The Ben Shapiro Show - September 23, 2026


The Truth About the Midterm Polls

Hosted by
Mentioned
I Don't Care If The Trump Administration "Banned" CNN

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

196.51

Word count

1,857

Sentence count

118


Transcript

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00:00:00.000 So, right now, things look bad for the Republicans going into 2026.
00:00:04.000 And the prediction markets are saying Republicans could lose the Senate.
00:00:06.000 In fact, maybe even likely to lose the Senate.
00:00:09.000 I think that's skewed.
00:00:10.000 I think that's skewed.
00:00:12.000 So, as we say, a lot of the prediction markets are suggesting that Democrats are going to blow Republicans out.
00:00:17.000 And right now, in the sort of generic congressional polling, Republicans are doing quite poorly.
00:00:22.000 In the generic congressional polling, according to Real Clear Polling, Republicans are trailing the Democrats by upwards of eight points.
00:00:30.000 Those are terrible numbers.
00:00:31.000 That would be a blowout for Democrats.
00:00:34.000 With that said, I think that some of the stuff you're seeing in the prediction markets and some of the stuff you're seeing in the poll averages is being skewed by outliers.
00:00:41.000 How do I know this?
00:00:42.000 Now, I'm going to try and distinguish here between outlier polls and poll averages.
00:00:45.000 So, poll averages usually end up being within margin of error of the actual final outcome.
00:00:50.000 However, if you have too many outlier polls in a poll average, then the polling data just ends up being off dramatically.
00:00:56.000 And we have seen an enormous amount.
00:01:00.000 Of, I would say, avalanche coverage, like a rock rolls down the hill and it starts an avalanche.
00:01:05.000 You see that from these outlier polls.
00:01:07.000 You're seeing a lot of catastrophic headlines right now about the 2026 election.
00:01:11.000 And some of this is based on things like push polling.
00:01:13.000 Some of this is based on outlier polls that are now being assumed to be the reality.
00:01:18.000 So, again, the poll averages right now have Republicans in poor position.
00:01:22.000 But the truth is that the vast majority of races in the United States right now, particularly for the Senate, are within margin of error.
00:01:27.000 Texas is a margin of error race, Michigan is a margin of error race.
00:01:31.000 Iowa is a margin of error race.
00:01:32.000 Maine is a margin of error race.
00:01:34.000 New Hampshire is a margin of error race.
00:01:35.000 Alaska is margin of error.
00:01:37.000 So, pretty much all the battlegrounds right now are margin of error.
00:01:40.000 Ohio seems to have fallen outside the margin of error, but maybe not because the last couple of polls in Ohio show Sherrod Brown maybe a three point lead over the current incumbent, John Huston.
00:01:53.000 So, these elections are still really close in the Senate.
00:01:56.000 But when you aggregate all of the polls and you include these outliers, you end up with some pretty bad polling data.
00:02:01.000 And we've seen some very, very big individual polling misses.
00:02:04.000 Again, not poll averages.
00:02:05.000 But individual polling misses.
00:02:07.000 And I want to point them out because I think that what you're seeing right now is a narrative that's being created by some of these outliers.
00:02:13.000 If I just told you those poll averages that every one of those races is within margin of error, that sounds basically right.
00:02:18.000 If I say Texas is within margin of error, that's uncomfortable that that's basically right.
00:02:22.000 If I say Iowa, Michigan, these are within margin.
00:02:26.000 But if I tell you that there is a poll that shows Kansas within margin of error, I'm going to go no on that.
00:02:34.000 So the latest Emerson poll, Has the Kansas Democrat Adam Hamilton ahead of incumbent Roger Marshall in the Senate race by two points?
00:02:43.000 Donald Trump won 57% of the vote in Kansas in 2024.
00:02:48.000 I do not think that you're going to end up with a Kansas Democrat in that seat.
00:02:51.000 That is what we call an outlier poll happening well prior to the election.
00:02:55.000 Or how about South Carolina?
00:02:57.000 Right now, in the South Carolina polling, Darlene Graham Norton, the sister of Lindsey Graham, is only ahead of the Democrat Annie Andrews by 3.5 points in the polling average.
00:03:07.000 That's only because the polling average includes about two polls.
00:03:10.000 Donald Trump won almost 60% of the vote in South Carolina.
00:03:14.000 And Darlene Graham Norton just inherited her seat from her brother who died suddenly and was quite popular with South Carolina Republicans.
00:03:24.000 No, I don't believe that we're within margin of error in South Carolina.
00:03:27.000 I don't believe that we're within margin of error in Florida.
00:03:29.000 Okay, Florida is my home state.
00:03:30.000 If you think that Florida DSA candidate Angie Nixon is neck and neck with Ashley Moody, you're out of your mind.
00:03:37.000 But right now, there are two polls showing Nixon and Moody neck and neck.
00:03:42.000 Donald Trump won Florida with 56% of the popular vote in 2024.
00:03:48.000 No, I do not think that that is a margin of error poll.
00:03:51.000 There's an Iowa poll that shows Republican Ashley Hinson behind Democrat Josh Turek by eight points, Demaris poll.
00:03:58.000 And that's being pushed out there.
00:04:00.000 And again, there's a Michigan poll showing El Sayed up seven over Rodgers.
00:04:03.000 That is, again, an outlier poll.
00:04:04.000 And those being pushed out there, headlines showing gigantic leads.
00:04:08.000 The reason I warn about this is because this actually has downstream impact for Republican voters.
00:04:12.000 In other words, if you're a Republican voter, these are battleground states with close elections.
00:04:17.000 Get out and vote.
00:04:19.000 Get out and vote.
00:04:20.000 I think the goal of some of these outlier polls, in some cases, is to deliberately drive down the Republican voter turnout.
00:04:26.000 The reason I say this is because we have seen this game before.
00:04:30.000 The prediction markets, taking outlier polls into account, suggested that Abdul El Sayed was going to swamp Haley Stevens in the Michigan Senate primary.
00:04:38.000 She ended up losing by bare thousands of votes out of a couple of million cast.
00:04:45.000 If they adopted all these push polls suggesting that El Sayed was the runaway favorite, would more people have shown up for Haley Stevens?
00:04:49.000 The answer for sure is yes.
00:04:51.000 You saw the same thing happen in Wisconsin, where Francesca Hong, the DSA candidate, was supposed to wipe out her opponent in that particular race, and he ended up coming back and winning with basically no public support.
00:05:03.000 So, when you see outlier polls that just sound outside the realm of reality, and again, I'm not doubting that there are certain polls that have Tallarico ahead in Texas, but I do doubt that Texans are going to favor James Tallarico by six in Texas.
00:05:16.000 Some of these polls are designed, again, to drive down voter turnout.
00:05:20.000 And we have seen voter error, we have seen polling error in some of these states before, right?
00:05:24.000 That Iowa poll that's showing Ashley Hinson down by eight points to Josh Turek.
00:05:28.000 Okay, well, I mean, the Ann Seltzer Iowa poll showed.
00:05:33.000 Harris winning Iowa by three points in 2024, days before Trump won the state by 13.
00:05:40.000 And it turns out, by the way, some of these polls are just made up.
00:05:42.000 The Francesca Hong supposed victory was never a reality.
00:05:47.000 There was a firm called Meridian that said that she was leading Democrat David Crowley in the primary by over 20, and she lost by 0.5%.
00:05:54.000 The firm then announced after the fact the poll was fabricated as part of a social experiment.
00:05:59.000 So there are a lot of reasons to think Republicans are not going to perform particularly well here.
00:06:04.000 The economic statistics are decent.
00:06:06.000 We have a 4.1% unemployment rate as of August, which is pretty near full employment.
00:06:10.000 The poverty rate in the United States is at an all time low of 10.2%.
00:06:14.000 Median household income is up 2.6% from 2024.
00:06:18.000 That's the highest level on record since 1967.
00:06:22.000 But inflation is also still hanging around above 3%.
00:06:26.000 Gas prices and diesel prices continue to be up.
00:06:28.000 You can see all the reasons.
00:06:30.000 The really big reason that Republicans are in bad shape right now is the president has horrible approval ratings.
00:06:35.000 Right now, According to the Nate Silver polling average, Donald Trump is underwater to the tune of 38% approval rating, 59% disapproval rating.
00:06:45.000 But what's most interesting about President Trump's chart is if you look at President Trump's net approval rating, what you see is a fairly consistent downward line since Liberation Day.
00:06:57.000 You don't actually see the sort of step function that you see normally with presidents, events are shocking the system.
00:07:03.000 Joe Biden, if you look at Joe Biden's approval, what you can see in Joe Biden's presidential approval, just by way of contrast, As you can see, that it dumped essentially with the Afghanistan withdrawal in late 2021, and then it just stayed there.
00:07:17.000 You draw a horizontal line through Joe Biden's approval rating, and it basically just stagnates around 40% for the rest of his presidency.
00:07:24.000 If you look at Obama's approval rating from 2009 to 2017, what you can see here is that, again, kind of a horizontal line that applies across his presidency.
00:07:34.000 He drops down to about 50% fairly early on, and then he's occasional below 50%.
00:07:40.000 He kind of sticks around the 45 to 50% range his entire presidency.
00:07:43.000 Go back to that Trump chart, and what you see is a steady, even decline in his approval rating.
00:07:49.000 Why is that happening?
00:07:50.000 The reason that's happening is because essentially President Trump made a large scale promise.
00:07:56.000 He was going to bring costs down, life was going to become more affordable.
00:07:59.000 And then, since Liberation Day, which is when the American people started to perceive that Trump had other priorities other than affordability, since then he has not bucked that idea.
00:08:09.000 He has not fixed that idea.
00:08:10.000 And so, the American people, particularly Republicans, by the way, have grown increasingly disenchanted with the lack of focus on the fact that inflation has not been conquered.
00:08:20.000 And that the prices aren't going back to 2020 prices.
00:08:22.000 So, overpromise, underdeliver would be the problem for President Trump, which is why you haven't seen him hit that bottom yet, where he just sort of hangs around at 40% the way that Joe Biden did, or hangs around at 45% the way that Barack Obama did.
00:08:35.000 If Republicans do get shellacked, it will largely be due to President Trump's approval rating.
00:08:38.000 Presidential approval ratings are, in fact, heavily correlated with midterm outcomes.
00:08:46.000 That's a reality, more so than economic statistics.
00:08:49.000 But for those who are trying to sell you the soap, That basically the president's foreign policy is to blame for all of this.
00:08:53.000 That's the thing that really did all of this.
00:08:55.000 There is not a lot of support in the public approval ratings to suggest that that is the thing that has been the major problematic factor for President Trump.
00:09:04.000 Also, again, don't take too seriously the warnings from the media that Democrats are going to wipe out Republicans.
00:09:10.000 I do think some of that is a demoralization op designed to get Republicans not to show up to the polls in 2026 and turn that into a self fulfilling prophecy.
00:09:18.000 What an amazing video you just watched!
00:09:20.000 Wasn't that amazing?
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