Legendary election forecaster Nate Silver says Democrats now have an 80 percent chance of taking a majority in the U.S. Senate in Tuesday’s midterms, according to his forecast and new New York Times/Siena polling, the Daily Beast reported on Monday.
In a Silver Bulletin post, Silver said his FLIPR model reached that mark for the first time after the Times/Siena surveys.
Those polls show Democrats leading in the key Senate races in Michigan, Texas, Maine, Ohio, Kansas, Alaska and Iowa, along with each state’s governor’s race, the Beast reports.
Silver said Abdul El-Sayed’s 11-point lead in Michigan and James Talarico’s 7-point lead in Texas are big enough to survive a modest polling error. He said Democrats’ current standing in Alaska is disappointing after previous polls showed a much stronger lead, but that they wouldn’t complain about flipping just the top five races, particularly alongside the Texas governorship.
On X, Silver said pollsters have “crossed the threshold” into projecting Democratic Senate gains. “They might be wrong,” he said, but “no hiding from it.”
The Times’ Nate Cohn warned the polls could “misfire” because surveys have underestimated Republicans before, and said Democrats could be disappointed again.
However, he also noted Trump’s approval is lower now than in past election years when Republicans were hammered, and that Republicans can’t count on approval above 50 percent in red states, as they could in 2018.
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