Good evening. It’s crunch time. With exactly four weeks until the midterm elections, politics is nonstop. So, from now until Nov. 3, I’m going to send On Politics every weekday. I’ll guide you through the big races and the key moments of the fight for Congress — sometimes with help from my colleagues around the newsroom and the country. Tonight, I’ve asked Ruth Igielnik, a polling editor at The Times, to tell us who, exactly, is powering the Democrats’ run of good polling numbers. — Jess Bidgood
Democrats look strong in polls. They have these groups to thank.Look at the past few weeks of polls surveying the race for control of Congress, and you’ll see a sea of blue. When voters are asked which party they will support in their local House race, Democrats come out ahead by 5 to 15 percentage points. Democrats also have a solid, if less sturdy, position in the race for the Senate. Recent New York Times/Siena University polls have found Democrats ahead in four crucial battleground states — Texas, Alaska, New Hampshire and Michigan — and holding an edge in Ohio. Iowa and Kansas are neck and neck. And Republicans have the edge in Maine. Today, I want to zoom in on four groups of voters who have bolstered Democrats’ chances for November, and show how each could swing a battleground Senate race. Younger voters: 30 under 30As younger voters, particularly young men, drifted toward Republicans over the past few years, there was some concern in the Democratic Party that they might be lost forever. That no longer seems to be the case. Across the eight Senate races The Times and Siena polled, Democrats have a 30-point advantage with voters under the age of 30. When asked which candidate they trusted to handle the cost of living — which voters in this age group said was the most important issue — that margin was even wider. Democrats’ advantage with younger voters is most pronounced in Michigan, where Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has a nearly 40-point lead with voters under the age of 45. These voters said they trust El-Sayed to handle foreign wars and American manufacturing, two issues that have been central to the Senate race in the state. Older voters: Trust despite TrumpThe other end of the age spectrum matters even more. Older voters — those 65 and above — historically vote at much higher rates than younger voters in midterm elections. And they tend to lean toward Republicans. So it’s a big deal that, in the eight states we polled, these voters are now almost evenly split. In Ohio, where Sherrod Brown is fighting for a comeback in the Senate against the Republican incumbent Jon Husted, voters over 65 are equally divided. That’s a remarkable feat when you consider that most older voters in the state approve of how President Trump is handling immigration, and that they are the most likely of any age group to say they want a candidate who supports Trump. But voters over 65 also say they trust Brown over Husted to do what’s best for ordinary Ohioans, 51 percent to 46 percent. And Brown has the edge on who they think would be a more effective senator. Latino voters: Swinging backIn 2024, pre-election polls found Democrats with just a 12-point advantage with Hispanic voters. That lead has grown to 24 points, according to a recent NBC News/Telemundo survey. In Texas, James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate, has a sizable 32-point lead with Hispanic voters in the Times/Siena poll. Latinos make up about one-third of the electorate in the state. On measure after measure, Latino voters say they prefer Talarico. They trust him to handle the cost of living and to do what’s best for ordinary Texans, and they consider him to have better character than his opponent, Ken Paxton. Talarico is even winning some 14 percent of Latino voters who said they supported Trump in 2024. Independent voters: Costs are keyIn nearly every state we polled, Democrats hold an advantage with independent voters, the bloc of swing voters that typically decides elections. Across the eight states combined, independent voters say they trust Democrats more on every measure in the polls. Democrats’ lead with independent voters is widest in Alaska, where they hold a whopping 46-point edge with the group. Nearly 60 percent of independents say that Trump’s policies have hurt their state, and 80 percent of independent voters disapprove of how the president has handled the cost of living. And independents there gave Mary Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate, a nearly 50-point advantage — among the widest of any issue in any state — on who they trust to handle rising costs. GET CAUGHT UP
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”That was Trump at a rally in Nebraska last night, in a portion of his speech focused on the threat that Iran posed to the United States. (You can see the full quote, in context, here.) The remark drew anger from officials in both parties. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, said the president’s comments were “dangerous.” And in San Diego, Jim Desmond, a Republican local official running for Congress, said he “vehemently” disagreed with the president, adding: “No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.” The Trump administration said today that the comment was being misconstrued. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications chief, wrote on social media. IN ONE GRAPHIC
For more than a century, Americans have used Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., as a place to protest and celebrate. The park is close enough to the White House that, in 1991, President George H.W. Bush complained that antiwar demonstrators there were “keeping me up all night.” Now, the Trump administration is planning to add a permanent fence around the park. Click the image above to see how those plans could restrict the public’s access. NUMBER OF THE DAY 100That’s how many women Democrats could send to the House this year if the party does well in the midterms. It would be a milestone. In 1985, less than 5 percent of the House Democratic Caucus were women. Now, that number is approaching 50 percent. Republicans have less gender diversity in their ranks in the House: There are currently 32 G.O.P. women — around 15 percent of their members — and that number is at risk of falling after the midterms. ONE LAST THING
What a fight in the dog park tells us about 2026Americans on opposite sides of the political divide live side by side in real life — sometimes uneasily, and sometimes angrily. My colleague Jessica Contrera, who is based in Akron, Ohio, recently wrote about a violent political dispute that began, of all places, in a dog park. I asked her what drew her to the story. Dog park drama always piques my interest. I once wrote about a dog park in a wealthy suburb of D.C. where neighbors kept calling the police on dogs — for barking. So when I saw a headline about criminal charges related to a fight between humans at a dog park, I clicked. Then I learned what the fight, which turned into a shootout, was really about: President Trump. This tale seemed to encapsulate just how much political tensions in this swing state, like in much of America, are always bubbling just under the surface. I set out to get to know both men involved. One of them is likely to suffer health problems for the rest of his life. The other fears that, if convicted, he will die in prison. No matter what a judge or jury finds, their lives have been forever changed by their choices that day. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
