Who’s winning the race for Congress?
By REID J. EPSTEIN
The Republican Party’s hopes of saving its majorities in Congress increasingly appear to depend on a few possible outcomes: GOP advantages in money and on the map pay off, the polls are wrong, or a major news development suddenly brightens the party’s prospects.
In the meantime, Republicans in competitive races are doing whatever they can to try to loosen their ties to President Donald Trump’s agenda, which is dragging their party down with just over three weeks to go before the midterm elections.
There have been new ads stating opposition to Trump’s tariffs from candidates who supported them, calls to end the war in Iran from candidates who backed it and efforts to look bipartisan from candidates who pledged to be Trump’s top allies.
The debates last week made clear that Republicans are on the back foot. Questions about high prices, tariffs and the war dominated the sessions in battleground states. While GOP advertising often aims to link Democrats to their party’s left-wing figures and stoke disputes about transgender athletes, cost-of-living issues are paramount to voters this year.
Trump’s rhetoric is not helping his party. Even as his own approval ratings have plummeted, he urges voters to pretend that he is on the ballot. He touts data centers that are even less popular than he is. And he has shown no inclination to back off from his positions on the war in Iran or tariffs.
But then there is the money.
Thanks to Trump’s super political action committees and well-heeled political allies, Republicans still hold a commanding financial advantage. Billionaire Elon Musk has directed more than $276 million to Republicans since the start of July.
Republicans hope that will help them pull through on a House map they sought to redraw in their favor and Senate map that features plenty of races in red states. But the time to change minds and move votes is shrinking by the day.
The battle for the Senate
Republicans have all but conceded the race in North Carolina to Democrat Roy Cooper, a popular former governor. In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, has a commanding lead over Rep. Mike Collins. And now Democrats are on offense in deep-red Kansas, with Senate Majority PAC, the party’s main super PAC, beginning $5 million worth of ads in the state.
According to polls, Democratic candidates are leading or running neck-and-neck in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas — all places Trump won three times by substantial margins. He and Vice President JD Vance have aimed to energize the base with appearances in those states, but the polls suggest the Democrats are holding their own.
In the eyes of Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, Democrats even have a chance to take back the majority partly because of his recruiting efforts. In an interview Friday, he claimed credit for getting Cooper, former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and former Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska into their races and helping Josh Turek win his primary in Iowa.
“I couldn’t accept the map as is because the map as is consigns us to a minority, all things being equal, just because of the way the states are structured,” Schumer said. “So we had to expand the map. I didn’t accept the original map. I worked to build a better one.”
Still, some Democrats worry about Senate races that ought to be easier for them. Contests remain tight in Maine, Michigan and New Hampshire.
The race for the House
Things do not look promising for House Republican hopes of retaining their majority.
The Cook Political Report on Friday shifted 18 districts toward Democrats. Two Iowa seats, held by Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, are now considered “lean Democratic.”
That is in addition to Republicans already punting on the Omaha-based district held by the retiring Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska.
Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the House majority whip, said the issue is that Republican voters may be too “satisfied” with Trump to vote in November.
“The midterms, you typically have the party that wins the White House is satisfied,” Emmer said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “If our people will turn out — you may be satisfied, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t vote. You show up and vote, we’re going to be fine.”
Democrats need to flip just three seats to take a House majority. Many election forecasters now suggest they will do much better than that. During a discussion last week, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, repeatedly declined to predict how many seats his party would win.
He did, however, suggest that Democrats would be able to repeat their successes from 2018, the last midterm with Trump in the White House.
“Past performance is not evidence of future results,” he said. “But it provides at least a path for us to ascertain what is possible.”
The money
Even for Musk, a quarter-billion dollars is a lot to spend on politics in just three months.
The billionaire has once again become the largest single donor to Republican causes. The roughly $276 million he directed to groups during July, August and September means his tab for the 2026 elections is now about $366 million.
Musk’s funds are split between $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main Senate GOP super PAC; over $76 million to America PAC, his own outlet that focuses on voter turnout; $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, which supports House Republicans; and other donations. One of them reflects Musk’s interest in the Texas Senate race: He gave $10 million to a super PAC backing Ken Paxton, who polls show trails James Talarico, the Democratic candidate trying to become the first in his party to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988.
The early vote
In five states with competitive Senate races, 615,100 ballots have already been cast.
Top talker
After vanishing from the campaign trail for nine days, Talarico emerged at the Austin City Limits music festival Friday. He said he’d been home sick with the flu.
Paxton had been making hay out of Talarico’s whereabouts. What is next in the Texas campaign is unclear: Talarico on Saturday challenged Paxton to debate, and Trump has suggested Paxton should debate, but Paxton has yet to agree to a debate.
One poll number
76%.
That’s the percentage of Ohio voters who said Trump’s policies have increased the cost of living in the state in a CNN/SSRS poll. The poll found Brown, the Democrat, up by 6 percentage points over Sen. Jon Husted, the Republican. Trump and Vance have both visited the state recently in an attempt to boost support for Husted.
On the issues
Trump’s latest idea to bring down gas prices — importing diesel fuel from Russia — got a chilly reception from some of his fellow Republicans, including a few in battleground races. Former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan and Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, who are both locked in tight Senate races, panned the idea. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said Saturday that he would force a vote to block Russian oil purchases. The U.S. has forbidden importing Russian fuel since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
On the ground
In Maine, the cost of home heating oil is surging along with prices of seemingly everything else, forcing voters to pay more to stay warm just as fall temperatures drop.
Republicans concede the costs — up 80% over a year ago to fill a standard heating oil tank — are a problem for Sen. Susan Collins, who backed the Iran war that drove up oil prices before she called for it to end.
Quote of the week
“If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.” — Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia
Ossoff pulled no punches in his debate attacks on Collins. He said Collins had “hired half the Third Reich,” a reference to Collins hiring aides who have espoused white nationalist and antisemitic views.
Collins responded that he had “condemned racism, antisemitism, hate.”
