Democratic Senate candidates in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin hold leads over their Republican competitors, keeping a narrow path open to maintaining Democratic control of Congress’s upper chamber next year, according to new New York Times/Siena College polls.
And, in a surprise that could shake up the Senate battlefield, Dan Osborn, a union organizer and industrial mechanic running as an independent, has jumped to a strong lead in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, in and around Omaha, over the incumbent Republican, Senator Deb Fischer, reaching a level of support that could keep him competitive in the heavily Republican state.
The showing in the Midwest is a testament to the ability of Democrats, as well as Mr. Osborn, to separate the Senate contests from the presidential race, and keep control of the chamber in play. Senators Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, veteran incumbents, have created political brands that appear to be independent of their national party, while in Michigan, Representative Elissa Slotkin may be drafting on the strength of Democratic women in her state who occupy the posts of governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
In Ohio, Mr. Brown leads his Republican challenger, Bernie Moreno, 47 percent to 43 percent, drawing in 10 percent of voters that support former President Donald J. Trump and 13 percent of those self-identified as Republicans. Ms. Baldwin leads her Republican challenger, the banker Eric Hovde, 50 to 43, in Wisconsin, while Ms. Slotkin leads the former congressman Mike Rogers, 47 percent to 42 percent, in the race to succeed Michigan’s retiring Democratic senator, Debbie Stabenow.
The strong showing by Democratic Senate candidates does not necessarily mean the party will maintain control of the chamber next year. Their current one-seat majority is almost certainly lost, with the retirement of Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and the near certainty that the state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, will succeed him.
Democrats, lead by Vice President Kamala Harris, would need to hold the White House and win every other endangered Democratic Senate seat — including Senator Jon Tester’s, in deep red Montana, potentially the deciding race — to preserve a 50-50 split, with a Vice President Tim Walz breaking the tie. Or, Democratic candidates need to pull off an upset against an incumbent Republican, such as Ted Cruz in Texas or Rick Scott in Florida.
On that front, the New York Times/Siena College polls offered another tantalizing data point regarding Senate control: In Eastern Nebraska, Mr. Osborn, a political newcomer, is leading Ms. Fischer, 49 percent to 38 percent. That might be enough to keep his long-shot bid competitive in a suddenly important statewide campaign.
Republicans had high hopes for the Senate race in Michigan, where they got the mainstream candidate they had wanted. Mr. Rogers is an Army veteran, former special agent in the F.B.I. and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
But Ms. Slotkin, who like Mr. Rogers comes from the mid-Michigan region around Lansing, made her career appealing to centrist voters in that swing House district, and she continues to draw 6 percent of likely voters in Michigan who say they will vote for Mr. Trump and 7 percent who say they voted for Mr. Trump in 2020.
Reginald Gooden, 66, who identified himself as a semiretired health care professional, in Commerce Township, Mich., said he was backing Mr. Trump reluctantly, because he is “singularly” worried about how Ms. Harris would handle autocrats abroad. But, he said, he is a moderate, and likes Ms. Slotkin’s politics.
“There’s a sense of balance with her,” he said.
In Ohio, where Mr. Trump holds a comfortable lead over Ms. Harris, Mr. Brown is in need of even more ticket splitters to beat Mr. Moreno, a wealthy, Colombian-born businessman who prevailed in a brutal Republican primary in March on the strength of Mr. Trump’s endorsement. Republicans knew that Mr. Brown would draw some Republican support, but figured there just would not be enough Trump-Brown voters in 2024 to secure his re-election.
So far, they appear to be wrong.
In addition to the 10 percent of Trump voters who say they plan to vote for Mr. Brown, the senator is showing strong support in Ohio’s suburbs and enjoys a 21-percentage point lead among women, in a state where 57 percent voted last December to enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio constitution.
“There’s a lot of work that’s been done before, you know for the local people,” said Victoria Williams, 42, a Trump supporter and quality manager at a steel manufacturer in Centerville, Ohio, explaining her support for Mr. Brown. “He’s done a lot for, I don’t want to say this badly, but for the poor, the working class.”
Mr. Moreno’s 16-point lead among men — 54 percent to 38 percent — is not enough to close the gender gap.
The polls were taken just as a recording came to light of Mr. Moreno suggesting that abortion rights shouldn’t concern women over the age of 50 — “I don’t think that’s an issue for you,” he said on tape, in Warren County, Ohio, last weekend.
In Wisconsin, the gender gap is even more stark. Mr. Hovde made mistakes early in the campaign, suggesting, for instance, that “almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote.” Ms. Baldwin’s campaign used that quote, plus a comment that overweight people should pay more for health insurance and another that “the old physical toil” of farming had given way to “largely driving around on a tractor,” to paint her opponent as a rich, out-of-touch Republican from Southern California.
According to the polls, Ms. Baldwin leads Mr. Hovde among women by 29 percentage points, holds a lead among white voters — a rarity for Democrats in their campaigns this year — and is taking about 5 percent of voters who say they cast their ballots in 2020 for Mr. Trump. Her lead among independents is 51 percent to 39 percent.
It isn’t just women who say they feel insulted by Mr. Hovde.
“Some of the stuff that I’ve seen from Tammy Baldwin I like,” said Paul Markunas, 55, of Harris, Wis., who owns a post-construction cleaning company, “and some of the things he has said I really don’t like.”
Mr. Markunas said he will be voting for Mr. Trump and Ms. Baldwin.
In Nebraska, Democrats should not get too excited yet about the prospect of the unexpected defeat of Ms. Fischer. Mr. Osborn has guarded his independence in a state that is hostile to Democrats, refusing to say which party he would caucus with if elected. And even his 11-point lead in the state’s second district may not be enough unless he can make inroads in the heavily Republican first and third districts. The Times/Siena poll did not canvas the entire state.
But for an underfunded candidate whose main political experience was leading a strike against Kellogg’s in 2021, Mr. Osborn is showing remarkable strength. Running as a blue-collar mechanic, he is leading in Nebraska’s purple second district among women and men and among voters without a college degree. He is also taking 12 percent of the Republican vote.
“He’s gaining strength in Nebraska,” said Linda Lough, 74, a retired human resources manager in Omaha who supports Mr. Osborn as well as the Republican senator, Pete Ricketts, who is running in a special election for the state’s other Senate seat. “I think he’s just very straightforward, he’s really a working man and he understands problems that working people have.”
Mr. Osborn’s campaign manager, Dustin Wahl, said the candidate has made inroads into the more heavily Republican districts. That has been enough this week to prompt the first surge of attack ads of the race from Ms. Fischer.
Without a political party behind him, Mr. Osborn has been able to raise only about $1.6 million compared to Ms. Fischer’s $6.3 million. He also rejected the endorsement of the state’s Democratic Party, depriving himself of institutional support.
But for an incumbent Ms. Fischer has kept a low profile. With Mr. Osborn’s pitch claiming that the Senate needs a true working-class voice, he has been able to hang close enough in the few statewide polls that prognosticators have begun hedging their bets on an easy re-election for Ms. Fischer.
Here are the key things to know about these polls
Interviewers spoke with 688 likely voters in Michigan, 687 likely voters in Ohio, 680 likely voters in Wisconsin and 680 likely voters in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District from Sept. 21 to 26, 2024.
Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, about 97 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for these polls. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.
Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For these polls, interviewers placed nearly 260,000 calls to just over 140,000 voters.
To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the results and methodology page, under “Composition of the Sample.”
The margin of sampling error among likely voters is about plus or minus four percentage points for each poll, and about plus or minus 2.5 percentage points when the three state polls are joined together. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When the difference between two values is computed — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as large.
You can see full results and a detailed methodology here. If you want to read more about how and why the Times/Siena Poll is conducted, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions here.
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