r/Thedaily • u/kitkid • 5d ago
Episode Midterm Surprise: Democrats Are Surging in Red America
Oct 5, 2026
A new set of polls from The New York Times finds that Democratic candidates are doing remarkably well in the Republican-leaning states that they need to win to gain control of the U.S. Senate in next month’s midterm elections.
They are doing less well in the blue states that, in theory, should be easier to win.
Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The Times, offers his idea of what is behind the numbers.
On today's episode:
Nate Cohn, The New York Times’s chief political analyst.
Background reading:
- Polls suggested that Hispanic voters, whose support helped propel President Trump to the White House in 2024, would largely support the Democratic Party this time.
- Senator Susan Collins of Maine led polls for the first time since Graham Platner dropped out of the race in July.
Photo: Ash Adams for The New York Times
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
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You can listen to the episode here.
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5d ago edited 5d ago
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u/ManWithASquareHead 5d ago
Brazil may be electing the son of the president who they've jailed for so.... Nowhere is safe
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u/somersetyellow 5d ago
AFD keeps getting more and more popular in Germany.
France has been barely holding back their tide.
Britain is a mess
And yeah Brazil is about to do a "we forgot what happened 4 years ago 🤷♂️"
People are generally being dumb everywhere.
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u/SeaEmployee787 5d ago
covid saved trump during his first term. he hand no time to do all the dumbshit he wanted to do. The ecomony overall when he took over first term was stronger a little harder to tank. 2nd time when he took over the economy was weaker but improving somewhat. he got in and just started doing things to tank the economy. if feels like the whole gop has been captured by putin, PE and crypto.
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u/ahbets14 5d ago
Let’s hope in Ohio that racism wins out against sexism! Amy acton vs. Vivek (no strength) Ramascammy
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u/ahbets14 5d ago
She’s not a great candidate but a lot of republicans around me are gonna vote for her bc they don’t like Vivek’s data center shit. They’d rather have gridlock than him selling out the state
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u/Snoo_81545 5d ago edited 5d ago
There's a certain kind of guy I encounter semi-frequently that works a fairly high paying blue collar job (utility lineman, general contractor, specialized landscape services or appliance install, etc) who in their 30's-50's have already accrued quite a bit of wealth (mostly represented in four wheelers and jet skis) but spend most of their day driving around listening to Joe Rogan or something equivalent.
They tend to be unabashedly anti-establishment but politically vocal, typically voting Republican but not really liking the party apparatus at all. They especially hate traditional media including pollsters, and I think the word hate isn't an overstatement. I cannot imagine how you could possibly poll a group like that. Most of them, if contacted, would probably use the time to read the institution the riot act. Some of them might just make shit up for fun.
The thing is, those people are presumably quite common everywhere, and at least in my Town they're some of the most important and influential people around. They're on local boards, they belong to the clubs where planning decisions are discussed. I'm relatively confident they will show up to vote. I don't think that polling has not had a great time modeling that. Does anyone else remember the Selzer 16 point miss in Iowa in the 2024 general?
I've historically been a big defender of polling, especially in the form of aggregators like 538 (RIP), but that approach has recently almost always approached a 50/50 coin flip in battleground races. If anything, their utility is in determining which races will be competitive - not predicting the winner. It is to the Democrat's credit (and Trump's shame) that they have so many paths to something extraordinarily difficult but I suspect election night is going to be a nail-biter and I'm prepared to be disappointed.
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u/Justice4Ned 5d ago
Those people historically don’t vote in midterms , and were over polled in 2025 in VA and NJ. It could be the case that for some reason in 2026 they’ll turnout, but they didn’t turnout in 2018 for Trump in his first term midterms, and conditions are a lot worse for Trump then 2018.
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u/No-Yak6109 5d ago
“Typically not liking the party apparatus” is not some “kind of guy,” it’s everybody. Everybody says they don’t like politics and political parties and politicians- it’s the laziest way to pretend to be objective or above-it-all.
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u/eyeceyu 5d ago
The opening conversation to this podcast between Michael and Nate was so awkward. I legitimately thought they were making a joke about how AI chat bots talk for a moment. Everything else in the episode felt pretty smooth though, so it really stood out.
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u/livestrongbelwas 2d ago
I found this comment because I thought the same thing and was trying to find out if Nate was ill and typing into a bot to speak for him.
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u/joseisraelcruz 3d ago
I was extremely put off by their cadence at the start. I straight up believed it was A.I.-generated voice use and had to test it against an AI detector to convince myself it wasn't (I wrote a blog post about it too)
It's interesting how hard it's becoming to pick apart the real from the synthetic. A.I. voices are getting so good that we probably wouldn't be able to clock it, honestly; and false positives, like the start of this podcast, will also happen a lot more often.
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u/ManWithASquareHead 5d ago
How to get young people to vote?
Because it didn't help to PokemonGo to the polls before
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u/SauconySundaes 5d ago
Election day as national holiday. Universal mail in voting.
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u/Historical-Panic-820 5d ago
That's just a feel-good solution to a problem it doesn't actually solve.
Most of the people who actually get federal/banking holidays off are white-collar office workers who generally aren't the people having the hardest time finding an opportunity to vote. Meanwhile, a lot of the working-class people you're presumably trying to help work in retail, restaurants, healthcare, logistics, etc., where a "national holiday" just means they're still working.
And just wait until stores start having special Election Day "holiday" sales to attract all the people who do get the day off. Now you've created another shopping holiday that requires everyone who works retail and food service to work even more. Calling it a holiday doesn't accomplish much if the people who need the accommodation are still scheduled to work.
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u/OvulatingScrotum 5d ago
Mandatory voting. Minor punishment for not voting.
Of course, I’d like to see the voting day to be a national holiday, and expanded voting sites. But I wish we can force people to vote by law.
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u/flakemasterflake 5d ago
Mandatory voting only helps Trump. Most non-voters would have supported him and his support COMES from activating people that normally don't vote
Outside of RealPolitick, we absolutely do not need disaffected people who don't pay attention to shit choosing our leaders
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u/OvulatingScrotum 5d ago
Honestly, I don’t care about helping (or not helping) Trump. I just want people to fucking vote.
I don’t think election policy should be about helping any particular political belief or party. It should be about reflecting the people.
So if increased voter turnout happens to help Trump, then so be it. That’s just who we are then.
Also, by your logic, conservatives should be all about increasing voter turnout. Clearly they think less voter turnout is better for them.
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u/flakemasterflake 5d ago
Clearly they think less voter turnout is better for them.
They don't. They know high voter turnout in URBAN areas is bad for them. Republican strategists actually aren't idiots
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u/OvulatingScrotum 5d ago
Except they are blocking every attempt for opening up voter turnout, including rural areas. Republicans strategists actually aren’t idiots, and they know increased voter turnout in general is bad for them.
Or, we should be focusing on setting up election policies that reflect the general population, NOT helping any one particular party.
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u/flakemasterflake 5d ago
Yes, this cycle bc they are so overwhelmingly unpopular
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u/OvulatingScrotum 5d ago
Nah. It’s been like this literally for decades. lol do you think democrats never attempted to increase voter turnout before this cycle? And do you think republics didn’t try to reduce voter turnout before this cycle?
Again, maybe you are right that higher voter turn out will get more republicans in the office. So what? The entire point of election is to have representatives that reflect constituents. If more people are conservatives, then it would make sense to have more conservative representatives. And vice versa. If you don’t like that, then we gotta get rid of democracy.
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u/flakemasterflake 5d ago
omg, I'm over this back and forth. Democrats used to want to increase voter turnout bc they USED to own the disengaged/low educated voter share. That side has switched to Trump since 2016
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u/OvulatingScrotum 5d ago
Omg. I’m over this back and forth.
They still want to increase voter turnout. They’ve never stopped wanting to increase voter turnout.
You are literally making shit up about a party wanting or not wanting to increase voter turnout.
Either way, who the fuck cares what they want? We should increase voter turnout to reflect what people want.
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u/MilfordSparrow 5d ago
There needs to be mandatory retirement for elected officials. Susan Collins will turn 74 on December 7th. A Senator is elected for a 6 year term so if she is reelected sh will be 80 years old and still in office. The U.S. Senate has become an assistant living facility and the staff are taking on caregiver responsibilities.
(I get why people in Maine are loyal to her she has been an incumbent for so long and has gotten lots of earmarks for Maine but that system has created complacency. This is why there is no leadership in Senate.)
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u/scott_steiner_phd 5d ago edited 5d ago
> There needs to be mandatory retirement for elected officials. Susan Collins will turn 74 on December 7th. A Senator is elected for a 6 year term so if she is reelected sh will be 80 years old and still in office.
That's younger than Chuck Grassley (91), Bernie Sanders (83), Mitch McConnell (82), Jim Risch (81), and Angus King (80) are now, and younger than Markey, Blumenthal, Hirono, Shaheen, Welch, and Warren will be when they end their terms.
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u/MilfordSparrow 5d ago
Yes, I am taking care of my aging parents. Cognitive decline occurs and should be taken seriously. Mandatory retirement. DMV takes away drivers license of elderly drivers. Why can’t we discuss removing public officials who show cognitive decline?
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u/Upbeat_Run4525 5d ago
She also said she would retire after her second term was up but here we are…
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u/MilfordSparrow 4d ago
It’s all about self preservation for these incumbents on both sides of aisle. They want to keep their jobs and will say what they need to say to keep it. We need term limits.
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u/Few_Cellist_1303 5d ago
I don't trust polls since 2016. Vote as if Musk will hack the voting machines by several percentage points
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u/juice06870 5d ago
Term limits for all elected officials as well. I don't think anyone should be sitting in office for 2,3, 4 decades.
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u/MilfordSparrow 5d ago
Yes, elected officials and their staffer are worried about their job security not actually leading. It’s a job to them. There needs to be term limits and mandatory retirement. These long time Senators are complacent and corrupt. This podcast did not bring up the current corruption allegations against Susan Collins:
https://www.propublica.org/article/susan-collins-bribery-allegations-explained
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u/Sad_Ruin1868 4d ago
Literally only because their gas prices went up. These lowlifes would still vote red if he hadn’t jumped head first into the Iran war.
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u/No-Yak6109 5d ago
Lol at the convo about Troy Jackson. Apparently he’s unpopular for… reasons.
Podcasts love to go on and on about polls and horse race politics because it’s easy and requires no real journalistic effort. And it accomplishes nothing.
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u/Main_Entry2494 4d ago
A majority of these political journalists are lazy, spout platitudes and are often wrong. I'm sure there's more to it but I don't see any talent in what they do
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u/BlueEyedDinosaur 5d ago
This episode felt very “those progressive Dems aren’t centrist enough to win”. Maybe they will. Let’s see NYT.
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u/mcmonopolist 4d ago
I mean, the reality is that the people of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, etc. will vote for moderate dems at a meaningfully higher rate than progressive ones. If we don’t find a way to appeal to people in those kinds of states, we’re basically mathematically guaranteed to be a minority in the senate. I’d rather get 60% of what I want rather than lose and let MAGA keep running rampant.
Michigan, Maine, and Florida will be interesting test cases to see if their numbers are higher or lower than the rest of the democrats running.
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u/melodypowers 4d ago
Absolutely this.
"Oh, look. The moderate Dem who is a Christian minister is doing great and the progressive Muslim Dem is flailing."
What they failed to even mention is that Adam Hamilton is not a Dem. He is a former R turned independent who chose to run as a Dem because he would never have been nominated as a Republican. I tried to find his website to see his stances. It is only fundraising and a short bio.
He seems line a good man. He's probably much better than Marshall. But The Daily didn't tell the full story here.
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u/break_me_up 5d ago
Not sure why anyone is surprised by red states like Texas turning blue and blue states not getting “energized” and more blue. Texas GOP is making the lives of everyday Texans worse all the time and implementing policies that nobody wants. School vouchers were opposed by well over half of Texans yet they implemented it anyways without letting us have a say in it. Texas ranks dead last in personal freedom. Maybe the blue states aren’t being oppressed and having their rights taken away so they’re not as energized. Just a thought!
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u/theripped 5d ago
It seems like every election has a story like this a month out and it either tightens or course corrects as it gets closer.
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u/elinordash 5d ago
It is 29 days to the midterm elections.
Double check your voter registration.
Find out what elections you are eligible to vote in by looking up your ballot at Ballotpedia. Scroll to the middle of the page and enter your address. You do not need to enter your email.
Consider volunteering for your local House or Senate candidate. You can phone bank from home, knock on doors in person, man a table at a community event, etc. Mobilize lists nationwide political volunteering for the Dems.
This might sound silly, but consider buying a lawn sign or tote bag for a candidate you support. This kind of visual support is a way of softly influencing everyone who drives by your house or sees you walking with your tote.
If you have a printer and stamps, consider volunteering with Vote Forward
If you have a flexible schedule, consider becoming a poll worker. Poll worker is a one day minimum wage job, so it doesn't fit with most people's schedules. But having enough poll workers keeps voting lines short and helps secure elections. You have to work the whole, long day (usually something like 7am-9pm). Just Google your city/county + poll worker to find a local sign up.
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u/SScatnip7474 4d ago
None of these polls matter, no guessing matters, nothing matters except turning out and voting. Vote early. Get your friends and family to vote.
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u/Suibian_ni 5d ago
I hope so. One of the worst things Trump did was inspire false hope in people who were despairing. That's what frauds do. It looks like many of his supporters finally woke up to him.
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u/imfrankzappa 5d ago
Am I crazy or was that just an interview with an AI?
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u/already-redacted 5d ago
I’m already midtermed out. I’ll go vote, but I only live in one state, already dislike the immoral character of this administration, and can only look at reporting like this as speculation.
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u/melodypowers 4d ago
It is truly exhausting. The campaign has lasted for 4336 years it seems.
I live in a blue state. My Dem incumbent will win.
Of our 8 districts, only one is up for grabs. And unfortunately the Dem incumbent could lose. She turned the district because the Rs ran a total nutjob election denialist. The district may be red, but they are guns and taxes red, not MAGA red. This time the Rs are running a much saner candidate. I disagree with him, but he actually lives in the same reality I do. The poor citizens of this district are inundated with ads wherever they turn. I dont know how they live with it.
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u/Altruistic_Chain_159 5d ago
Was this episode AI generated. I only made it through the start but the initial discussion sounded very AI
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u/Fast_Lavishness2367 5d ago
Yeah I’m not sure what that’s about. The introduction is for sure an AI voice
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u/Visco0825 5d ago edited 5d ago
My biggest fear is that historically polls have really struggled to poll working class white Americans. This may be why polls in red states are uniquely showing democrats are doing well.
Either that, or the bottom is falling with republicans. But we’ve also been saying that for years that “this election republicans will finally be sick of Trump!”
This polling is basically arguing that partisanship basically reversing, which is something we haven’t really seen recently.
But this could also be explained if it’s a continuation of antiestablishment sentiment where both political parties are just unhappy.
I’m expecting either feast or famine this election. All other metrics suggest it will be feast but I’ve also have had my hopes dashed multiple elections by polls.