00:00:01.000So, let's take a look at sort of where we are in this election cycle.
00:00:04.000Well, the CalCHE markets, of course, they're our sponsors.
00:00:07.000They point out that the Democratic Party currently apparently has a 70% shot of taking the Senate.
00:00:12.000Those odds have been rapidly rising since essentially the end of the summer.
00:00:18.000It'll be interesting to see, you know, how that actually materializes.
00:00:21.00043 million votes have already been cast nationally in early voting, about half mail in and half in person.
00:00:26.000Turnout is up across the board compared to 2022, except in Iowa.
00:00:30.000In the battleground states for the Senate, 46% of early votes are registered Democrats, 40% are GOP, 14% are independent.
00:00:38.000If you go state by state, you can see where Republicans still have a sort of built in advantage.
00:00:44.000So, states that are going to be really, really just serious battles, Maine, right now, Democrats lead Republicans by about 74,000 early ballots.
00:00:56.000Probably in this state, when it comes to final voter turnout, somewhere between 375,000 to 475,000 votes are still outstanding.
00:01:04.000Either will be voted absentee or will be voted day of.
00:01:08.000Republicans probably need to win somewhere around 60% of the remaining votes in order to win that election.1.00
00:01:46.000I mean, considering the day of balloting tends to shift heavily Republican, absolutely.
00:01:51.000In Ohio, Democrats lead Republicans right now by about 70,000 in the early balloting, but there's still between 2.9 and 3.4 million votes remaining.
00:02:00.000The GOP needs to win probably a bare majority, about 52% or above of the remaining votes, in order to hold that Ohio seat.
00:02:08.000In Iowa, Democrats lead Republicans by about 52,000 early ballots.
00:02:14.000However, again, the GOP only needs to win 52% of the remaining ballots in order to win that election.
00:02:23.000In Texas, James Tallarico has a really uphill battle.
00:02:27.000Republicans are actually leading Democrats by 61,000 early ballots right now.
00:02:32.000Somewhere between 2.9 and 3.9 million votes are remaining.
00:02:37.000On the low end, Theoretically, the Republicans could even slightly lose the remaining outstanding vote and still win.
00:02:42.000Because again, Texas is extremely, extremely Republican.
00:02:45.000So this brings us to the latest polling.
00:02:47.000So CNN released a batch of polls and let's just say these polls are dicey at best.
00:02:53.000First of all, each one of these polls is a very, very high margin of error, like a five point margin of error minimum.
00:02:58.000The sample size is pretty small, 700, 900.
00:03:00.000So to understand how polls work, you have to understand margin of error.
00:03:03.000Margin of error just means the more people you sample, the more chance it is that that is representative of a broader population.
00:03:10.000Obviously, if you could sample the entire population, your margin of error would basically be zero because now you know what everybody thinks.
00:03:16.000The question is how you build the representative population.
00:03:19.000One is the size of the sample, the larger the sample, the closer you're going to get to representation.
00:03:24.000But that relies on a given, which is that you are composing your actual voting base properly.
00:03:30.000So you have to estimate what you think the final voting base is going to look like in order for it to be representative.
00:03:35.000So, for example, if you have a poll of 7,000 Republicans and it shows 7,000 people voting for Susan Collins in Maine, That does not mean that 100% of people in Maine are going to vote for Susan Collins, right?
00:04:10.000The current sample is 50% Democrats and 43% Republican.
00:04:17.000Now, CNN attributes the El Sayed plus seven finding to that lead rests on worsening views of Rogers as well as consolidated support among Democrats following the state's contentious August.
00:05:17.000Among Rogers supporters, the opposite.
00:05:19.00041% said in August, September they were voting for Rogers to support, to, to, to oppose El Sayed.
00:05:26.000Today, almost 6 in 10 say they're doing it to oppose El Sayed.
00:05:29.000That seems to me a bit of a buried lead because That means a lot of the Mike Rogers support, I'll bet, is coming from independents and Democrats who are crossing over.
00:05:38.000Again, that chart is coming from a 7.4% margin of error.0.98
00:05:42.000So the CNN polling is, I would say, a little bit garbage in, garbage out.0.98
00:06:16.000In Kansas, they've Adam Hamilton, the Democrat, up four, which is well above the Real Clear Politics polling average.
00:06:22.000So let's take a look at sort of how this breaks down more specifically.
00:06:28.000So we're going to look at some of the factors that.
00:06:33.000Require us to see how much sort of these states are moving.
00:06:36.000So if we use the current real clear politics polling averages for 2026 elections as the actual outcomes of each race, Texas, Iowa, and Maine are polling kind of where history would predict.
00:06:47.000Republican incumbent races in Alaska, Kansas, Ohio, South Carolina are polling significantly more Democratic than what history would predict.
00:06:56.000It shows how big a swing each poll requires compared to prior president to midterm swings, meaning Presidential election happens, then there's a midterm.
00:07:05.000Usually the party in power loses some points between the two.
00:07:09.000But the swing in most states is of moderate size.
00:07:13.000So, for example, right now, Michigan is pulling within sort of a normal variance.
00:07:18.000Maine is also pulling within a normal variance.
00:07:20.000But the normal swing that would be required here by the polling is a 16 point swing in Kansas, a 16 point swing in Texas, a 16 point swing in South Carolina, a 15 point swing in Ohio, a 14 point swing in Alaska, and a 13 point swing in Iowa.
00:07:36.000So that means that's how much of a swing you would need away from the 2024 result for today's polls to be correct.
00:07:43.000And swings of that size historically are rare.
00:08:19.000This one uses a regression analysis to show how each race might end up based on the 2024 presidential vote, Trump's approval rating and incumbency.
00:08:28.000In Ohio, Kansas, Alaska, and South Carolina, the polls, in other words, are running significantly more democratic than historical trends in each state would suggest.
00:08:35.000There would have to be a massive shift.
00:08:40.000So, to take an example, Texas, 2016 to today's polls.
00:08:45.000Okay, so in 2016, Trump was plus nine over Clinton.
00:08:51.000In 2018, Cruz beat Beto O'Rourke by 2.6.
00:08:57.000In 2020, John Cornyn won by almost 10 points.
00:09:01.000That same year, Trump won by about six points over Joe Biden.
00:09:08.000In 2024, Cruz beat Colin Allred by about nine points and Trump won by about 14 points.
00:09:14.000So, what you would sort of expect is that this would stick in the normal Texas range.
00:09:20.000Democrats would need to experience a massive, unprecedented swing in order to win that state.
00:09:26.000So, this is why I say when you look at the polls that are coming out right now, one thing that you ought to understand is that many of the polling outfits, number one, are grouping because they want to be part of the narrative.
00:09:33.000But, number two, Polls affect how people vote.
00:09:37.000This is why it used to be pretty common, you know, 25 years ago, for various companies to release their exit polls the day of elections.
00:09:45.000And then in many countries, it became illegal to do that because it affects how the actual voting is going to go.
00:09:50.000Well, understand that's happening with the polling right now.
00:09:52.000Do not be discouraged from voting because the CNN polls say a thing.
00:10:22.000Well, because she keeps asking them to do things like do news.
00:10:25.000According to Fox News, CBS News editor in chief Barry Weiss faced, quote, significant resistance from staff at Thursday's 9 a.m. meeting about the growing Alaska ballot controversy, network insiders told Fox News Digital.
00:10:36.000Weiss pointed out that what's happening in Alaska is a scandal.
00:10:38.000Now, remember, we did a lot of the show yesterday on this.
00:10:42.000Basically, the Democratic Party recruited a person with the same name as the Republican candidates to run in the very, very tight Alaska Senate race.0.57
00:10:49.000Draw away a few thousand votes, cause Dan Sullivan, the actual real Dan Sullivan, to lose because some other schlub named Daniel J. Sullivan is also on the ballot.0.85
00:11:01.000And her staffers went crazy, apparently.
00:11:03.000Many on the call shrugged it off as routine politics and said Republicans have also engaged in similar scheming.
00:11:10.000When Weiss asked for other examples of ballot confusion, Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan pointed to New Hampshire Senate candidate John Sununu, suggesting that midterm voters might confuse him with his brother, former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu.0.97
00:11:22.000Well, that's an incredibly dumb example, Margaret Brennan.0.95
00:11:44.000Found another candidate named Sherrod Brown to run in Ohio and put that guy on the ballot.
00:11:50.000Democrats would be screaming bloody murder and the media would be up in arms.
00:11:54.000CBS News political correspondent Ed O'Keefe said nothing was new.
00:11:59.000Earlier that morning, O'Keefe stressed to viewers that what happened in Alaska, quote, could be a dirty trick, but it's not illegal, adding, this has happened before, kind of.
00:12:07.000Funny how fast do they run to it's happened before, kind of, when it clearly has not really happened very much before, like at all.
00:12:14.000But the point here is that Barry Weiss is just asking her team to do news and they are very mad about it.
00:12:18.000They are very, very angry that Barry Weiss is asking them to do news.
00:12:21.000Every time, in fact, Barry Weiss asks for teams to do news, they get pissed and then they leak it to somebody.
00:12:27.000Which is why, you know, again, if I had been advising Barry Weiss when she took over CBS News, she should have gone in there with a hatchet and fired three quarters of the staff.
00:12:35.000Because it turns out an enormous number of these people are just hacks.
00:12:37.000Let them go to Substack and build their own constituency if they're that good at the news.
00:12:43.000But legacy media going to legacy media.
00:12:45.000And even when you put somebody in there to correct it, they're still going to face some fairly strong systemic obstacles.
00:12:50.000What an amazing video you just watched!
00:12:53.000Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.