incumbent in this race almost. This race is much more about Sherrod Brown. There was even a poll a couple of weeks ago that showed that one in four likely voters in Ohio thought Sherrod Brown was still a U.S. senator, not John Husted. So this is, raises much more about Sherrod Brown than it is about John Husted.

CHAKRABARTI: I can understand their confusion, because he was a senator not that long ago. Jeremy Pelzer chief politics reporter for cleveland.com, thank you so much for joining us today.

PELZER: Thanks a lot.

CHAKRABARTI: Jessica, we got about 30 seconds left. Your final thought on sort of this moment in American politics, and places you’ll keep your eye on come November 3rd, I believe. That’s Election Day.

TAYLOR: This is going to be a true test of the limits of partisanship, and can Democrats win in these very red areas? It could show a realignment in a post-Trump era.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.