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Most of the latest coverage surrounding polling has focused on the battle for control of Congress, or President Trump’s historically low approval numbers. But there’s far more on the ballot this November than just federal races, including controversial ballot measures surrounding the electoral process, taxes, and transgender rights. These measures can have far-reaching impacts, even for residents of other states. We don’t have public polling for every measure that will be on voters’ ballots, but we have seen a good amount for some of the most potentially consequential measures of the year. For this week’s Trendline, we’ll be breaking down the latest polling on ballot measures to see which ones stand a chance at passing and how they might impact Americans across the country.

Elections

Multiple states are voting on measures affecting elections and voting in their states, some with the potential to dramatically alter how their residents pick their elected representatives.

In Missouri, Proposition A gives voters the choice of whether or not to keep a newly passed Republican gerrymander that would almost certainly help the GOP pick up a seat in Congress. (That map was paused by the state Supreme Court last month to let voters weigh in first.) We’ve only seen one recent public poll for the measure, and Missourians appear to be pretty evenly split; in a Saint Louis University/YouGov poll (Aug. 13 - 24, 2026), 35 percent of likely voters said they would vote to keep the new gerrymander, while 32 percent would reject it, and 33 percent weren’t sure.

Another voting-related ballot measure in Missouri would make it harder for the state legislature to weaken or change the initiative and referendum process, after state lawmakers nullified paid sick leave protections voters had passed via initiative. Voters seemed more friendly to this measure, with 48 percent supporting it in the SLU/YouGov poll and 21 percent opposing. Another 32 percent said they weren’t sure.

Maryland also has a redistricting-related measure on the ballot this year; Question 3 would clarify that state constitutional redistricting requirements apply only to state legislative districts and not congressional ones. Democrats in the state legislature put this measure to voters in the hopes of passing a new gerrymander of their own next year. The two public polls we have on the measure paint a starkly different picture — a Hart Research poll (Sept. 8 - 10, 2026) sponsored by Fight Back MD (which supports the measure) found the measure up slightly, with 40 percent of respondents in favor, 35 percent opposed, and 25 percent unsure. But a Lincoln Park Strategies/Ragnar Research Partners poll (Sept. 10 - 13, 2026) for Protect Maryland Votes (which opposes the measure) showed the question underwater by double digits, with just 28 percent of Marylanders supporting the measure, 41 percent opposed, and 31 percent unsure.

In California, voters will decide whether to amend the state’s recall election process to leave offices vacant until a special election can be held to replace a recalled politician, rather than the current system of electing a replacement at the time of the recall. A PPIC poll from last month (Sept. 4 - 10, 2026) showed voters quite opposed to this change, with just 35 percent supporting the measure and 59 percent opposed. Only 5 percent said they weren’t sure.

And in Massachusetts, Bay Staters will vote on whether to overhaul their primary process and create a single primary system where the top two candidates regardless of party move on to the general election, the same system used in California and Washington. Three recent polls of the question show it passing with varying degrees of strength — a University of Massachusetts Amherst/YouGov poll (Aug. 5 - 12, 2026) had the measure ahead by 19 points, with 51 percent supporting and 32 opposed to the overhaul. Two September polls also showed the measure ahead, but by a smaller margin. A MassInc/CommonWealth Beacon poll (Sept. 14 - 22, 2026) showed 43 percent of respondents in favor of the measure and 36 percent opposed. And in a University of New Hampshire poll (Sept. 17 - 21, 2026), 41 percent of respondents were supportive, while 39 percent were opposed.

Alaska will also hold (another) vote on whether to repeal the state’s top-four ranked-choice primary system and return to a traditional party primary system. We’ve only seen one public poll on the topic so far: a Fabrizio Ward/Impact Research poll for AARP (Sept. 8 - 11, 2026) showed voters closely split just like they were in 2024, with 44 percent in favor of repealing ranked-choice voting and 47 percent opposed.

Taxes

Lots of states will also have voters weigh on tax proposals, some of which have caused quite a stir — California’s Proposition 40 chief among them. Also referred to as the “billionaire tax,” the measure would levy a one-time 5 percent tax on individuals with over $1 billion in assets to help fund state programs, including health care and food assistance. The measure has drawn fierce opposition from prominent figures like Gov. Gavin Newsom, as well as from the state’s wealthiest residents, who managed to get opposing measures on the same ballot. Propositions 41 and 42 would nullify Proposition 40 if either one of them gets a higher share of the vote than 40.

These propositions are by far the ballot measures for which we’ve seen the most public polling this cycle. In an average of polls conducted in August and September, just over 48 percent of respondents said they support Proposition 40, while an average of 41 percent were opposed. Propositions 41 and 42 received a bit less support on average from Californians, but it’ll still be a nail-biter; Proposition 42 in particular is right on the heels of Proposition 40.

In Washington, voters will be asked whether to repeal a millionaire’s tax that the state legislature passed earlier this year, the first income tax ever to be levied in the state. According to the one public poll we’ve seen from DHM Research (Sept. 14 - 21, 2026), voters seem to be pretty opposed to the repeal. When shown the official ballot language for the measure, just 35 percent of respondents said they supported the initiative, while 57 percent were opposed.

Other states will vote on whether to decrease taxes. Floridians will decide on Amendment 3, which would greatly expand the homestead tax exemption, limit yearly tax increases, and restrict local spending using these funds. An average of three recent polls (from Sachs Media, St. Pete Polls/Florida Politics, and Stetson University) shows 54 percent in favor of the measure and 30 percent opposed, which isn’t quite enough to get the measure over the finish line: Florida requires 60 percent support for constitutional amendments to pass. And North Carolinians will vote on whether to decrease the maximum allowable state income tax to 3.5 percent, down from the current 7 percent cap (though no residents are currently taxed at that level). Recent polls from Elon University/YouGov (Aug. 21 - 31, 2026) and Harper Polling/Carolina Journal (Sept. 13 - 15, 2026) both show the measure with over 60 percent support.

Transgender Issues

Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Washington will be asked to weigh in on policies affecting transgender Americans this November. So far, there have only been two publicly released polls across these initiatives.

In Arizona, Proposition 318 would ban schools and sports groups from letting individuals use restrooms, locker rooms, or showers that are not designated for the sex they were assigned at birth. It would also remove a provision from state law allowing female students to participate in sports designated for males. A Stealth Analytics poll (Aug. 11 - 13, 2026) showed the measure with 52 percent support, with just 16 percent opposing and 32 percent unsure.

Missourians will vote on Amendment 3, which would do a couple of different things. It would repeal the voter-approved amendment establishing a constitutional right to reproductive freedom, and would prohibit abortions except in specific instances of rape, incest, or medical emergency. It would also ban all gender transition surgeries and medication for minors. The Saint Louis University/YouGov poll showed the amendment in a tight battle, with 43 percent of respondents supporting and 44 percent opposing the measure. Thirteen percent weren’t sure.

Many more measures will be on voters’ ballots across the country this November, but we’ve only seen public polls for a select few. Massachusetts residents will be asked (among other things) if they want to make recreational marijuana use illegal again (they’re opposed on average by a 34-point margin), and whether they want to relax some zoning laws to allow for more single-family housing construction (they support on average by a 37-point margin). Michiganders will decide whether to call a state constitutional convention — a Glengariff poll for WDIV and the Detroit News (Aug. 31 - Sept. 3, 2026) showed the measure up by 16 points. And Vermonters will vote on whether to prohibit the denial of rights based on traits like race, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity; almost 70 percent of respondents in a recent University of New Hampshire poll (Sept. 17 - 21, 2026) were in favor.

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Other polling nuggets

• A polling experiment from Echelon Insights (Sept. 17 - 21, 2026) tested how voters responded to different language around data centers. Half of respondents were asked if they supported a data center in their community, and the other half were asked if they supported a “server farm.” With the data center language, voters were opposed by a margin of 40 percentage points, 65 to 25. But with the server farm language, opposition shrank to a margin of 22 percentage points, 50 to 28. Also notable: When using the server farm language, the number of respondents who said they were undecided was 22 percent, twice as many as said the same about data centers, so some of this decrease in margin may be due to voters having less strongly held opinions about server farms than data centers.

• According to The Argument/Verasight (Sept. 16 - 21, 2026), the only war Americans believe was worth fighting in the last century was World War II. Asked whether it was right or wrong for the U.S. to engage in a variety of conflicts, a majority said wars in Iran, Iraq, and Vietnam were wrong, and a near-majority (47 percent) said the same about Afghanistan. Thirty-seven percent said U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was right, the most of any non-World War II conflict. When it comes to World War II, however, voters take a decidedly different position: 74 percent said it was right to engage in that conflict, while just 12 percent disagreed.

• Americans’ trust in the Supreme Court has reached a historic low, according to polling data from Gallup dating back to the 1970s. In the latest survey (Sept. 1 - 17, 2026), just 46 percent of Americans said they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the Supreme Court, the lowest reading on record, and 61 percent disapprove of the job the Court is doing, tying the record high disapproval rating first recorded in July of this year. The drop is driven mostly by Democrats, whose approval of the Court has been falling since 2021, and now stands at just 12 percent. But independents have also hit a record low in their approval of the Court, at 31 percent, and Republicans’ ratings of the Court have also seen a dip from a high of 79 percent in September 2025 to 65 percent in the most recent poll.

• It’s October, and Spooky Season has officially begun. According to YouGov (Sept. 25 - 28, 2026), half of Americans (49 percent) believe that some people have paranormal abilities, and 58 percent believe that people have experienced paranormal encounters that are unable to be explained scientifically. Around a fifth of Americans (19 percent) say they have seen a spirit or ghost, and seven percent report having seen a demon. More than half (52 percent) say that homeowners should be required by law to disclose whether or not they believe their house is haunted before selling it.

  Polling averages update

  All numbers are as of 12:00 PM Eastern on Oct. 2, 2026.

  2026 U.S. House generic ballot

  The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot remained steady this week, with Democrats still ahead of Republicans by 8 percentage points. Currently, 50.8 percent of likely voters indicate that they plan to vote for a Democrat in November, while 43.1 percent plan to vote for a Republican.

  

  Trump’s job approval

  President Trump’s net approval rating among U.S. adults dropped a point this week, for a new low of -28 percentage points. Overall, 62.5 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance, while just 34.5 percent approve, his lowest ever rating.

  

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Flock cameras seem to be everywhere these days, both in the news and around the country. Communities all over America are debating whether to continue use of the automated license plate readers, with some terminating their contracts and others standing firm on their use of the cameras. Amid mounting privacy concerns and repeated instances of police officers misusing the technology to track private citizens, Flock Safety has reportedly been considering selling itself. But even amid all this controversy, supporters of these types of cameras say they continue to be useful tools for law enforcement to find and prosecute criminals. So, where do Americans stand? This week on The Trendline, we find out.

Beginning in August, Data for Progress has been tracking whether people have a favorable or unfavorable view of Flock cameras. While favorable views have been mired in the low 20s throughout their tracking, unfavorable views have risen from 41 percent in mid-August to 52 percent in the most recent survey (Sept. 18 - 20, 2026).

In a more general question, Cygnal explains to voters what automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) are as follows:

Automatic license plate readers are cameras placed along roads that photograph the license plate of passing cars and alert law enforcement if the vehicle has been involved in a crime or is being driven by a missing person.

Even given this somewhat generous definition, their most recent survey on the issue (Sept. 1 - 2, 2026) found support for the use of these cameras 3 points underwater, 46 to 49, a drop of 21 points in net support since they first asked the question in July.

Asked about what might be appropriate uses of the technology, a significant majority of respondents told Cygnal that locating missing persons, finding stolen vehicles, and solving crimes were all acceptable. However, just 43 percent said it was appropriate to use ALPRs to catch people with outstanding warrants, and only 28 percent said it was acceptable to use the cameras to help immigration agents find and deport people. Fifteen percent of respondents said that none of the circumstances presented were appropriate uses of ALPRs.

In a Navigator Research survey (Sept. 10 - 14, 2026), 62 percent of respondents said they were concerned about the use of Flock cameras, while 26 percent were not. However, the specific details of voters’ concerns vary widely. Given a list of possible concerns and the ability to choose more than one, no individual issue had more than 33 percent of respondents saying it was concerning, and no issue had fewer than 23 percent. Topping the list of concerns were the collection of information about people without their consent (33 percent) or who have not committed or been suspected of a crime (33 percent), allowing the government to track where people go every day (32 percent), and the risk of hackers gaining access to the cameras or data (31 percent).

When it comes to privacy, however, voters seem pretty clearly against the use of Flock cameras. In a Marquette Law School poll (Sept. 2 - 9, 2026), respondents were told “Flock Safety has a network of 120,000 cameras which allow the company and law enforcement to track the movement of vehicles.” Given that information, 39 percent said that these cameras were an important tool for police investigations, while 61 percent said they were an unacceptable violation of privacy rights. While Republicans were slightly less likely than independents or Democrats to say the cameras were a violation of privacy, majorities across the political spectrum agreed with that position.

Interestingly, though, Black voters were split on the issue, with 51 percent saying Flock cameras were an important tool for law enforcement while 49 percent said they were a violation of privacy. The sample size on this subgroup is fairly small, so we should read this finding with caution, as it doesn’t really jibe with some previous polling. For example, according to YouGov (July 27 - Aug. 6, 2026), on almost every issue tested, Black voters had a more negative view of law enforcement than other racial groups, and were more supportive of policies to rein in police power than other racial groups. On the other hand, in Data for Progress’s tracking, Black voters had the most favorable views of Flock cameras of any racial group presented in crosstabs in every survey.

When it comes to the effectiveness of these cameras, Americans are split. A YouGov survey (Aug. 18 - 21, 2026) found that 30 percent of Americans said ALPRs reduce crime, while 38 percent said they didn’t and the rest were unsure. Respondents also said police were using these cameras in inappropriate ways: 44 percent said police often or sometimes use ALPRs to stalk or harass private citizens, while 37 percent said they rarely or never do. And 48 percent said police use ALPR data to build criminal cases against innocent people, while 29 percent said they don’t. There was also overwhelming support for requiring police to get a warrant before accessing the data: 66 percent said they should need a warrant, while just 20 percent said they should not.

Of course, it wouldn’t be American public opinion without some contradictory findings. The August YouGov poll found that when asked whether it was more important to give law enforcement tools to address crime or protect people’s privacy, 52 percent said privacy was more important, while 34 percent chose law enforcement. But in the very next question, asked if they would give up more personal privacy if it reduced crime, respondents were split almost evenly, with 36 percent saying they would give up privacy to reduce crime and 35 percent saying they wouldn’t. Perhaps this is due to some overly rosy perceptions of people’s own susceptibility to be charged with crimes: Just 12 percent of respondents told the pollster they often drive faster than the speed limit, while another 29 percent said they sometimes do. Forty-three percent said they rarely or never drive above the speed limit. Sure, Jan.

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Other polling nuggets

• In a new CNN/SSRS poll (Sept. 16 - 17, 2026), voters are even more down on Trump’s handling of the economy than they were on former President Joe Biden’s. Sixty-six percent of adults said Trump had worsened economic conditions in the country, while 21 percent said he had improved the economy, and 13 percent said he had had no effect. When CNN posed the same question to Americans about Biden the month before the 2022 midterms, just 50 percent said Biden had made the economy worse, while 26 percent said it was better, and 24 said he had made no effect. That’s despite Americans back then feeling worse about the overall economy than they do today — 28 percent of Americans in the newer poll rate the economy as good today, compared to 22 percent of Americans in CNN’s October 2022 poll.

• As the United Nations General Assembly convenes in New York City, 58 percent of Americans say that the U.S. should remain a member of the organization it helped found, according to the latest YouGov/The Economist poll (Sept. 18 - 21, 2026). Eighteen percent said the U.S. should withdraw its membership, while 24 percent weren’t sure. Those numbers mirror a separate question in the poll asking whether the United States should take an active part in world affairs — 51 percent said yes, while 29 percent said we should stay out of world affairs, and 21 percent said they weren’t sure. Democrats and independents were solidly in favor of remaining in the UN, while Republicans were more split; 31 percent of GOP respondents favored withdrawing, while 37 percent said they wanted to remain.

• As his approval hits record lows, Republicans seem to be drifting away from Trump in other ways, too. In the latest Echelon Insights poll (Sept. 17 - 21, 2026), just 34 percent of Republicans say they consider themselves primarily to be a supporter of Trump, compared to 56 percent who said they’re primarily supporters of the Republican Party. That’s a reversal from immediately following Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, when Echelon found 59 percent of Republicans said they were primarily supporters of Trump, while 36 percent said the Republican Party. Back then, 73 percent of Republicans said they strongly approved of the job Trump was doing as president; that number has fallen to 42 percent in the latest survey.

• Seventeen percent of Americans say they lie at least a few times a week, according to a poll from YouGov (Sept. 15 - 19, 2026). Another 17 percent say they lie a few times a month, while 15 percent of respondents say they never lie. But most Americans agree that lying is okay at least sometimes, usually in the interest of being polite — for instance, when telling a new parent that their baby is cute even if you don’t think so, or saying you love a gift even if you don’t. Other lies were more taboo according to respondents, like telling a doctor you drink less alcohol than you really do, or saying you’re on the way when you haven’t actually left yet. Overall, 63 percent of Americans said they lie less often than most other people, which statistically doesn’t really make sense. Somebody’s gotta be lying.

Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 12:00 PM Eastern on Sept. 25, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot ticked up another point this week, with Democrats now ahead of Republicans by 8 percentage points. Currently, 50.7 percent of likely voters indicate that they plan to vote for a Democrat in November, while 43 percent plan to vote for a Republican.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s net approval rating among U.S. adults dropped two points this week, for a new low of -27 percentage points. Overall, 62.1 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance, while just 34.9 percent approve, his lowest ever rating.

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As of 11:00 AM on September 23, 2026, our average of polls gives the president a new low of 34.6% approval among U.S. adults, with a disapproval rating of 62.3%. Over the last week, he has hit new second-term lows in surveys from at least 7 polling firms: CNN/SSRS, Ipsos, NBC News, Strength In Numbers/Verasight, Quantus Insights, Echelon Insights, and American Research Group.

While the president has been sliding, the Republican Party’s deficit in the the U.S. House generic ballot has increased to 7.6 points, rounding to +8 points for the first time this cycle and rivaling the party’s lead in the 2018 blue wave:

Our historical polling averages show the president’s updated rating is worse than George W. Bush’s second-term approval rating on the eve of the 2006 midterm that cost Republicans both chambers of Congress. And public mood is approaching where it was toward Richard Nixon during Watergate, in the months before he resigned in disgrace.

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Trump 2 versus Trump 1

The cleanest way to see how much worse Trump’s ratings today are than for his first term is to put the two trends on top of each other, indexed to the first day of each term.

When expressed as a difference between approval and disapproval, President Trump’s current net approval of −28 (34.6% approve, 62.2% disapprove) is nearly double the deficit he was running at the same point in his first term, when net approval sat at −13 heading toward the 2018 wave that cost Republicans 41 House seats. The two lines tracked each other reasonably closely for the first year, with Trump actually slightly more popular the second time around, but diverged hard after the beginning of the U.S. war in Iran and in the summer of 2026. There has been a notable 3-point drop in the president’s net rating in the last two weeks:

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Trump in historical context

Next, I look at Trump compared to past presidents at this point in their terms, both first and second. Trump’s problem, simply put, is that he is the most unpopular president since at least the 1930s, when scientific polling was developed, to hold office at this point before a midterm election.

If we widen the comparison from 2017 to include every president’s first term back to Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 — 13 of them — the president sticks out like a sore thumb. (Harry Truman doesn’t belong in this group: he succeeded FDR unelected in 1945, so his own elected term, which began in 1949, is conventionally counted as his second term. He shows up in the next chart.) At the same point in their first terms, every single one of Trump’s predecessors was in better shape than he is right now. Carter, the name people usually reach for when they want an unpopular president, was within a point of break-even.

The averages in these charts were calculated by running the same computer program we use to estimate Trump’s average rating on historical polls, going back nearly nine decades.

Trump is serving a second, non-consecutive term, so the more direct comparison is to the eight other presidents who won a second term outright — FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama — lined up by days since their second inauguration. Here, too, the president sticks out like a sore thumb. Reagan, Clinton and Eisenhower were all comfortably above water at this point in their second terms, and FDR, heading into the 1938 recession-driven wave that cost Democrats roughly 70 House seats, was still positive at +9. Truman, Obama and Bush were underwater, but only by 1, 12 and 14 points. The only second-term president who polled worse than Trump does today was Richard Nixon, and Nixon had already resigned five weeks before reaching this point in the calendar.

On average, presidents at this point in their second term have polled at a net approval of around +4 points (counting Nixon at his last day in office). Today, Trump is 28 points underwater — roughly a 32-point gap from the historical norm.

There are two lines worth emphasizing here. The first is George W. Bush’s, whose approval rating cratered in his second term under the weight of an unpopular war in Iraq. At this point in that term, September 2006, Bush’s net approval was −14. Six weeks later, voters gave Democrats the House and the Senate.

Today Trump’s approval rating is 13 points below where Bush was at this point in his second term, and 8 points below where he was on Election Day 2006. Bush didn’t sink to Trump’s current level until June 2007, more than half a year after his party had already been thrown out of power in Congress.

The second parallel is with Richard Nixon. Trump’s net approval today, −28, is roughly where Nixon’s stood in late November 1973: a month after the Saturday Night Massacre, with the Watergate investigation closing in, and eight months before he resigned in disgrace. Nixon bottomed out at −38 the week he left office. Trump is now about 10 points from Nixon’s Watergate-era low, and still falling.

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What it means for November

Is Trump the single most unpopular president of the polling era, full stop? Not quite. Nixon’s final days in office were worse, and so were Bush’s last months in 2008, when the financial crisis pushed his net approval under −40. Harry Truman also had an approval rating in the 20s at his low point in March 1952, though his disapproval was barely higher than Trump’s is today, at 63%.

But among presidents who reached this specific point in a term before a midterm election, Trump has no equal. That’s true whether you compare him to his own first term, to every president’s first term since Eisenhower, or to the eight presidents who won a second term.

It’s also worth being clear about why Trump’s rating is this bad. Net approval of Trump on inflation and the cost of living — the single issue Americans name most often as the country’s biggest problem — has fallen to -45.6 in our average, the worst issue-specific number we’ve recorded for this presidency. And Trump has spent his presidency taking credit for inflationary policies, such as his tariffs and war in Iran.

The president has also moved policy dramatically to the right on immigration. While it remains his best issue, his net approval rating on immigration has fallen over 20 points since the start of his term, now sitting at -13. We know from political science that enacting policy more toward either political pole tends to cause voters to react harshly against the party in power.

Presidents’ parties almost always lose House seats in a midterm — it’s one of the most reliable patterns in American politics, going back generations, with only a couple of exceptions since the 1930s. The size of the loss has tended to track the president’s popularity: bigger when he’s unpopular, smaller when he’s popular.

Trump has made his popularity more central to voting decisions than usual this cycle, not less — by staging a midterm-year convention built entirely around himself, by asking voters to treat November as a referendum on him personally, and by dangling a $5,000 payout that only works if his party wins. He has made many decisions that directly tied the GOP’s fortunes to his own approval rating. That’s a risky gamble when you’re historically unpopular.

This is in large part why the FiftyPlusOne election forecast gives Democrats a 98% chance of winning back the House, and a 69% chance — better than two-in-three — of flipping the Senate this November.

There are plenty of local reasons Democrats are running well in individual seats — from recruitment, incumbency, fundraising, and other local political factors. But the biggest single explanation for the expected national wave is probably the simplest one: the president is historically unpopular. Maybe it really is that simple.

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Correction: A previous version of this article said Donald Trump was the most unpopular president ever at this point in his term. This is not definitively true, since we do not know the popularity of presidents before scientific polling was developed in the 1930s. Trump is merely the most unpopular president since then.

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Earlier this cycle, at the urging of President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled legislatures in Texas and Florida took the rare step of redrawing their congressional maps in the middle of the decade. Both states have some of the highest Hispanic populations in the country, and the GOP carefully redrew congressional districts hoping that the deep in-roads Republicans made with Hispanic voters in 2024 would stick around. But those plans already seem to have gone awry.

In heavily-Hispanic southern Texas, one solidly Democratic district (TX-35) was completely transformed to one that voted for Trump by 10 points in 2024, and two Democratic-held seats that already leaned Republican (TX-28 and TX-34) were pushed a few points further to the right. All three were initially seen to be relatively easy pick-ups for the GOP come November, while a fourth district in the area, TX-15, was already held by a Republican and not expected to be very competitive regardless of redistricting.

But 46 days before the election, Democrats are favored in TX-28 and TX-34, while TX-35 is a toss-up, according to FiftyPlusOne’s 2026 House forecast. And in TX-15, Democratic challenger Bobby Pulido has led all three public polls of the race this year (though two were sponsored by Democratic-leaning organizations); our forecast still rates the seat as leaning Republican.

In Florida, Republicans seem to be having a similar issue. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who represents a newly tweaked district that voted for Trump by 15 points in 2024, is running like she’s behind; this week she released an ad chastising Trump for his immigration policies after a Democratic-funded poll released yesterday showed Salazar up by just 1 point. And in FL-22, a seat with just over 30 percent Hispanic voters that the GOP redrew as a prime pickup opportunity, Democrat Pia Dandiya is actually a slight favorite to win in our forecast, though it’s close enough that we still rate the race as a toss-up.

Taken together, the fact that Democrats are even competitive in so many right-leaning heavily Hispanic districts has many in the party jumping for joy. All of these districts voted for Trump by at least 10 points, and many party activists and insiders are claiming that the gains Republicans made among Hispanic voters in 2024 have all but been erased.

In today’s Trendline, we’re taking a closer look at how Hispanic voters are thinking about politics and the coming midterms. What issues are motivating Hispanic voters this year, and do we see the same leftward lurch among Hispanics across the country, or is this just an isolated trend limited to a handful of competitive seats in two states?

Despite the good signs for Democrats in Texas and Florida, national polling data among Hispanics is a bit more cautious. While Republicans have certainly lost support among the demographic compared to 2024, it’s not a complete reversion to the mean. According to an average of crosstabs from national generic ballot polls, Democratic support among Hispanic voters still isn’t even close to the level it was in 2016 and 2018, when net Democratic advantage in House races was over 35 points, according to exit polls. Instead, their current lead looks more like 2020, when net Democratic support among Hispanics fell from its 2018 high to +27 points.

But even Democrats’ current 25-point advantage is a vast improvement from their 2024 performance, when the party won Hispanics by only 9 points. And it’s a slight improvement from the last midterm in 2022, when the party held a 21-point advantage.

That growing advantage has come mostly from a decline in support for Republicans, rather than a swell of support for Democrats. Compared to the 2024 election, Democratic support among Hispanics has grown by just 3 points, while support for the GOP has dropped by 13 points. Republican support among Hispanics is now at its lowest level since 2018. (Given that current polling has over 10 percent of Hispanic voters undecided in November’s election, there’s still room for the margin to change as we get closer to November.)

Much of the drop in support for the GOP may be due to dissatisfaction with Trump. According to a poll from BSP Research/UnidosUS this spring (Apr. 27 - May 14, 2026), a quarter of Hispanic Trump voters in 2024 say that if they had the opportunity to do it over, they would not vote for the president. That’s higher than the 18 percent of Trump voters overall who regretted their vote in a recent poll from Navigator Research (Aug. 21 - 24, 2026).

Indeed, since Trump took office in January 2025, the net Democratic advantage with Hispanics and Latinos in the generic ballot has grown by around 14 points, outpacing movement among the general population by about 3.5 points.

The laziest explanation for this dissatisfaction is that Hispanic voters are unhappy with Trump’s heavy-handed immigration policies. That’s certainly true for many: Just 26 percent of Hispanic voters approve of the way Trump has handled immigration, compared to 43 percent of all likely voters in the latest New York Times/Siena University poll (Sept. 8 - 13, 2026). But polls of Hispanic voters have shown pretty clearly that, like most Americans, they’re actually prioritizing economic issues much more.

In the BSP Research/UnidosUS poll from May, Hispanic voters listed the cost of living/inflation, the economy/jobs, health care, and housing all as more important issues than immigration reform. Cost of living concerns, in particular, were far and away the most pressing for respondents: 60 percent said it was one of their top-three issues, compared to just 21 percent who said the same of immigration reform. And in a Wick poll also conducted this spring (May 21 - 25, 2026), 73 percent of Hispanic voters said they were more concerned about high prices and the cost of living than they were about immigration enforcement.

Those concerns are almost identical to 2024. Right before the election that year, BSP Research’s final tracking poll for EntraVision and AltaMed also showed cost of living concerns topping the list of most-important issues among Hispanic voters, with immigration issues not even cracking the top five.

So rather than a direct response to Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics (which are definitely still unpopular!), most Hispanics seem to be turning on Republicans out of a deep unhappiness with the state of the economy. Just 21 percent of Hispanic voters in this year’s BSP Research poll, for instance, said they expected Trump’s economic policies to make them better off next year, while 52 percent expected the policies to make them worse off. That’s a drop from the 46 percent of Hispanic voters who said they trusted Trump more to handle economic issues in 2024 exit polling. The fact that Democrats haven’t gained all that much ground with Hispanics compared to the significant GOP declines this year might suggest that the backlash that manifested in 2024 is simply aimed at whichever party is currently in charge, a typical thermostatic swing.

But even if immigration does become a deciding factor for a critical mass of Hispanic voters, it’s still not clear that Democrats would gain much more support than they already have. In this year’s BSP poll, 51 percent of Hispanic respondents said Democrats would do a better job handling immigration reform, while just 25 percent chose Republicans (19 percent said it made no difference). That’s almost exactly the same as the numbers on inflation and the cost of living, which 51 percent of Hispanics trusted Democrats more to handle, with 23 percent choosing Republicans instead. And when asked specifically about border security, the GOP was much closer: 34 percent said Republicans would handle the issue better, compared to 40 percent for Democrats (and another 19 percent who said it made no difference).

We’ve seen significant movement toward Democrats in the overall generic ballot over the last week or two, and it’s certainly possible that Hispanic and Latino voters move even further to the left between now and Election Day. Given small sample sizes in crosstabs, it’s impossible to say how the current 10 percent of undecided voters will lean; if they mirror trends among decided voters, Democrats would expand their advantage among Hispanics from 25 percentage points to 28. And if they swing further left than current trends, the GOP might have literally drawn their own demise, especially in Texas and Florida.

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Other polling nuggets

• A majority of voters, 53 percent, say that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement has gone too far, according to a new Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research/Fox News poll (Sept. 11 - 14, 2026). Eighty-seven percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents, and 17 percent of Republicans agreed that the administration’s immigration enforcement had gone too far. Voters were split as to why they thought so, however: 45 percent of those who said the enforcement had gone too far said it was because it was using too much force, while 49 percent said that it was targeting the wrong people and 6 percent said both.

• Democrats hold an 8-point lead on the generic ballot in a new YouGov/CBS News poll (Sept. 8 - 11, 2026), but voters aren’t totally sold on the party. Asked if they would be financially better off or worse off if Democrats win control of Congress in November, voters were evenly split, with 36 percent saying they would be better off and an identical 36 percent saying they would be worse off (27 percent said it wouldn’t make a difference). Still, Democrats have the upper hand on Republicans: Asked the same question about Republicans winning control, voters said they would be financially worse off by an 18-point margin, 46 to 28, and by a 9-point margin, voters said their personal financial situation made them more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans.

• Amid a wave of new measles cases and deaths, many Americans remain skeptical of vaccine safety. In an Ipsos/Reuters poll (Sept. 11 - 14, 2026), 13 percent of Americans said they thought vaccines were not safe for adults or children, roughly unchanged from the 15 percent who said the same back in February. Just 73 percent said parents have a duty to vaccinate their children against measles, and 32 percent said that public schools should not be allowed to refuse enrollment to unvaccinated children. Americans are also skeptical of the Trump administration’s ability to handle the current measles outbreak: Just 26 percent said the current administration is handling the outbreak responsibly, while 41 percent disagreed (the rest were unsure or did not respond to the question). Asked whether the administration would stop the outbreak and prevent measles from becoming a common illness again, just 27 percent agreed that they would, while 42 percent thought they would not be able to stop the outbreak.

• While medical treatments continue to extend human lifespans, it appears there’s at least some limit to how far folks want to take it. A plurality, 43 percent, said they would not choose to live to 150 if it were possible, while 31 percent said they would, according to a new YouGov/Economist survey (Sept. 11 - 14, 2026). Older voters were the least likely to want to live longer: 50 percent of those aged 65 and up said they would not choose to live to 150, while 23 percent said they would. The youngest voters were most likely to want to live on, with 39 percent saying they would choose to live to 150 and 43 percent saying they would not. Apparently there really is such a thing as too many birthdays for some people.

Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 12:00 PM Eastern on Sept. 18, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot ticked up a point this week, with Democrats now ahead of Republicans by 7 percentage points. Currently, 50.5 percent of likely voters indicate that they plan to vote for a Democrat in November, while 43.2 percent plan to vote for a Republican.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s net approval rating among U.S. adults remained stable this week. Overall, 60.7 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance, while just 36.1 percent approve, for a net approval rating of -25 percentage points.

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It doesn’t seem to matter what race was surveyed either. In elections to the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, spanning seats that Kamala Harris won easily in 2024 to those overwhelmingly Republican-leaning, these new polls almost always seem to show a close race.

Those numbers come from FiftyPlusOne’s database of House polls going back to 2006, which tells a clear comparative story about who is releasing surveys this year. My analysis finds that part of the surge is the ordinary signal of a favorable Democratic environment. But my investigation also reveals an apparent recent change in why sponsors release internal campaign polls — that traces back to a niche, nerdy polling project run by the New York Times’ data-journalism vertical, The Upshot, in 2018.

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There are a lot of internal polls this year

Our data includes all polls of U.S. House races held from 2006 to 2026 and published between 300 and 54 days before the election. I then counted the number of polls in each cycle that were sponsored by Democrats, Republicans, or from a nonpartisan source. The chart below shows the counts of the total number of polls from each source in each cycle.

So far, 2026 has had the third-highest number of House polls released overall, and the second-highest number of Democratic internals. The total number of released Democratic internals matches the Democratic “wave” year of 2018, rather than, say, 2010 when Republicans had the edge in the national environment (and when GOP challengers released a lot of surveys showing them ahead of incumbents for fundraising purposes).

When comparing the statistics in 2026 to the overall number of Dem/Rep/nonpartisan releases for the whole cycle historically, you can see that we should expect the total number of polls to increase considerably as the election approaches. In 2018, for example, polls released after Labor Day made up about 65 percent of all polls released over the whole year. The increase is particularly large for nonpartisan/public surveys.

Democratic internal polling so far makes up 56 percent of all polls released this cycle, higher than the 48 percent of polls released at this point in 2018. By the end of that cycle, Democratic internals made up just 27 percent of the total number of surveys.

Internal House poll releases have historically been an indicator of which party has an advantage in the national electoral environment. The next graph plots the Democratic share of partisan internals released (we omit nonpartisan polls). There is a strong relationship between the share of all internals that are released by one party, and the advantage that party has in the national House popular vote. The current composition of partisan surveys, at 80.7 percent Democratic, is more D-leaning than every cycle since 2002 — larger even than 2018.

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How The New York Times changed incentives for House polling forever

The dynamics of House polls have changed significantly in the last decade. In the fall of 2018, The New York Times and its pollster Siena College teamed up for an ambitious project to poll dozens of competitive House races and update the results live on the internet as interviews were completed. In an earlier analysis of that project, I found that there was a strong relationship between the competitiveness of a NYT/Siena House poll and the change in donations given to the Democratic candidate in the two weeks after the poll was released.

The chart below plots the Democratic margin in each NYT/Siena poll against the change in donations to the corresponding race in the two weeks before and after each poll was released. A higher point means donations in that race rose in the two weeks after the Times released its poll in the race, and a lower point means donations fell. Donations were highest in races where polls indicated a Democratic candidate was coming up just short against their opponent, and lowest in races the poll showed to be uncompetitive. (The measure of donations here is the average amount given to the Democratic candidate each day.)

Campaigns quickly caught on to the effect these polls had on their fundraising and released their own surveys showing competitive races.

In House races in the 2018 election cycle, I found that the release of a NYT/Siena survey was associated with a large increase in the share of other polls showing the Democratic candidate within 5 points of their opponent.

The graph below groups polls by whether they were released just before or after a NYT poll of the same district, and the Democratic candidate’s margin of victory in the poll. I categorized each poll according to the following margins:

• Double Digit Deficit: Democratic candidate behind by 10 points or more

• Behind But Not Out: Behind by 5 to 10 points

• Battleground: Within a 5-point margin

• Lead But Not Safe: Ahead by 5 to 10 points

• Double Digit Lead: Ahead by 10 or more

The chart shows a statistically significant increase in the share of “battleground” polls released after a NYT/Siena poll of the same district:

Moreover, this effect has persisted in every election cycle after 2018. The bar chart below shows the competitiveness of every House poll released since the 2006 election cycle grouped by sponsor type. In and after 2018, the share of House polls showing competitive races increased regardless of sponsorship: The share of Democratic-aligned competitive polls increased by 18 percent on average, Republican-aligned by 20 percent, and nonpartisan by 0 percent.

It is not surprising that Democratic campaigns, which are much more reliant on small-dollar donations than their Republican opponents, have seen the biggest shift toward released competitive surveys.

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Democratic polls are popping up in redder and redder seats

We have learned that the volume of Democratic internal polls has not changed from 2018 to 2026. But the frequency of Democratic internals that show a close race has risen significantly.

Overall, 77 percent of Democratic internal polls released this cycle have shown a race within 5 points, a new high across all sponsorship categories and election cycles.

A final reason why it seems like there are more Democratic internals this cycle is that there has been a sharp increase in the number released in heavily Republican districts. In the chart below, I have grouped Democratic internals by cycle based on the margin of the vote Kamala Harris had over Donald Trump in the seat in 2024 and the competitiveness category of the poll result. The chart shows a large increase in the number of Democratic internals released in heavily GOP seats, especially when looking at the 2022 and 2024 cycles, where Democratic internals were released mostly in battleground or Biden-won districts. Some of these polls show Democrats outrunning Harris’s margin by 20 points or more!

Overall, this analysis does not make any claims about the accuracy of current House polls. It may very well be right that Democrats are leading in seats Republicans typically win by 5-15 percentage points.

But it is clear that motivation for releasing a poll has changed significantly over the last decade as a response to fundraising incentives. It seems the original NYT/Siena polling project has turned pre-election surveys into a tool for raising campaign funds, not merely measuring public opinion.

Article credits:

Katie Marriner created the charts for this piece.

Mary Radcliffe provided research and data.

Cooper Burton copy-edited.

G. Elliott Morris was editor.

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The information landscape facing Americans is more confusing than ever. AI-generated campaign ads are on the rise. Online social media influencers are being given secret government jobs, without telling their followers about the arrangement. Trust in the media to cover campaigns continues to decline. Amidst all this chaos, Americans still have to get their news from somewhere. In today’s Trendline, we’re examining where Americans get their information, which institutions they do (or don’t) trust, and what might be done to confront the steadily rising distrust in almost every aspect of American society.

Trust in Media

Americans don’t really seem to trust anybody nowadays, according to a poll from AP-NORC/USAFacts (July 29 - Aug. 10, 2026), but traditional media still ranks higher than other sources. When asked how much they trusted a variety of sources of information, like national or local newspapers, the federal or state governments, social media, and more, none were trusted a great deal or quite a bit by more than 27 percent of respondents. That 27 percent was for “public TV or radio such as PBS or NPR,” followed by local TV news and national TV news (both 22 percent). While higher than other sources of information, that’s still a pretty abysmal rating for traditional media.

But viewed from another perspective, things really may not be so dire. A significant number of respondents in the survey said they had a moderate amount of trust in most mainstream news sources: A majority had at least a moderate amount of trust in public tv or radio, local news, national news, national newspapers, local newspapers, and state government. And the poll also contained clues for how journalists can improve trust in their work. Sixty percent of respondents said they are extremely or very likely to consider information factual if it’s based on data, 49 percent said the same if it has been verified by scientists, and 39 percent said so if it’s either verified by an academic institution or comes from a nonpartisan source.

Trust in the Federal Government

Trust in the federal government, however, is an entirely different issue. Trust has fallen across each of the 11 categories of information asked about in the survey since the previous poll in 2024, and outright majorities in eight categories said they currently trust the federal government only a little or not at all to provide factual information.

This distrust echoes findings from other surveys, too. An SSRS poll (Mar. 19 - 22, 2026) found that the share of Americans who tend to trust federal statistics declined from 53 percent in 2025 to 47 percent in 2026, with the greatest distrust coming from political independents, 60 percent of whom said they tend not to trust federal statistics. At the same time, however, significant majorities agree that federal statistics are important: 70 percent said public officials need them to make good decisions, and 68 percent said they are important for understanding society.

The reasons for all this distrust may not be rooted in a belief that the government is lying, though. In an Echelon Insights poll (Dec. 11 - 15, 2025), 47 percent of respondents said they did not trust the government’s economic statistics, while 28 percent said they did and 24 percent were unsure. But when asked why they didn’t trust the government, 60 percent said it was because they didn’t think the numbers accurately measure the experiences of real people, while only 35 percent of distrusters said that government data was being intentionally faked or manipulated.

Trust in AI

While trust in information from the media and government has been steadily declining, the same cannot be said of information from artificial intelligence: When asked in the AP-NORC/USAFacts poll how often information provided by AI chatbots was based on factual information, the share who said always or often rose from 8 percent in 2024 to 16 percent in 2026, and the number who said rarely or never fell from 51 to 41 percent. There was a similar improvement in views of AI-assisted search, including AI overviews on search results.

And despite the fact that most still don’t trust it, searching for information is actually the most common use of AI, according to Pew Research (Feb. 17 - 23, 2026). Forty-two percent of Americans said they use chatbots to search for information, and 60 percent said they read AI summaries at the top of a search engine result. But while people may be using these tools to search for information, they don’t necessarily rely on them exclusively. Just 2 percent in a recent Gallup poll (May 4 - 17, 2026) said they use AI chatbots as one of their top three sources of news.

The rising trust in AI doesn’t seem to be extending to its use in the newsroom, though. Asked in the Gallup poll how a news organization could increase trust in AI-assisted content, 39 percent of Americans did not select an option, saying that their trust would be reduced no matter what. Thirty-one percent said their trust would increase if a human reported or verified the information, and 22 percent said it would increase trust if they could verify the information with a different source.

Trust in Elections and Campaigns

And when it comes to the swiftly approaching midterms, Americans are struggling to discern fact from fiction. According to AP-NORC/USAFacts, just 30 percent said it is easy to know if information about the upcoming election is true or not, while 37 percent said it’s difficult. (Another 31 percent said it is neither easy nor difficult.) As for information from candidates themselves, the situation is even worse: 25 percent said it’s easy to know if what candidates are saying is true, while 43 percent said it’s difficult, and 30 percent said it is neither easy nor difficult. Asked how they would verify information about the midterms, 37 percent said they would use an internet search; no other method of fact-checking had more than 8 percent.

While some Americans don’t trust them for other kinds of information, traditional media sources are still highly rated when it comes to information about the outcome of the midterms. Over 60 percent of Americans said they trusted national and local newspapers and TV stations to provide accurate information about election outcomes at least a moderate amount. The least trusted sources were President Donald Trump, AI-powered search, and social media. But the most trusted source of all remains official government certifications of elections: 67 percent of Americans trust local and state governments to accurately report election outcomes.

All together, while Americans’ trust in institutions across the board is suffering, there are still some signs ahead of the elections that voters will be able to access and trust the information they need to stay informed. Majorities still have at least moderate trust in traditional media institutions, even if they are wary of information from the federal government. And while AI use is on the rise, most Americans are still skeptical of its veracity, and are more likely to turn to a traditional web search to fact check information. We’re in for a torrent of political news over the next two months, but despite their pessimistic outlooks, Americans still appear reasonably well-situated to sort through what is and is not true.

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Other polling nuggets

• Only 10 percent of respondents in the latest Ipsos poll (Aug. 21 - 23, 2026) said they plan to do something to commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11 today, while 59 percent said they have no plans and 30 percent weren’t quite sure yet. Of those who said they had plans, most involved participating in a moment of silence or displaying an American flag, while around a fifth said they would visit a memorial or volunteer somewhere. Regardless of how they mark the occasion, most Americans were deeply affected by the tragedy, with 75 percent saying they remember where they were when they first heard the news, and a plurality (47 percent) ranking it as the most important historic event of their lifetime. An increasing number of Americans have no memories of the event at all, though — 11 percent in the poll said they weren’t born yet when 9/11 happened, and 13 percent said they do not remember where they were when they heard about the attacks.

• Following the FIFA World Cup this summer, more Americans than ever before say that soccer is their favorite sport to watch, according to the latest polling from Gallup (Aug. 3 - 24, 2026). “More than ever before” is still only 9 percent, though, as football (the American kind, of course) remains on top, with a wide plurality of 31 percent saying it’s their favorite sport to watch. That’s a drop of 10 percent from the last time the question was asked in December 2023, but Gallup attributes some of the movement to whether or not the poll was conducted during the football season, when fans are most tuned in. But it’s also true that younger Americans are less interested in football than their older counterparts, with just 20 percent of those aged 18-34 rating it their favorite sport, compared to 38 percent of Americans aged 55 and older. Instead, younger Americans are more likely to favor less-popular sports like hockey and mixed martial arts, or say they don’t have a favorite sport at all.

• Republicans held an uncommon midterm convention this week, in an attempt to gin up enthusiasm and support for their candidates as the party faces dismal polling numbers across the board. It’s too early to know for certain what effect the convention may have had on Americans’ enthusiasm or vote choice, but don’t hold your breath: In a new RMG Research/Napolitan News Service survey (Sept. 8 - 9, 2026), only 11 percent of Americans even knew there was a GOP convention being held this week, and only 6 percent said they planned to watch any of it. Many of the biggest headlines from the convention may not do much to sway public opinion anyway — GOP leaders spent much of their time attacking Democrats as “communists” and “socialists,” but according to a new Quinnipiac University poll (Sept. 3 - 6, 2026), more Americans said they’re less likely to vote for a candidate who identifies as a MAGA supporter (51 percent) than one who identifies as a Democratic Socialist (43 percent). And while Trump promised Americans a $5,000 check if Republicans keep control of Congress in November, Americans are skeptical: In a YouGov poll from today (Sept. 11, 2026), just 35 percent of Americans support Trump’s plan, while 45 percent are opposed.

• The margarita reigns supreme: Among the 58 percent of Americans who identify as cocktail drinkers in YouGov’s newest polling (Sept. 3 - 7, 2026), a plurality rated the best-selling cocktail in America as their favorite drink, followed by a rum and coke and a piña colada. Despite the margarita’s dominance, a plurality of 28 percent said vodka was their preferred liquor to include in cocktails, while 17 percent said tequila, and whiskey and rum tied for third at 14 percent. At the bottom of the list of favorite drinks was the negroni (Mary’s preferred drink!), with less than a percent of cocktail drinkers ranking it as their favorite. As for Cooper, he prefers an amaretto sour, but alas, only 1 percent of respondents seem to agree with him.

Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 1:00 PM Eastern on Sept. 11, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot remained stable this week, with Democrats still ahead of Republicans by 6 percentage points. Currently, 49.9 percent of likely voters indicate that they plan to vote for a Democrat in November, while 43.5 percent plan to vote for a Republican.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s net approval rating among U.S. adults declined by 2 points this week. Overall, 60.4 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance, while just 35.7 percent approve, for a net approval rating of -25 percentage points.

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Earlier this year, Americans’ perception of corruption in the U.S. government hit the highest level that Gallup has ever recorded, going back at least 20 years. In the latest survey (May 1 - June 10, 2026), 89 percent of Americans said that corruption was “widespread throughout the government in this country.” That’s 30 points higher than the share who said the same back in 2006, when Gallup first began asking the question, and a dramatic departure from Trump’s first term, when Americans didn’t rate corruption as any more widespread than they had in the past.

But the most striking finding from this report isn’t that sky-high number — it’s that since 2023, only four countries of the 132 Gallup surveyed have had a perceived corruption rate higher than the United States: Ghana, Nigeria, Lebanon, and Peru. Among wealthier economies, the U.S. had by far the highest perceived corruption in Gallup’s polling, outpacing the median OECD country by 20 points last year. According to most Americans, our government seems to be in a corrupt league of its own.

But by most expert measures, the U.S. is not actually one of the most corrupt countries in the world, or even close to it. Transparency International publishes an index of global corruption each year based on economic and civic data from across the globe; in 2025, out of 182 countries, the U.S. ranked as the 29th least corrupt.

So if it’s true that the U.S. actually ranks in the top fifth of least corrupt countries in the world, why do Americans seem to have a worse view of their government than almost any other nation? A lot of it may boil down to how people define ‘corruption.’

In a recent Navigator Research survey (Aug. 21 - 24, 2026), a slight majority (51 percent) of registered voters said the most harmful kind of corruption in the U.S. was perpetrated by “wealthy special interests and big corporations,” rather than by politicians who accept bribes or “[use] inside information for personal profit” (43 percent). And when respondents were asked who they thought was most involved in corruption, three of the top five answers included billionaires, wealthy campaign donors, and special-interest groups, while the other two referred to Republican politicians.

This seems to indicate that when many Americans talk about corruption, they’re referring in large part to the political influence of billionaires and special interests rather than shifty criminal activity from politicians themselves (although plenty of Americans think that’s a problem too). This is borne out in Gallup’s polling as well — Americans’ perceptions of corruption within U.S. businesses also hit an all-time high this year at 71 percent.

So while the U.S. might perform fairly well on some of the more traditional measures of corruption that are included in Transparency International’s index, those metrics might not be capturing the perceived influence of monied interests that many Americans are most worried about.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. It’s not just the wealthy special interests that are catching flak; politicians and political parties are getting their fair share of blame too. Topping the above chart by a healthy margin was President Donald Trump and his family, with 48 percent saying they’re involved in corruption, closely followed by Republicans in Congress at 37 percent (Democrats in Congress rounded out the top six at 28 percent). And because Trump and Republicans are in charge of the government right now, that may contribute to an increase in how Americans see corruption.

When Americans were asked in a YouGov poll this summer (June 29 - July 1, 2026) how serious of a problem they thought corruption was among a long list of professions, members of Congress and U.S. presidents topped the list. (The professions seen as least corrupt were professional athletes, doctors, and professors.) YouGov also asked respondents how many politicians in the U.S. they thought were corrupt; 66 percent said at least half of them, while 26 percent said just “some,” and literally 0 percent said that none were corrupt. Those are pretty clear signs that individual politicians are still broadly seen as corrupt, even if Americans’ idea of corruption is slightly more focused on the influence of outside interests.

Refreshingly, all of this is something that Republicans and Democrats agree on. It’s true that the recent spike in Gallup’s numbers was driven almost entirely by Democrats, but that’s mostly because Republicans already saw the government as corrupt at the start of Trump’s presidency — perceptions of corruption in the government grew from 57 to 91 percent among Democrats between 2024 and 2026, a 34-point increase, while Republicans moved from 87 to 83 percent, only a 4-point change.

It’s also true that the GOP is consistently seen as more corrupt than the Democratic Party across recent surveys, particularly President Trump, who voters view as distinctly corrupt. But it’s actually Republicans who are more worried about the issue: In the Navigator poll, Republican voters are slightly more likely than Democrats to list corruption as a top-five issue. And while GOP politicians might be seen as a bit more corrupt overall, voters are telling pollsters they’re tired of corruption from both parties — when Navigator asked about a long list of corruption scandals, a quarter of voters consistently said that each happens equally often in either party.

Supermajorities of both parties also have a firm belief that corruption is a fixable issue, and that perpetrators should face punishment. In a recent Ipsos/Reuters poll (Aug. 14 - 17, 2026), 75 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats thought corruption in politics could be “eliminated with strong regulation and enforcement,” while only around 20 percent in either party said corruption was “just part of how politics gets done and it can’t really be eliminated.”

When the University of Massachusetts Amherst/YouGov asked respondents in an August survey (Aug. 21 - 26, 2026) what the most appropriate consequence for offenders of various corrupt actions would be, over 80 percent of respondents (and similar shares of Democrats and Republicans) said that criminal or ethics investigations should be opened. Less than 15 percent of adults said that we should just let the voters decide.

Every country is going to experience some amount of corruption — politicians are people, after all, and some people will always break the rules. Corruption isn’t a new part of American life, even though more voters are worried about it now than in the last 20 years, and it probably isn’t quite as bad as many are perceiving it to be. But unlike most political issues, Americans from both parties actually agree on both the diagnosis and the cure, and there has been some recent movement in Congress to help address some of the problems, such as advancing a ban on congressional stock trading and introducing several bills limiting congressmembers from prediction market trading. Ultimately, though, unless significant changes are made to curtail the influence of big business on politics, it seems unlikely that Americans’ views of corruption will change anytime soon.

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Other polling nuggets

• Half of Americans say that student loan debt isn’t worth the risk, according to a new poll from Noble Predictive Insights/The Center Square (Aug. 12 - 16, 2026). Fifty percent said that taking on student loans is “too risky because many graduates struggle to find jobs that justify the cost,” while 35 percent said they thought a college degree was worth the risk. Even among those with a bachelor’s degree, more said the loans were too risky than not, with 46 percent saying that student debt was too hazardous and 43 percent saying the degree was worth the risk.

• By a whopping 51-point margin, Americans disapprove of renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, according to this week’s YouGov/The Economist survey (Aug. 28 - 31, 2026). Disapproval stretched across the political spectrum, but was decidedly less pronounced among Republicans; Democrats disapproved by 80 percentage points, independents by 69 points, and Republicans by just 4 points.

• Americans would rather pay more for gas than continue sending troops to Iran, according to a new survey from J.L. Partners/The Daily Mail (Aug. 28 - 31, 2026). Asked to choose between paying $5 for gas or sending more troops, 46 percent preferred higher gas prices, compared with 22 percent who preferred sending more troops. Democrats were especially likely to prefer higher gas prices than more deployments, with 55 percent saying they’d rather pay more at the pump, and 15 percent saying they’d rather send more troops. Republicans were split, with 38 percent saying they prefer higher gas prices and 39 percent preferring deployments.

• What do you do when you’ve forgotten the name of an acquaintance? According to a recent YouGov poll (Sept. 2, 2026), Americans aren’t likely to fess up. Just 24 percent say they would tell the person they’ve forgotten their name, while 46 percent would avoid using the name and hope to remember, and another 15 percent would try to get the person or someone else in the conversation to say their name. Older respondents are more likely to admit they’ve forgotten than younger ones, with 29 percent of those aged 65 and up saying they’d admit it, compared with 21 percent of those under 30. (We’re Cooper and Mary, in case you needed that.)

Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 10:30 AM Eastern on Sep. 4, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot remained stable this week, with Democrats ahead of Republicans by 6 percentage points. Currently, 49.7 percent of likely voters indicate that they plan to vote for a Democrat in November, while 43.7 percent plan to vote for a Republican.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s approval rating among U.S. adults stayed fairly steady this week, with 36.1 percent of Americans approving of his job performance, the same as last week. His disapproval rating fell slightly from 59.6 percent last week to 59.4 percent this week.

Paid subscribers to 50+1 get access to premium analysis, plus sortable tables and complete data access on our polling website. If you want to follow the 2026 cycle with the best data at your fingertips, become a paid subscriber.

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Last week, trade negotiations between the United States and Canada abruptly fell apart, with both sides pointing fingers at the other. A 50 percent tariff on a long list of Canadian goods is now in effect, and the Trump administration has threatened an expansion of tariffs to additional products, including auto parts, to take effect in January 2027.

In response, the Canadian government announced retaliatory tariffs of 50 percent on key U.S. imports to Canada, which will take effect in September. Prime Minister Mark Carney told Canadians in a press conference Saturday that “You’re at war when you’re attacked. We got attacked,” and that his government was going to “hit back.”

So, what do Americans think of all this back-and-forth? What do Canadians think? Today on the Trendline, we’re checking in on both, to get a feel for how the American and Canadian public view the trade war, their leaders, and each other.

For many, President Donald Trump’s decision to escalate a trade war with Canada this close to the midterms seems baffling. Canadian tariffs are expected to have a disproportionate impact on several states with key Senate races, potentially increasing economic hardship just before voting begins. Right now, Trump’s net approval rating on trade (-22.7 percentage points) more or less matches his overall net approval rating (-23.5 percentage points), but if increases in tariffs cause higher prices, he’s got plenty of room to fall; his net approval rating on inflation is more than 20 percentage points lower than on trade.

With elections coming up and his approval already quite negative, Trump doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room with the American public. Carney, on the other hand, seems to be basking in goodwill from Canadians. According to Canadian poll aggregator 338Canada, approval of Carney/the Carney government has been positive since the 2025 election. (Because of Canada’s parliamentary system, 338Canada includes polls that ask about Carney directly as well as those that ask about the Carney government.) Carney currently has a +20 net approval rating among Canadians.

In the wake of the ongoing trade war, we’ve also seen sharp changes in how Canadians view Americans, though not really vice versa. For example, in February 2023, the Angus Reid Institute found that 73 percent of Canadians thought Canada should approach the U.S. “on friendly terms / as a valued partner.” By July of this year, that number had crashed to 26 percent. At the same time, the share who said the U.S. should be treated as an enemy or potential threat rose from just 7 percent in 2023 to 42 percent in July.

American’s views of the relationship between our two governments have also dimmed in the last few years, but to nowhere near the same degree. In a YouGov/The Economist poll conducted in May 2023, 83 percent of registered voters said they viewed Canada as an ally, while just 10 percent viewed it as an enemy. By February of this year, the most recent data from YouGov/The Economist on this question, voters were only slightly less likely to view Canada as a friend: 76 percent said the nation was an ally, while 14 percent said it was an enemy.

Even as the trade war has escalated, that view doesn’t seem to have changed much among Americans. In Angus Reid polling (Jul. 31 - Aug. 5, 2026 among Americans; Jul. 10 - 14, 2026 among Canadians), 78 percent of Americans said that we should treat Canada as a friend or ally, while just 4 percent said we should treat the nation as an enemy or threat to American interests.

This increasing sourness of Canadians toward the American government is also spilling over to the American people, and of course Donald Trump. In the Angus Reid poll, Trump’s favorability is underwater among Canadians by 64 percentage points, 79 to 15, and their favorability of the American people is underwater by 4 percentage points, 48 to 44. In a survey from the Pew Research Center released in June and conducted earlier this year, 74 percent of Americans said they had a favorable opinion of Canada; just 34 percent of Canadians returned the sentiment.

But while Canadians appear to be fuming mad at our nation, our leader, and us, Americans barely know who Mark Carney even is. Of the 15 foreign politicians with the highest name recognition in YouGov’s ongoing tracking, Carney ranked dead last, with only 45 percent of Americans saying they recognized his name.

But while not many people know who Carney is, those that do have a pretty good impression of him. He has the second-highest net favorability of these 15 leaders, with only President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine better liked.

And despite our diverging opinions of each other, Americans and Canadians actually agree about the new round of tariffs levied by the U.S. against Canada: They don’t like them. According to the Angus Reid poll, just 24 percent of Americans support the new tariffs, while 59 percent are opposed. And in a Marquette Law School poll (Jul. 22 - 29, 2026), 56 percent of Americans said that tariffs hurt the U.S. economy, while 26 percent said they help and 17 percent said they don’t make much difference.

When it comes to the Canadian response to tariffs, Carney likely has the Canadian people on his side. In a Leger poll (Aug. 15 - 17, 2026) conducted before the talks collapsed, 56 percent of Canadians said they wanted the government to “take a hard line and make no more concessions,” compared to 31 percent who said they preferred the government “be flexible and, if need be, make concessions.” Asked about a variety of retaliatory measures that Canada could take against the U.S., every possible measure was above water with Canadians, with the most preferred option being to “add a special tax on electricity sold to the United States.”

While the Canadian government has not yet introduced taxes or tariffs on electricity, the measure they are currently pursuing — tariffs on a broad range of U.S. goods — was supported by 59 percent of Canadians, with 28 percent opposed and 13 percent unsure.

Given how unpopular tariffs are in the States, it’s perhaps surprising that even Americans are somewhat supportive of Canada’s response. In a YouGov poll (Aug. 26, 2026), 43 percent of Americans said they approved of Canada’s retaliatory measures, while 40 percent were opposed. And the response doesn’t break sharply along partisan lines: The retaliatory tariffs were approved of by 53 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of independents, and 33 percent of Republicans, a more bipartisan mix than we typically see.

All in all, the Canadian government appears well positioned. Carney has broad support for his actions and a high approval rating. Americans don’t support their own government in this fight, strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of trade, and by a slim margin even support Canada’s imposition of tariffs against our own nation. Those retaliatory tariffs aren’t set to take effect until Sept. 8, and against this backdrop, it’s still possible the two nations come to an agreement before that ever happens. But regardless of whether a deal is made, it’ll be a tall order to rebuild the old era of good feelings that seems to have all but vanished, at least on the Canadian side.

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Other polling nuggets

• Most Americans still think that UFOs are a result of human activity or natural phenomena rather than alien spacecraft, according to new polling from Gallup (Jul. 1 - 19, 2026). Forty-nine percent attributed UFO sightings to boring old human activity (down from 60 percent in 2019), while 37 percent said that at least some sightings were evidence of aliens visiting from outer space, up slightly from the 33 percent who said the same in 2019. Overall, almost a fifth of Americans (17 percent) say they’ve seen a UFO before. Men are more likely than women to say they’ve seen a UFO, while the Midwest seems to be a rather UFO-sparse area — just 12 percent of those in the Midwest said they’d seen a UFO, the least of any region, while 20 percent of those who lived in the East and West of the country and 16 percent of those in the South reported having witnessed a UFO. And in the great American tradition of distrusting the government, 78 percent of adults believe the government knows more about UFOs than it’s letting on. That’s despite Trump ordering the Pentagon to release any files it had on UFOs and “alien and extraterrestrial life” in February.

• After Trump ordered the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver any mail ballots to states that haven’t provided a list of eligible voters, the Supreme Court granted him an interim win Monday, though another court Thursday reimposed a nationwide injunction blocking the rule. In a Navigator Research survey (Aug. 21 - 24, 2026), 60 percent of respondents said they were confident that voting by mail was safe and secure, including 78 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of independents, and 43 of Republicans. And in a new poll from SurveyMonkey and the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions (Aug. 18 - 20, 2026), 74 percent of likely voters said they were confident mail ballots would be counted accurately. One big criticism of voting by mail has been the time it takes some states to count votes, which can cause significant shifts in candidates’ vote shares as more ballots get counted. Sixty-five percent of likely voters, including majorities across the political spectrum, said they support allowing election officials to preprocess mail-in ballots, a method of speeding up vote-tallying that’s currently allowed in some states like Florida, but prohibited in others like Michigan. Overall, 34 percent of likely voters in the survey said they planned to vote by mail.

• News broke this week of a major settlement between Meta and attorneys general from 52 states and territories, where Meta agreed to pay approximately $18 billion in penalties and make significant changes to its platforms in an attempt to reduce the risk of harm to children and teenagers. Recent polling from Pew Research Center (May 26 - Jun. 1, 2026) shows that a majority of Americans would go a step further and support banning children under 16 from using social media entirely. That included solid majorities of both Democrats and Republicans. Interestingly, Americans 65 and older were the least likely to support such a ban, below even adults aged 18-29 (though a plurality of 49 percent of older voters were still in favor). When asked how they felt about certain restrictions — similar to those Meta agreed to in its settlement — like limiting how much time minors can spend on social media apps and requiring more stringent age-verification methods, almost 80 percent of adults said they were supportive of each measure. Seventy-seven percent of adults also said they supported banning the use of phones in classrooms, up from 68 percent in 2024. And in the first time since Pew began asking the question two years ago, a plurality (48 percent) of Americans favor banning the use of phones during the entire school day (43 percent were opposed).

• We lost a legend this week: Dolly Parton’s family announced Tuesday that the country music superstar had passed away after a brief battle with cancer. Almost universally loved, Dolly had a 70 percent favorability rating in an April survey by the University of Massachusetts/YouGov, with only 5 percent of adults saying they had an unfavorable opinion of her. Known not only for her smash hits, Dolly also made headlines with her philanthropy, flashy outfits, and unmatched charisma. A YouGov poll this week (Aug. 27, 2026) asked Americans what they thought Dolly would be most remembered for; 39 percent said her music, while 26 percent said her charitable work, and 20 percent said her personality. Rest in peace to a beloved national icon.

Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 9:30 AM Eastern on Aug. 28, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot remained stable this week, with Democrats ahead of Republicans by 6 percentage points. Currently, 49.5 percent of likely voters indicate that they plan to vote for a Democrat in November, while 43.4 percent plan to vote for a Republican.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s approval rating among U.S. adults barely budged this week, with 36.1 percent of Americans approving of his job performance, identical to last week. His disapproval rating nudged down from 59.9 percent last week to 59.6 percent this week.

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In another Times piece last week responding to news of a fake pollster, Median Strategies, whose “polls” had been reported on by a very small number of news outlets, Ruth Igielnik and Caroline Soler claim that the number of public pollsters is “skyrocketing,” noting that there are around 30 new pollsters so far this year. (Our numbers differ somewhat, because we have different aggregation standards and track different questions.) They say the increase in new, untested pollsters can make it difficult to judge survey quality.

But there’s a question amidst all this panic that the Times and Post seem not to have asked: Is any of this different from the past, or is this totally normal? If you want to claim, as Epstein does, that “misleading polling has shaped campaign narratives, donor behavior and news coverage like never before” — or, as Olsen does, that polls are getting worse — it might be worth looking at the data from past election cycles.

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Campaigns love sharing questionable polls

It is worth stating up front that using polls to try to shape media coverage is not a new campaign tactic, despite the impression one gets from the Times and WaPo stories. Campaigns have long been sharing unreliable or biased polls to gin up support and try to control the narrative of a race. It’s their whole jam! After news broke in Maine earlier this year of Democratic candidate Graham Platner’s Nazi-linked tattoo, for example, groups allied with the oyster farmer quickly released polling showing Platner still ahead, in an attempt to reassure supporters and stem the bleeding.

Campaigns have been using internal polling to spread information they want public for decades. For example, in 2024, Leah Askarinam outlined how Bernie Moreno’s U.S. Senate campaign in Ohio leveraged its internal polling, selectively releasing good news and holding back bad news, to win Trump’s endorsement. In that case, he laundered the polls through Politico, but the ultimate outcome is the same.

And it goes beyond just horse race polling and congressional campaigns: President Donald Trump has incorrectly cited inflated approval rating data from Rasmussen Reports (whose polls we have banned from our database). In past election cycles, he has also shared unscientific social media “polls” on his Twitter and Truth Social accounts that vastly overstated his support.

Shoddy polling being spread by politicians with an agenda is part of politics. What may be different in the modern era is the way these polls are spread — on social media, rather than in inside-the-beltway news coverage — but the fact remains that this is nothing new.

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Fake data from prediction markets goes back almost a decade

Prediction markets, and fake polls trying to influence them, have also been around for a long time — like, since the 1980s. We know how to deal with them. Sure, the success of Kalshi and Polymarket in recent years has propelled the prediction market industry to greater prominence than ever before. But even before the rise of those two giants, there were fake surveys released specifically to swing the markets, and with much wider distribution than the Median Strategies affair.

In 2017, a series of “polls” from a group calling themselves “Delphi Analytica” were released. The most ludicrous of these surveys showed then-Sen. Debbie Stabenow losing a U.S. Senate race to Kid Rock, and was widely shared in right-of-center media outlets including the Daily Caller and Gateway Pundit, tweeted by sitting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and posted by Kid Rock himself. The “polls” were actually produced by bettors from the most popular prediction market at the time, PredictIt, and temporarily influenced the market on Stabenow’s reelection.

But professionals, like our team here at FiftyPlusOne, the Times polling team, and various other aggregators, know about these sorts of problems and have mechanisms in place to screen out bad actors. When we make mistakes or learn new information that causes us to doubt previous decisions, we respond quickly and publicly to explain what happened and why. It takes more than a random amateur cooking up fake data in a college dorm to fool us (though we can’t control how other media outlets cover such polls).

Is text-to-web a worse way to conduct surveys?

The Epstein article includes a quote from Rep. Haley Stevens saying that part of the problem with Michigan Senate primary polling was that pollsters are no longer using live caller phone surveys. We do not find a lot of evidence supporting this claim.

But the concern about a drift away from live caller polls is one worth pausing on for a moment. Pew Research has documented how quickly the industry has shifted away from live phone polls, with nearly all pollsters using the mode in 2000 — by 2022, that number had shrunk to six.

Many of the moves away from live phone polls were actually encouraged by the polling industry writ large. Fewer people answer their phone than in previous decades, and using texts to reach respondents may help with recruiting Americans who are difficult to reach, like younger voters (as the Times notes). And in their 2024 autopsy of the polling industry, the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) found that “mode of data collection … showed weak associations with error,” but text and live phone polls didn’t differ very much in their average error.

To gut-check this, we looked at all the 2026 Senate primary polls in our database for races that have already happened where we know the mode of data collection (some pollsters do not include this information in their poll releases) that were conducted within three months of the election. There are no surveys in that dataset that were exclusively fielded with text-to-web (TTW), though many included TTW as part of a multimodal methodology. Among the 84 surveys that included TTW, the average absolute error on the margin between the top two candidates in the poll and the actual election outcome was 15.4 percentage points, not too far off from the average 13-point error we expect to see in Senate primary polls.

Among the 63 polls that included live callers, either as the only mode of reaching respondents or as part of a multimodal approach, the average absolute error was 14.9 percentage points – almost the same. Of the 40 polls that included an online opt-in panel as part of their method to reach respondents, the average absolute error was 15.5 percentage points.

There were 23 polls that were conducted exclusively with live callers, and these performed a touch better than the multimodal polls, with an average absolute error of 11.7 percentage points. We saw similar results in 2024, though there were far fewer Senate primary polls that cycle — just 50 polls were conducted within 3 months of a Senate primary and disclosed their methodology. Of those, we see around 15 percentage points in absolute error on the margin between the top two candidates in polls that include text-to-web (14.7), live phone (15.9), and online opt-in panel (15.0), but just 7.5 percentage points for polls that are exclusively live phone (take that with a grain of salt: there are only 4 such surveys).

All this may be a sign that including more live phone responses in primary polling could be helpful for pollsters that can afford it. Primary voters tend to be older and more engaged — exactly the kind of voters that answer phone polls more often. But the AAPOR results from last year suggest this may not replicate in the general election.

Are there really a lot of new pollsters this year?

There’s also no evidence that new pollsters are flooding polling aggregates at a higher-than-normal rate. So far this cycle, we have added 65 brand new pollsters to our database. That may seem like a lot, but it’s only three more than during the 2024 cycle, and less than the 75+ new pollsters we saw in 2020 and 2016. While it’s more than we’ve seen in a midterm cycle going back to at least 2010, the differences aren’t all that large — there were 57 new pollsters in 2010, for example. In addition to totally new groups, we’ve seen 12 new collaborations between existing firms (these are often bipartisan teams working together in an attempt to produce more neutral results), a number that’s also in line with historical precedent.

And not every one of those are actually “new” pollsters — this analysis counts every pollster whose first poll in our database was released this cycle. But many of these pollsters are well-known and established firms who just hadn’t yet released survey data that included a question we track (like presidential approval or horse race polling). BSP Research, for example, has been around for 20 years producing surveys mostly focused on Hispanic and Latino voters, but their first poll asking a question we track in our database was released earlier this month. Same with the University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation, whose issue polling we’ve cited many times over the years (including in last week’s Trendline!), but whose congressional approval question in March was the first to make it into our database.

We still have two months to go before the election, which means more new pollsters could (and probably will) show up. But as of now, we don’t have any evidence that the number of new pollsters this cycle is alarming or unusual in any meaningful way. While that might not align with many people’s perceptions of the state of the polling industry, this sort of churn isn’t really out of the ordinary.

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There’s no need to panic

The upshot: All of these problems have been around for a long time. And the Times should know that, because they seem to write at least one article every cycle about how the polling industry is blowing it again. Here’s one from 2024, 2022, and one of several from 2020. And they aren’t the only ones — Politico publicly frets at least once per election, too.

In fact, a lot of the concern going around in the last week seems to have sprung up from what appears to be a total coincidence. In a very short span of time, we saw two high-profile (but only slightly larger-than-average) polling misses (in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary and Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary), a completely fake pollster, and some shenanigans from existing pollsters. While, as we’ve documented here, all of these issues are pretty par for the course, their confluence during the dog days of August seems to have catapulted some normal issues into the spotlight. And despite all the hand-wringing we see each cycle about the slow death of the polling industry, pollsters in 2022 had one of the most accurate midterm elections in the history of scientific polling.

You don’t have to trust any individual poll, or any individual pollster, to give you the best read on a given race — and actually you shouldn’t! We maintain polling averages precisely to avoid that problem. And while we’ve been banging the drum about high average error in Senate and gubernatorial primary polls for months, general election polling is typically much more accurate. Of course, we can’t know yet just how accurate the polls will be in November, but there’s nothing especially troubling about the polls this cycle. Polling is getting a lot harder, and much more expensive, but there is no evidence it is getting worse.

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For decades, Republicans have built their congressional strength on support from rural voters, racking up huge margins in some of the most sparsely populated areas of the country. That advantage isn’t going away any time soon, but an average of recent generic ballot polling shows that Democrats are making significant inroads with these voters, posing another challenge to the GOP’s aim of retaining their congressional majorities.

The shifts among urban and suburban voters this cycle compared to recent cycles are roughly in line with what we would expect, given that the overall generic ballot has moved about 8 points toward Democrats since President Donald Trump took office. While the party isn’t quite at the massive 33-point margin among urban voters they had in 2018’s blue wave election, they’ve still significantly improved their numbers since the last midterm in 2022, and currently hold an estimated 27-point advantage among city-dwellers in an average of generic ballot polls.1 Democrats have particularly gained support from urban voters over the last year, with these voters shifting leftward by nearly 11 points since last August, while the general public has shifted only 3 points leftward.

Democrats are also performing quite well with suburban voters, who comprise about half of the electorate and who, at least since 2016, usually lean slightly Republican. Democrats currently hold a 6-point advantage in the suburbs, which would be the first lead for the party among these voters in over a decade if it holds. A solid Democratic performance here would boost the party’s chances of winning key congressional races stretching from the Rust Belt all the way to Florida.

But the most interesting numbers can be found among a demographic Democrats have struggled with for years. While rural voters have long voted heavily Republican, recent data indicates they could be much less favorable to the GOP this year. Since Trump’s inauguration last January, our average of generic ballot polls shows rural voters shifting 13 points toward Democrats, solidly outpacing movement among both urban and suburban voters. Most of that change came early on in Trump’s second term, with rural voters shifting 10 points leftward in the first year of the administration. The GOP’s current 13-point polling advantage is right in line with their 14-point lead in 2018, when Democrats scored massive wins across the country.

Take these shifts with a healthy amount of uncertainty, though. Between Trump’s inauguration and mid-April, every geographical crosstab in our database came from just three pollsters: Echelon Insights, Cygnal, and McLaughlin & Associates. This doesn’t mean the data is wrong — Echelon and Cygnal, for instance, are reputable firms that produce high-quality data. But an average based on data from just three pollsters will generally be less accurate than one that comprises a larger selection of polls. Starting around April 15, 2025, many more pollsters began to release generic ballot polls with urbanicity crosstabs and the average becomes a bit steadier, though it still points to a strong Democratic overperformance, particularly among rural voters.

It’s impossible to know for sure what exactly is behind this larger shift among rural voters. Many farmers have been hit hard by tariffs and inflation, as well as uncertainty from an unfinished and convoluted farm bill that could all be contributing to frustration with the party in power. But issue polling can give us some more concrete clues.

Take the most recent Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research poll for Fox News (Jul. 17 - 20, 2026), for instance, where 51 percent of rural respondents said they feel betrayed by politicians from their own party, more than the share of urban or suburban respondents who said the same. And 68 percent of rural voters said it was more important to bring in new people to the government than to keep people with experience, while just 31 percent said the opposite. That matches the number of suburban voters who agreed, and far exceeds the 53 percent of urban voters who said it was more important to bring new people in. When asked how closely tied voters thought each party was to elite interests, 68 percent of rural voters said the GOP was cozy with elites, while only 56 percent said the same of Democrats.

In isolation, these could just be seen as general anti-government sentiments rather than a backlash specifically against the GOP. But when taken together, it’s easier to see how an anti-establishment rural electorate might put up stronger-than-normal resistance to Republicans this cycle. That could matter greatly in November — GOP backsliding in rural areas could imperil their chances in close states with large rural populations like Iowa and Alaska, which have competitive Senate and House seats on the line. And if rural voters continue to trend more Democratic through the general election, seats like MT-01 and CO-03 that were previously considered to be a bit of a reach for Democrats might start to look more like toss-ups.

It’s important to note, though, that while these numbers are interesting, crosstab data can be really noisy sometimes. Take, for instance, a Cygnal poll in April that showed Democrats down 30 points among rural voters, followed by a John Zogby Strategies poll two weeks later that showed Democrats down just 9 points. That’s why we take an average, which helps to smooth out these differences. It certainly doesn’t mean we should disregard the data, or that these polls have nothing useful to tell us, just that we should be extra careful when drawing conclusions from them. Democrats are doing well in other metrics, like special elections in rural areas, that also point to a strong midterm showing for the party. But the best way to consume polling data is to understand the inherent uncertainty that comes with it, and these crosstabs are no exception.

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Other polling nuggets

• Karoline Leavitt is stepping down as White House press secretary, citing a desire to spend more time with her young children (Leavitt became the first press secretary in U.S. history to give birth while holding the job). According to a YouGov poll (Aug. 17, 2026), she’s seen as the best press secretary to serve Trump, with 19 percent saying she’s been Trump’s best press secretary, and no other spokesperson getting more than 5 percent. This is especially true among Republicans: 40 percent say Leavitt has been Trump’s best press secretary. Two-thirds of Democrats say none of them have been the best, and none of Trump’s five press secretaries got more than 3 percent among Democrats. Still, across the political spectrum, Americans approve of her decision to leave the job, with 52 percent approving and just 8 percent disapproving. Approval is especially strong among Democrats, at 60 percent, while 53 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of independents approve of her choice.

• In the latest release from the University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation, in polls conducted nationally and across competitive states and districts in May and June, a majority of voters in every jurisdiction polled agreed on three out of four mechanisms to reduce the Social Security budget shortfall, while views on the last mechanism were more mixed. After being told that the policies were aimed at reducing the shortfall, voters were asked if they favored or opposed them. The most preferred policy was to subject income over $400,000 to payroll taxes (currently, all income over $185,000 is exempt from Social Security taxes), which was supported by at least 70 percent of respondents in every state and district polled, as well as 79 percent nationally. Reducing benefits to the top 20 percent of lifetime earners was supported by 65 percent nationally, and at least 56 percent in each state and district. These two proposals, garnering the most support out of the four, would both target high-earners to try to shore up the Social Security trust.
  
  Proposals that would hit more universally are slightly less popular. Increasing payroll taxes from 6.2 to 6.5 percent was supported by 62 percent nationally, and at least 56 percent in each state and district polled. Increasing the retirement age from 67 to 68, however, was more controversial. Fifty-six percent of voters nationally said they favored the proposal, but swing states and districts are mixed. The proposal was under 50 percent support in four geographies, and at 50 percent in another three. Democrats seem especially skeptical, with eight jurisdictions showing Democratic support under 50 percent, compared with just three showing Republican support under 50 percent.

• A significant majority of Americans say that corruption influences the decisions made by the federal government, according to a new Ipsos/Reuters poll (Aug. 14 - 17, 2026). A whopping 74 percent said that corruption influences the federal government “quite a bit” or “a great deal,” including 81 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents, and 71 percent of Republicans. But the closer you get to home, the less people think corruption plays a role. Asked how much corruption influences decisions made by their own state government, 57 percent said quite a bit or a great deal, and when it comes to their local governments, just 44 percent said the same.

• Among a variety of popular sports and fitness activities, running is by far the most popular outdoor sport. In an Ipsos poll (Jun. 26 - 28, 2026) released this week, 38 percent of Americans said they had gone running or jogging for exercise in the last year, far more than the second most popular activity, basketball, which 14 percent said they had played in the last year. Young Americans were especially likely to say they went running, with 51 percent of those under the age of 35 saying they had, compared to 49 percent of those aged 35-49, 29 percent of those aged 50-64, and 17 percent of those over the age of 65. The only sport that had more participants among those aged 65 and older than those under the age of 35 was golf, with 12 percent of the oldest respondents saying they had played golf in the last year, compared to 11 percent of the youngest.

Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 1:00 PM Eastern on Aug. 21, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot stayed steady at Democrats +6 this week. We saw almost no change in the past week, with both Democrats and Republicans moving up by 0.1 percentage point.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s approval rating among U.S. adults remained underwater by 24 percentage points this week. His disapproval fell slightly from 60.4 percent last week to 59.9 percent this week, while his approval rating dropped from 36.3 percent to 36.1 percent.

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To this end, we publish a set of methodological and ethical standards we apply to publicly released polls before surveys appear on our website. If a pollster fails to meet these standards, or refuses to answer our questions, we do not include their data in our work.

Today, FiftyPlusOne is permanently banning the use of any future data from The Public Sentiment Institute, and suspending the use of data from Patriot Polling until and unless they sufficiently respond to our methodological inquiries. We have discovered evidence that suggests both firms conducted surveys for political campaigns without disclosing their clients publicly. All surveys from each pollster that exist in our database at publication will be marked as partisan, as we cannot be confident they were conducted on a nonpartisan basis as the pollsters claim.

Additionally, we are permanently removing from our website all polls released by The Public Sentiment Institute, after the company admitted it fabricated vote-choice data for select respondents. This fabrication appears to have boosted the poll numbers of the political candidate that paid TPSI for polling services.

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1. Undisclosed partisan work

Late last week, FiftyPlusOne received a tip that TPSI had allegedly published campaign internals for the James Fishback campaign without disclosing that those polls were funded by a candidate. This is in explicit violation of our ethical standards for pollsters, which state, “Pollsters operating on behalf of a party, campaign, PAC, or other political client will clearly label their polls as such. Pollsters will clearly specify sponsorship on each poll.”

Because we flag for readers when polls are part of a campaign operation — and exclude pollsters who violate our public criteria from our site — we promptly went into investigation mode. In the course of that investigation, we identified a second pollster who may have engaged in similar activity.

We looked up public records on spending for the Fishback campaign, and uncovered the following facts.

1. On June 9, 2026, the Fishback campaign paid The Public Sentiment Institute $1,575, with the memo line “Polling/survey.” The Public Sentiment Institute later released two surveys of the Florida gubernatorial primary, on June 10, 2026 and June 30, 2026, neither of which includes any indication of sponsorship by any outside group.

2. On August 13, 2026, The Public Sentiment Institute released another survey of the Florida gubernatorial primary that included the statement “This survey was designed, funded and conducted by The Public Sentiment Institute. No candidate, campaign, party committee or outside organization sponsored, commissioned or paid for this research.”

3. On January 21, 2026, the Fishback campaign paid Lucca Ruggieri, CEO of Patriot Polling, $1,500, with the memo line “Polling.” On February 2, 2026, Patriot Polling released a survey of the Florida gubernatorial primary that does not include any indication of sponsorship by any outside group. To the contrary, the release includes the phrase “we have decided to conduct a head-to-head poll,” suggesting that the survey was conducted independently. The survey memo is written favorably toward Fishback.

4. On July 29, 2026, Patriot Polling released an internal survey of the Florida 2nd Congressional District general election, conducted on behalf of the Keith Gross campaign. An earlier Patriot Polling survey, released February 11, 2026, of the Florida 2nd Congressional District Republican primary election, did not disclose any sponsorship. We did not find any evidence of payments to Patriot Polling or Lucca Ruggieri in Gross’ FEC filings.

Last Friday, we reached out to Patriot Polling and The Public Sentiment Institute to ask whether any of the polls noted above were undisclosed campaign internals. We followed up with them this week but did not receive any additional information from the pollsters. We also contacted the Fishback and Gross campaigns with requests for comment and have not heard back.

Failure to disclose sponsorship doesn’t automatically mean we exclude a pollster from our database. There are a few other pollsters that have a history both of (a) answering our direct questions and (b) not including sponsorship information in their releases that we continue to aggregate. We simply treat all of their polls as partisan, even if they do not specify a partisan sponsor.

However, failing to respond to methodological inquiries renders a firm’s data unusable, since we cannot vet the pollster per our published methodological and ethical standards.

2. Manufacturing vote-choice data for individual respondents

After we finalized an original draft of this article that included just the findings of undisclosed partisanship above, The Public Sentiment Institute published a post-mortem of their Florida polls, which significantly overstated support for James Fishback relative both to other polls of the race and election results. The report concluded that their error was two-fold: First, TPSI says, they dramatically overestimated turnout among young voters. That is not a methods violation, as pollsters often make judgement calls about the expected electorate — but their second reason is.

TPSI admits that the firm changed the stated vote choice of certain respondents who favored a different candidate, current Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, turning these respondents into supporters of James Fishback based on their belief that Fishback should have been polling higher. The report states:

Jay Collins was polling in the twenties in our data. That did not align with our read of the race, and we concluded it might reflect a data-quality problem specific to our text-message panel. Acting on that conclusion, we identified respondents who selected Collins but whose broader profile aligned with a competing coalition, and leaned those respondents toward James Fishback (emphasis ours).

This was the most consequential error in the project, and it was ours alone. … We reallocated real support away from a candidate (emphasis ours) on the basis of a suspicion that our own data contradicted. No survey methodology should permit a respondent’s stated preference to be reassigned because an analyst finds it implausible, and ours will not again.

This decision is an obvious violation of standard polling practices, which, as they themselves state, do not “permit a respondent’s stated preference to be reassigned because an analyst finds it implausible.” This decision is made all the more questionable by the undisclosed relationship between the pollster and the Fishback campaign.

FiftyPlusOne’s methodological and ethical standards include the following items:

1. All polls should have clear mechanisms in place to attempt to build a representative sample of the population or electorate. These mechanisms may vary; the most common is to weight the sample to a population benchmark, but other statistical or sampling techniques may also be used in place of or in addition to weighting to adjust the sample.

2. Pollsters will not knowingly select research tools or methods of analysis that yield misleading conclusions.

3. Pollsters will not falsify or fabricate data.

It is our opinion, as experts in aggregating and conducting polls, that switching individual-level vote-choice data in your poll to generate a result that is more in line with your “expectations” (and your preferred candidate) is tantamount to falsifying data, and that this behavior may have also been in violation of the other two standards cited here. We no longer have faith that TPSI is conducting honest research, and are permanently discontinuing use of its surveys. This specific poll will be removed from our database, as it was not conducted in a scientific manner.

These ethical issues coincidentally follow an instance of outright fabrication discovered earlier this week. A “polling” firm called Median Strategies, which appeared out of thin air two weeks ago and released “results” from a handful of “polls” across the country, admitted to the Los Angeles Times that its results were entirely fabricated as a “social experiment” designed to see how easy it would be to get the media and public to believe bogus data. It’s unclear if this was a real experiment or just the firm’s excuse after multiple organizations (including FiftyPlusOne) requested methodological information that it clearly did not have.

Responding to the Median Strategies story, the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) released the following statement on Wednesday.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research, the leading association of public opinion and survey research professionals, strongly condemns the fabrication of data in any polling or public opinion research. Intentionally misleading the public is a serious breach of ethics and undermines legitimate polling and public opinion work.

Legitimate polls are based on responses from the public. [...]

“It is extremely disturbing that this organization produced and distributed fabricated data undermining trust in public opinion and election polling,” said Mary Losch, President of AAPOR. “Professional polling organizations are transparent, ethical, and work hard to provide critical information to the public and other stakeholders. It is important that we don’t conflate fraudulent activity like this with legitimate election polling.”

If that approach is good enough for AAPOR, it’s good enough for us. (In fact, our ethical standards are in part derived from AAPOR’s own Code of Professional Ethics and Practices.)

Responding to email outreach before this story was published, The Public Sentiment Institute produced the following comment:

At TPSI, we are committed to transparency and eager to clarify any inaccuracies or falsehoods.

Patriot Polling did not reply to multiple attempts at outreach.

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At FiftyPlusOne, we only aggregate real surveys that we can verify

At FiftyPlusOne, our goal is to provide an accurate representation of what public opinion is on any given issue or election, as measured by methodologically transparent, honestly conducted polls. We take this mission seriously and go to great lengths to vet all pollsters that appear on our page. We do not maintain that pollsters have to be accurate (we can compensate for pollster (in)accuracy in our models), but firms do have to be able to convince us that they are real.

These standards are why, for example, FiftyPlusOne never aggregated so-called “polls” from Median Strategies. When we contacted them to ask questions about their methodology and company, they didn’t respond, so we didn’t republish their data on our site.

The polling industry and aggregates like ours are built on mutual trust. We can’t guarantee that everybody in this space is operating in good faith, but we do our best to vet new pollsters, have ongoing relationships and communication with many firms and sponsors, and hopefully maintain trust with our audience that the work we publish is legitimate. If pollsters do not respond when we have questions about how they generate their data, we cannot verify that legitimacy. And aggregating data we cannot verify would violate the trust that readers put in us.

The Public Sentiment Institute is now permanently banned, and Patriot Polling is now indefinitely suspended, from the FiftyPlusOne database, aggregates, models, and forecasts. Any future firms founded or managed by Lester Tellez or Dustin Smith (TPSI) are likewise banned, as are surveys sponsored by organizations affiliated with these individuals, such as On Point Politics. Future firms founded or managed by Lucca Ruggieri or Roberto Jay (Patriot Polling) are subject to the same suspension as Patriot Polling.

In keeping with historical tradition established at FiveThirtyEight, previous polls conducted by Patriot Polling will remain on our site, as they contain important context for understanding our polling averages at the time of their release, but all such surveys will be reclassified as partisan. If Patriot Polling responds to our methodological inquiries and sufficiently assures us these issues will not happen again, we will consider lifting their suspension and resuming collection of their polls.

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We’re just about 80 days from the 2026 midterm elections, and voters are starting to tune into the race a bit more. Much of the coverage surrounding the midterms so far has focused on each party’s primaries, but that leaves out a crucial demographic that is almost certain to decide ultimate control of Congress in November. With that in mind, this week’s Trendline will take a closer look at independent voters: where they stand ahead of November, and the issues they care most about.

In recent years, the number of Americans who identify as political independents has been growing, according to Gallup’s tracker. Since 2008, the percentage of Americans who consider themselves independent has risen by 10 percent, with a record 45 percent identifying as an independent in 2025. This trend is especially pronounced with young voters; majorities of both Gen Z and Millennials say they are independents, while among Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation, it’s closer to a third.

It may come as no surprise that voters who identify as politically independent have a dour view of the two parties. According to a poll from the Marquette Law School (Jul. 22 - 29, 2026), just 24 percent of “pure” independents (those that say they do not lean toward either Republicans or Democrats) have a favorable view of the Democratic party, and 15 percent have a favorable view of the Republican party. They’re also not so hot on the president: the same poll showed President Donald Trump’s favorability underwater among pure independents by 57 percentage points.

This frustration with political parties manifests in other ways, too. In a CNN/SSRS poll (May 7 - 31, 2026), independents were more likely than partisans to say they didn’t follow politics at all — 14 percent said so, compared to 4 percent of Democrats and Republicans. On the other end of the spectrum, 42 percent of Democrats said they “frequently seek out the latest political news,” a sentiment shared by 39 percent of Republicans and just 25 percent of independents.

CNN/SSRS also found that independents are less likely to be registered to vote, with 67 percent saying they were registered while more than 80 percent of partisans were. And like Gallup, they found independents to be younger than partisans, with 63 percent of independents under the age of 50.

When it comes to how they’re feeling about America, the picture is just as bad as how they feel about the two parties. According to YouGov/The Economist tracking data, 68 percent of registered independent voters say the economy is getting worse, higher than at any time in the last five years since July 2022, and 11 points higher than among registered voters overall. Similarly, 74 percent say that the country is on the wrong track, compared to 64 percent of registered voters overall.

This higher level of dissatisfaction among independents isn’t new, but it wasn’t always like this. During Trump’s first term (and before), independent voters generally looked similar to the nation in terms of their views of the country. But after Biden’s inauguration in 2021, independent voters started to turn more pessimistic than the overall electorate, routinely dragging behind the country on whether things are going in the right direction. After Trump’s second inauguration, they briefly improved their outlook, before dropping below the nation overall once again.

Given this sour outlook, it may come as no surprise that independents are not particularly fond of the president’s handling of his job. Trump’s approval rating hasn’t been above 30 with independents since early March, shortly after the latest conflict in Iran began. (For details on how this average was calculated, please refer to the methodology statement in this article.)

That low rating places Trump’s net approval among independents in his second term roughly 15.5 percentage points lower than his net overall approval rating, which currently sits at -24 percentage points. On average, throughout his second term, his approval rating among independents has been 15 points lower than his topline approval rating, a seemingly new phenomenon in the current political environment.

For example, in Trump’s first term, YouGov/Economist tracking data showed that among registered voters, the absolute difference in Trump’s net approval rating among independents and his overall net approval averaged around two percentage points, and wasn’t consistently higher or lower (his read was better with independents in 100 out of 207 polls, worse in 80, and the same in 27). In August 2018, before his first midterms, Trump’s approval with registered independents was hovering in the mid-40s in YouGov’s data, and never fell below 35 percent in the entire term. In the latest YouGov/Economist poll (Aug. 7 - 10, 2026), Trump’s approval rating among registered independents is 25 percent.

All this dissatisfaction is showing in the generic ballot polling among independents as well. In the last year, the number of independents who say they plan to vote for Democrats has grown by almost five points, and they now prefer a Democratic candidate by just over 15 points. (For details on how this average was calculated, see the methodology statement in this article.)

This 15-point margin, if it holds, is significant. In the 2018 midterms during Trump’s first term, exit polls estimated that independents voted for Democrats by a 12-point margin, and in 2022, they favored Democrats by two points. But there’s still a significant proportion of undecided voters here; even now, less than 100 days before the election, 28 percent of independents remain undecided.

There’s also a chance that a lot of these independent voters don’t show up to the polls at all. In a Change Research poll (Jul. 13 - 17, 2026), when asked to rate how motivated they were to vote on a 10-point scale, just 58 percent of pure independents rated their motivation at eight or above, compared with 89 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans. Twelve percent of independent voters rated their motivation to vote in November as a 0 out of 10, while just 2 percent of Democrats and 3 percent of Republicans said the same.

Independent voters may be the key to the midterms, with Democrats and Republicans nearly maxed out on their own party bases already. If Republicans can shore up their numbers with independents, they may stand a chance of stemming the blue wave that Democrats are hoping for. But given their general dissatisfaction with the state of the country, it may be a tall order.

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Other polling nuggets

• NIL isn’t just taking over college sports anymore: In a poll from Ipsos/The Associated Press (Jul. 21 - 26, 2026), 44 percent of parents of school-aged children who participate in sports said that their child earning money for their name, image, and likeness in the future played a role in their decision to enroll them in sports, including 18 percent who said it played a major role. But NIL considerations still aren’t the main reasons parents are enrolling their kids in sports: Around two-thirds said that earning an athletic scholarship or improving their college acceptance odds played a role. Parents are also concerned about potential injuries in K-12 sports — 39 percent of parents said they would encourage their child to play a sport other than football due to concussion concerns, while 35 percent said they wouldn’t and 25 percent weren’t sure.

• In a recent YouGov poll (Aug. 6 - 10, 2026), 59 percent of men said that it was important to them to be seen by others as manly or masculine, while 41 percent said it was not important. That number was slightly lower than the share of women who said it was important to them to be seen as feminine (63 percent). Women were also less concerned about being publicly shamed for their gender expression: 22 percent of men in the poll said they worried they would be judged or criticized for acting too feminine, while just 14 percent of women said they worried about being judged for acting too masculine.

• While Trump has spent years almost entirely reshaping the Republican Party in his image, GOP voters aren’t necessarily identifying themselves as closely with the president. In the latest Cygnal poll (Aug. 6 - 7, 2026), 54 percent of Republicans said they considered themselves more of a “traditional conservative Republican,” while only 44 percent said they identified more as a “Trump Republican.” On the Democratic side, 61 percent said they were more of a “progressive Democrat,” while just a third considered themselves more of a “traditional Democrat.”

• YouGov recently asked (Aug. 11, 2026) Americans how they pack their clothes in a suitcase. Most (58 percent) said they fold their clothes when packing, while 27 percent said they roll them. Clothes-packing experts (because apparently that’s a thing!) generally consider rolling your clothes to save more space than folding, though there are some trade-offs. But regardless of whether you fold or roll, at least you aren’t as chaotic as the 5 percent of Americans who say they just stuff their clothes into their suitcase, or the other 5 percent who say they don’t use a suitcase at all. Whatever gets you to the airport on time, I guess.

Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 1:00 PM Eastern on Aug. 14, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot rounded to 6 percentage points this week. Both Democrats and Republicans saw some improvement in their numbers, with Democrats increasing from 49 last week to 49.4 this week, and Republicans increasing from 42.5 to 43.3.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s approval rating among U.S. adults fell about a percentage point on net this week from where it was last week. His approval number sank about half a point from 36.3 to 36.8, while his disapproval rating grew from 59.9 to 60.4. He also hit an all time low this week of 36.1 to 60.8 on August 11.

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But as friend of the site Nathaniel Rakich has frequently pointed out, while in raw dollars these numbers are eye-popping, most election finance trackers don’t adjust for inflation. This makes it hard to know whether spending in 2026 really is at an all-time high. So today, we’re looking at outside spending in every primary season since 2010 (when the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited outside spending in federal elections), adjusted to June 2026 dollars, to see how things have changed over time. Is 2026 shaping up to be the most expensive election year on record?

To do this, we’re relying on data from OpenSecrets on outside spending in Federal primary races. OpenSecrets tracks every race where the total outside expenditures exceed $1,000; we’ve inflation-adjusted this from 2010 dollars to look at every partisan primary for House or Senate with at least $1,540 in outside spending in June 2026 dollars. (From here on out, all dollar figures should be read as inflation-adjusted to June 2026.)

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Outside actors are spending more money in more races

The first thing we noticed in the data is the dramatic increase in the number of races where outside groups have spent enough money that they show up in OpenSecrets’ data. In 2010, just 112 partisan primaries saw more than $1,540 in outside spending. While growth hasn’t always been steady, the number of primaries in which outside groups are spending money has slowly grown over time; by 2024, the number of races in which outside groups spent more than $1,540 had more than doubled to 241. This growth has been almost entirely in House primaries, where prior to 2018, typically fewer than 100 races saw significant outside spending, but ever since have had over 175 primaries with outside spending each cycle.

This growth is particularly high in Republican primaries. While outside spending has been growing among both parties, in every single cycle, the number of Republican primaries with more than $1,540 in outside spending exceeded the number of Democratic races, sometimes by more than 2-to-1.

The amounts outside groups are spending are increasing, too. If we consider the 50 most expensive House races in each cycle, for example, the average amount spent by outside groups has steadily grown, from less than $200,000 in 2010 to over $3.7 million in 2024. In 2010, just one House race saw more than $1 million in outside spending; in 2022 and 2024, only three of the 50 most expensive House primaries had less than $1 million in outside spending, and both cycles had three races where outside groups spent over $10 million.

Republicans are spending more and more in high-stakes Senate primaries

In 2014, incumbent Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran faced a Tea Party challenger, then-State Senator Chris McDaniel. McDaniel was endorsed by typical Tea Party actors, like Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund. In the previous cycle, a Tea Party nominee had knocked off an incumbent Republican in Indiana, only to go on to lose in November, so the GOP was taking no chances. In the 2012 Indiana primary, outside spending totaled just shy of $6.5 million. Spending more than doubled to over $13 million in the Mississippi race.

Cochran went on to defeat McDaniel in a runoff by just two percentage points. And since then, GOP spending in races with potentially problematic primary challengers has continued to grow. In 2016, nearly $16 million was spent in the New Hampshire primary where incumbent Kelly Ayotte faced a challenge from her right from former state senator Jim Rubens. In 2018, over $17 million was spent by outside groups in Wisconsin, where then-State Senator Leah Vukmir was locked in a tight race with Tea Party conservative Kevin Nicholson. In 2020, almost $18 million was spent in a close contest between incumbent Senator Roger Marshall and controversial former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach.

In each of these cases, the establishment candidate went on to win their race. And in 2022, when a number of races saw less mainstream candidates challenging the incumbent, outside GOP spending exploded. Seven Republican primary contests for U.S. Senate in 2022 saw more than $18 million in spending: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Alabama, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona. These 7 contests are among the 8 Senate primaries with the most outside spending since Citizens United. (The other one is the Ohio Republican primary in 2024, in 5th place.) On average in these 7 races, outside groups spent $29,162,201 in the Republican primary. The most expensive primary of all was the 2022 Ohio Senate contest, a tight 3-way contest between now-Vice President JD Vance, then-State Senator Matt Dolan, and former Ohio treasurer Josh Mandel.

Republican groups also typically shell out more in, and in more, Senate races than Democrats. In every cycle since Citizens United other than 2020, there are more GOP races in the top 20 most expensive primaries than Democratic races (in 2020, there are 10 of each). (See the table at the end of the article for a full list of primaries and their inflation-adjusted outside spending.)

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Spending in nonpartisan primaries has also grown

In nonpartisan primaries, where all candidates run on the same ballot regardless of party, outside spending has also grown in the years since Citizens United. Because only four states use a nonpartisan primary system (and in 2010, only one state did – Washington), there are fewer of these races each cycle, but more and more are seeing outside groups spending to promote candidates.

On the Senate side, there are very few nonpartisan primaries to consider. Only three have ever topped $1 million: Alaska in 2022, Louisiana in 2014, and California in 2024. Just one of these races topped $20 million: the open primary to succeed Laphonza Butler in California in 2024, which cost outside groups nearly $23 million.

With over $60 million in outside spending, Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary now indeed appears to far and away top the list of most expensive primaries in history. Due to the premium Republicans place on their primary elections, Texas’ Republican Senate primary also will likely land near the top — once all the final reporting is made this year.

When the dust settles at the end of the primary cycle, and all the FEC reports are finalized, we’ll find out for sure if 2026 continues the trend of increased spending across the board, or if just a few high-profile races drove enormous dollars.

For now, what we can definitely say is that, even if you adjust for inflation, elections are getting more and more expensive every year.

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Want even more? Here’s the complete data we used for this article, for you to play with yourself.

Methodology

Primary expenditures by outside groups were gathered from data published by OpenSecrets. For partisan races, spending conducted either for or against Republicans was counted as spending in the Republican primary, and spending conducted either for or against Democrats was counted as spending in the Democratic primary. For nonpartisan races, all spending was included.

Inflation adjustments were made using the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator. Each race was adjusted to June 2026 dollars1 based on the month in which the primary was held. Election dates were drawn from the Federal Election Commission.

The earliest dates of primaries in this dataset were in March 2010. In June 2026 dollars, $1,000 in March 2010 would be worth $1,534.49. We thus used $1,534.49 in inflation-adjusted dollars as the minimum for a race to appear in the dataset, to ensure comparable data over cycles.

Footnotes

One of those inputs is, of course, the polls — specifically, averages of polls. We have one set of computer programs that takes in the polls for every statewide and federal election in the country, adjusts them, and calculates an average estimate of support for each candidate over time, and then another program that reads in those estimates and feeds them through the forecast model.

Earlier this summer, I squirreled these polling averages away on a cloud computer server somewhere in the U.S. (probably in Ashburn, Virginia), where I left them to tick away each day while the team worked on getting our forecast model up. Now that it is, we had some time last week to put together a set of new graphs of these averages and publish them for everyone to use.

These averages are now up online at the FiftyPlusOne website. Below, I quickly run through our new estimates in each competitive U.S. Senate race.

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Georgia

Jon Ossoff is in the strongest position of any Democrat in the country, currently leading Republican opponent Mike Collins by 8.6 points. The incumbent has gained steadily since March, when the average opened at D+4.4. It peaked at D+12 on July 1 before settling back.

The caveat in Georgia (and most Senate contests so far) is that the polling is thin. Georgia has produced only five head-to-head polls this year, and they disagree sharply. A poll for Fox News by Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. had Ossoff ahead by 13 points in late June (which caused the July 1 spike in his support); three days later, Wick had him ahead by just 3.8. The most recent, Fabrizio Lee/Impact Research/AARP on July 16, split the difference at D+9 — and nothing has been published since.

Judging by current polls, this is unlikely to be a must-watch, uber-competitive race.

North Carolina

Another state with a big Democratic lead is North Carolina. Former governor Roy Cooper leads Michael Whatley, the current head of the Republican National Committee, by 8.0 points. A month ago, the race sat at D+8.7. Among the competitive races, this has been the most stable one (once we set aside a thin-polling artifact in January that briefly pushed the average above D+21, before correcting within a day)

The recent high-quality polling tells a consistent story. A New York Times/Siena University survey had Cooper at D+7 in late June, and Beacon/Shaw/Fox News had him at D+9 in July. More recently, Change Research had him at D+9 on August 1.

That is a strong position for a popular former governor in a state Republicans once expected to hold comfortably.

Maine

Incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins currently trails former President of the Maine Senate Troy Jackson by 2.9 points — but this is the newest race with a small sample size. Our average begins just on July 6, and includes only five head-to-head polls conducted since.

The polling to date is all over the place. Public Policy Polling gives Jackson a 5-point margin. Z to A Research has come out on the low end, at R+2 the following day. Both of these polls, however, were conducted during the contest to replace Graham Platner on the ballot, and were sponsored by candidates or organizations supporting particular candidates in that convention. More recently, the University of New Hampshire has pegged Jackson at D+3, and Hart Research has the race at D+4. The average has drifted down from its D+5 opening as the Republican-leaning results have been incorporated.

But poll watchers, be warned: Collins has survived big deficits in the past, including in 2020 when challenger Sara Gideon led her by 8 points on Election Eve. Treat the polls as but a rough guide in the Pine Tree state.

Texas

State House Rep. James Talarico leads State Attorney General Ken Paxton by 2.2 points in what has become a genuine race, despite the state’s typical lean hard to the right. The average began dead even in November, slipped to R+1.3 in February, then climbed to D+5.4 by mid-May before easing back.

Texas is the most heavily polled race on the board, with 24 head-to-head surveys. The late-July results cluster tightly, and all show a narrow Democratic lead: Texas Southern University at D+2, ReconMR/Siena University/Texas A&M University at D+4, Wedgewood (an upstart firm) at D+2, and YouGov Blue at D+3.

Ohio

In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown trailed Jon Husted by 2.5 points in December, but he now leads by 2.0 — a swing of 4.5 points.

Since June, the Democrat has seen a flurry of good polls, including one from Beacon/Shaw/Fox News at D+8 and another from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/Impact Research/AARP at D+3. But Siena University/New York Times then had Husted ahead by 3 in late June, and Ohio has since gone quiet. There has not been a head-to-head poll in six weeks.

The current number therefore rests on polling that is now well over a month old, and should be treated with some caution.

Iowa

Ashley Hinson leads Josh Turek by 0.9 points in a race that has tightened considerably since the spring — and marks a big shift left since 2024. Turek trailed by 3 points in February and by as many as 4 in April. He briefly took a narrow lead in late June before slipping back. The race remains a tossup. The only poll released in the last 6 weeks in this contest, from Emerson College/Nexstar, shows Hinson ahead by 3 points.

Michigan

This is the closest race on the map. Failed 2024 Republican nominee Mike Rogers leads Abdul El-Sayed by 1.3 points after reversing a Democratic advantage that stood at D+3.3 as recently as July 8.

But the shift came largely from a single poll. The Glengariff Group’s July 24 survey had El-Sayed at 38.7 percent and Rogers at 49.0 percent — a roughly 10-point Republican margin, far outside anything other surveys in the race. But because of a dearth of recent data, when the poll entered the average on July 28, the line moved just over four points in a single day.

Subsequent polls were much closer: Mitchell had the race tied, SoCal had it at R+1, and EPIC-MRA had it at R+3. The average has since stabilized around R+1.

Whether the Glengariff result captured a real shift or merely reflected the firm’s house effect is the central question in Michigan. This is the fourth poll Glengariff has released in the race, and all four have shown Rogers ahead of El-Sayed by more than the average did at the time — by 6.1, 6.4, 4.9, and now 10.3 points.

Alaska

We don’t have an average for Alaska up yet because the primary has not happened. Our forecast model does use these pre-primary polls, but as a policy we do not publish general-election averages for races that aren’t set yet.

The overall picture

There are eight potentially competitive U.S. Senate races this year. Democrats need to win in six of them to gain control of the Senate — two in the seats they currently control, plus four flips for a total of 51 seats.

Doing some unofficial averaging in Alaska, Democrats currently lead in six of these eight races. The two in which they trail — Michigan and Iowa — are both essentially tied, and Michigan has no new data since Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers won the Democratic and Republican primaries, respectively, last Tuesday. Their strongest positions, in Georgia and North Carolina, look like near locks for November.

Check out our new polling averages at FiftyPlusOne.news/averages.

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In May, the average price of gas nationwide hit $4.48. That coincided with the highest inflation rate in three years, driven primarily by a protracted war with Iran that has disrupted supply-chain routes and sent prices soaring. Since 2022, Americans have consistently ranked inflation as the among the most important issues facing the country, and they haven’t been afraid to make their concerns known at the ballot box; in the 2024 election, high inflation and the state of the economy were some of the top reasons voters elected Donald Trump.

Affordability concerns have continued to dominate the electoral conversation this cycle, with House Democrats making it their signature campaign issue, and some congressional Republicans are worried their party isn’t doing enough to address rising costs. Those are good instincts: According to polls from YouGov/The Economist, Americans are rating inflation/prices as even more important now than in 2024, and by a significant margin. In October 2024, 24 percent of Americans said inflation was the most important issue facing the country. Those numbers have grown steadily over the past year, reaching 30 percent in May and jumping to 36 percent in the most recent poll released this week.

These rising concerns aren’t just happening in the abstract — polling has also shown that Americans have changed their spending habits in response to persistent inflation. Over half of respondents in a recent poll from Ipsos (Jun. 2 - 3, 2026) said they had cut back on non-essential spending after seeing an increase in gas prices and the cost of living, while over a third said they had postponed larger expenses and bought less-expensive brands.

Congress’s apparent inaction on these issues this year has only bred further discontent among the public. The recent rise in inflation following the war with Iran has corresponded with a dramatic decline in the public’s approval of Trump’s handling of the economy. Trump’s net approval on inflation and the cost of living is now underperforming his overall net approval rating by almost 20 percentage points, and has dropped more than 40 points since the start of his term, according to an average of polls compiled by FiftyPlusOne.news and computed by our very own G. Elliott Morris. That makes it his lowest-rated issue being tracked, and a liability not just for him but Republicans as a whole this November.

The public’s deep disapproval of Trump’s handling of inflation has led to an interesting development: For the first time in a decade, more Americans trust Democrats on economic issues than Republicans, according to polling from Ipsos/Reuters. In their most recent poll (Jul. 29 - Aug. 3, 2026), 37 percent of Americans trusted Democrats more on the economy, while 36 percent preferred Republicans. Since Trump took office, the net share of Americans who trust Democrats more than Republicans on the issue has risen by over 20 points. That’s a dramatic reversal for the GOP.

What does this all mean for November? Candidates of both parties are already hammering affordability messaging, trying to position themselves as fighters for voters’ pocketbooks. But Republicans have a much harder task ahead of them. Democrats in 2024 tried desperately to disentangle themselves from former President Joe Biden’s abysmal economic ratings and the sky-high inflation that had plagued much of his term, but they were ultimately dragged down with the ship, losing the Senate and the presidency. Republicans will be hard-pressed to distance themselves from Trump’s tanking approval on inflation and the cost of living, and voters’ increasing distrust of their ability to handle the economy.

The GOP can take some comfort in the fact that most Americans aren’t single-issue voters. Other issues, like health care, social security, and democracy, also rank highly in polls and will factor into voters’ choices. And of course, not everyone who disapproves of Trump’s handling of inflation will turn out and vote blue in November. While Democrats have seen gains in the generic ballot since the beginning of the year, it hasn’t been to the same magnitude as the plummet in Trump’s approval rating. However, as we’ve noted before, the generic ballot tends to start drifting toward the out-of-power party in the last few months of the campaign season, so there’s still time for Democrats to pick up support ahead of November.

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Other polling nuggets

• As ICE has fallen from the headlines, the public’s views of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement activities have softened somewhat — though they are still not particularly positive. In an AP-NORC poll (Jul. 23 - 27, 2026), 55 percent of respondents said that the administration has gone too far in “sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities,” down from 62 percent in February. Similarly, the share who said the administration has gone too far in “restricting legal immigration” fell from 54 to 51 percent between the two surveys, and the percentage who said Trump had gone too far in “deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally” fell from 52 to 47 percent.

• Sixteen percent of Americans have experienced homelessness, according to a new YouGov poll (Jul. 28 - 30, 2026). Sixty-one percent said that homelessness in the U.S. is a very serious problem, and another 29 percent said it’s a somewhat serious problem. As for what to do about it? Most think the federal government should step in. Seventy-seven percent said that the federal government should do more to address homelessness, and 70 percent said that state and local governments should do more. Just 11 percent said that the issue is beyond the government’s control, while 75 percent said that the government can do a lot to address homelessness.

• Sixty-eight percent of Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth the costs, according to new polling from Ipsos/The Chicago Council on Global Affairs (Jul. 10 - 21, 2026). This includes 91 percent of Democrats and 76 percent of independents. Republicans, on the other hand, disagree: 63 percent told the pollsters that the war was worth the costs, while just 36 percent said it was not. Overall, the percentage of Americans who think that Iran’s nuclear program is a critical threat has been falling, now standing at 49 percent. But the percentage of Republicans who think Iran’s nuclear program is a critical threat has steadily grown since 2023, from 56 to 68 percent.

• Americans aren’t going to the movies all that much anymore: 43 percent told YouGov (Aug. 6, 2026) that they haven’t been to a theater in over a year. Even so, a majority (51 percent) said that seeing a movie in the theater is a better experience than watching it at home. And younger folks were just as likely as their older counterparts to say the theater experience is better than watching at home, with 51 percent of those aged 18 to 29 saying movies are better in theaters, compared to 48 percent of those over the age of 65.

Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 1:00 PM Eastern on Aug. 6, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot grew this week, rounding to 7 points. The average number of likely voters saying they plan to vote for a Republican fell from 43.5 percent on July 31 to 42.5 percent today, a full point, while the number who say they plan to vote for a Democrat fell less than half a percent, from 49.4 to 49.0.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s approval rating among U.S. adults has recovered somewhat from his all time low last week. On July 31, he was under water by 25 percentage points, with 36.1 percent approval and 61 percent disapproval. Today, his approval sits at 36.8 percent, with disapproval at 59.9 percent.

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How to best visualize probability and uncertainty is an undertaking that, well, involves a lot of uncertainty itself. Here at 50+1, we primarily want to make sure our graphics efficiently communicate to readers what the data can — and cannot — tell us about upcoming elections. But we also want to design graphics that are enjoyable, colorful, and work both on desktop computers and mobile devices.

After launching our new election forecast earlier this week, we thought it would be fitting to give readers a look behind the scenes at the decisions our team made about how to best visualize our forecasts for 2026.

Histogram

Visitors to our forecast page are greeted first with the following simulation distribution chart. This shows a subset of the 40,000 simulations our model makes of possible election outcomes, colored by which party wins the House (or Senate) in each simulation:

Traditional histograms in statistics are bar charts used to show a distribution of outcomes, where groups of like outcomes are assigned to a bar on the x-axis and the height of each bar reflects the frequency of occurrences in each of these bins. (For us, because we are running individual simulations, it’s important to emphasize the individual outcomes in each case.)) My starting point for visualizing statistical concepts is both with the source and the understanding of how statisticians visualize their data. I look at charts from research papers and try to simplify those down to their most important parts, writing down the questions that come to my mind when I first read one and addressing those questions in my design so that they are already answered for the next audience. From there, I take domain-specific knowledge and try to simplify it to cater to a wide audience — in a way that is approachable but still preserves the integrity of the data.

Because visualizing election simulations is a very niche concept, I saw fit to make a couple of changes when designing our histogram. First, I assign each possible House outcome one value on the x-axis instead of grouping margins into bins like D+5 - D+1 and R+1 - R+5, since the probability of each single seat outcome is of great importance. Then, in order to make it clear that the data here is a group of many individual model simulations, I show each of our simulations as their own squares — rather than totaling them and drawing a single bar for that outcome, as in the normal histogram..

I originally had this idea at FiveThirtyEight when designing the 2024 election forecast. I picked up a Galton board — one of many that were lying around — and flipped it over. When the balls fell into the shape of the bell curve I was working to create, I had this idea for the deconstructed histogram.

We also spent time deciding what the annotation layer of our histogram should be. The annotation layer introduces readers to the language of the visual. Instead of leaving the audience to parse x and y axes, the annotation explains what one visual element reads and leaves the reader with the verbiage to explore the rest of the chart.

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Map

The data: Odds and race ratings of each House and Senate race displayed geographically

When visualizing geographical data, there are compromises to be made — how much emphasis do we put on geography vs population? The number-one principle is to understand that land mass does not equate to population. This is why chloropleth maps are not the best solution when visualizing voting and representation.

So how do we give equal populations equal weight despite land mass? Some have solved this by arranging squares or hexagons into a suggestion of that state’s geography. That solves the “land doesn’t vote” issue, but a reader loses the geographical context they are used to.

The next question to ask is: “how do we combine both population data with geography?” The first instance I personally saw of a news outlet solving this was the French newspaper, Le Monde over 10 years ago. This is their 2024 version. The squares represent race outcomes but that is still overlaid with the geography with the U.S.

This is why our map overlays circles placed at each district’s centroid with the spatial. Of course this makes it hard to navigate New England states and densely populated areas like New York City and Los Angeles. To solve for this, we have a search for districts and candidate names, plus the interaction flow is set to zoom in on a state before a district can be selected. I want to shoutout the Economist who had the same idea for their geographic prediction model graphic and arranges the circles around densely populated areas nicely.

Other design decisions rest on mobile usability. We anchor the tooltips to the bottom of a map instead of having them float by the district on mouse hover or tap. This prevents overlap and hidden touchpoints when a tooltip is visible. It solves for limitations on mobile like screen size and a variety of different interactions like swiping (horizontal and vertical), tapping, and zooming. We also limit interactivity by showing half of the U.S. on smaller screen sizes and preventing any pinch-to-zoom or swiping by offering a button to toggle between East and West.

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Table

The data: everything else: odds, race ratings, demographic information, Trump margins

Tables are where we want to present a reader with everything else that is important to understand the forecast. We give users a chamber-wide overview and a district-level view of the forecast. Even through visualizations we’re telling a story, and an inverted pyramid in journalistic storytelling gives readers the top-level information first and more detailed, personalized information the further they navigate down the page.

Tables are for the “power users,” so our table is searchable by state, candidate name, and district. We give readers an initial view of what we think is the most significant information (a list of toss-up races.) But we offer preset filters for race ratings to limit overwhelming a casual reader with too many filtering and searching options.

For mobile, we switch to a card-like view like our polls table so that readers can view all of the data without having to scroll left-to-right while also preserving the position to keep it scanable.

With data so rich and complex, the visualization options and decisions are endless. With every visualization compromises have to be made in what to show and how to show it, but at 50+1 we aim for our visuals to reflect the complexity of the statistical rigor that goes into our models and analysis. Stay tuned for more forecast visualizations.

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As of 6:00 AM Eastern on Monday, August 3, 2026, the model gives Democrats an 85% chance of winning the majority of seats in the House, and a 55% chance of winning control of the Senate (51 seats or more, unless an independent wins in Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, or South Dakota). Our median forecast House popular vote margin for the Democrats is +7 points, plus or minus 5, and we forecast the party to win a median of 230 House seats (a range of 211 to 253) and 51 Senate seats (47-55).

None of this is a prediction that Democrats will win, but rather a probabilistic statement about the future if typical predictors of election results are as accurate (or inaccurate) as they have been historically. Our model generates a range of plausible outcomes for each chamber based on how often parties with similar polling leads as we’re seeing for Democrats today have gone on to win elections in the past. You can think of our forecast as an answer to the question “When Democrats have led the generic ballot by 6 points in August while Republicans have held the White House and [House/Senate] polls looked like they do now, how often have they won control of the [House/Senate]?”

This forecast is the intellectual successor to the congressional forecasting model I built at FiveThirtyEight in 2024 — which was the most accurate of any statistical forecast model last cycle and even beat the prediction markets. Our forecast combines polls, district- and state-level fundraising and past election returns, candidate-level data, and ratings from expert race-raters to produce a probability that either major party will win either chamber this November. (I say intellectual successor and not direct successor because I have had to build a new model from the ground up.)

If you would like to learn more about how the model works, you can find a methodology explainer here. (Though reader beware; we have erred on the side of verbosity.) A few highlights from the model follow.

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1. Democrats are even better positioned than they were before the 2018 wave

We ran our forecasting model on the 2018 cycle using only the data that existed at this same point on the calendar, 92 days before Election Day, and compared it to today. It may come as a surprise to readers to learn that Democrats are even likelier in our model today to win control of the House than they were at this point in 2018, the canonical “blue wave” cycle. At this point in 2018, our model would have given Democrats a 76% chance of winning control of the chamber.

The party back then was running about 6 points ahead in the polls, as it is today, and we were also forecasting it to win 230 seats in the chamber, identical to today’s forecast.

So what changed? Mostly, the geography of competition. Compared to 2018 there are more Lean Republican seats for the Democrats to pick up — and fewer Lean Democratic seats for them to lose. Our forecast also has less uncertainty now, owing to higher polarization of elections. The combination is that in 2018, at this same point, our model saw a wide spread of outcomes: anywhere from 201 to 264 House seats. Today that spread is meaningfully tighter, at 211 to 253 Democratic seats — with far more simulations where Democrats clear the 218 seats needed for the majority.

2. A friendly map is not enough to save Republicans in the Senate

Despite the fact that most Senate seats up for grabs were won handsomely by Donald Trump in 2024, these races have turned out to be marginal in our election forecast. This is because a forecasted D+7 popular vote margin for the Democrats puts them within reach, and recruiting successes for the party have pushed them further into play.

Take the six seats most likely to decide the chamber. If you combine each state’s partisan lean — a measure of how friendly it is to Democrats/Republicans in a neutral year — with the current generic-ballot margin, four of them still lean Republican, by an average of 6 points. That’s Alaska, Iowa, Texas, and Ohio — in that order. (In North Carolina and Maine, Democratic candidates are favored with this simple formula.)

Yet in every one of these races but Maine, the actual polling has Democrats running well ahead of where the map says they should be. In Texas, for example, the lean and the environment together say the Republican candidate, Ken Paxton, should be ahead of Democratic challenger James Talarico by up six points. Yet the polls have the latter ahead by three. In Alaska, Ohio, and Iowa, polls tell pretty much the same story, with Democratic candidates polling seven to nine points to the left of their states’ partisan baseline.

The one exception in in Maine, where Susan Collins’s decades-long personal brand keeps her about ten points ahead of a state that otherwise leans sharply Democratic. Still, polls there lead toward challenger Troy Jackson by 3-4 points.

Early Senate polling is thin and tends to tighten by November, so our model doesn’t take these leads at face value — but a gap this consistent is a real signal that strong Democratic recruiting has put these seats in play.

3. Democrats sweep both chambers about half the time

One cool way our model works is that the House and Senate are predicted simultaneously, in one combined model. This innovation in forecasting (most modelers forecast the two separately) gives us the ability to calculate the “joint probability” that Democrats sweep both the House and Senate in November.

The chart below shows all 40,000 of our model’s simulated elections as of publication, lined up along the horizontal axis by the Democrats’ margin in the national House vote and colored by who controls Congress in each simulation. Because we simulate the two chambers together, we can just count the outcomes for each national popular vote: Democrats win both chambers in 53% of simulations (dark blue); they take the House but fall short in the Senate in another 33% (light blue) — the likeliest path to divided control; Republicans hold both in 12% (dark red); and the rarest result of all — a Republican House alongside a Democratic Senate — turns up just 2% of the time (salmon).

The map also gives us a good mental benchmark for what Democrats need to hit in the national popular vote to be favored to win both chambers. When Democrats win the NPV by less than about 3.5-4 points, they're underdogs to hold the House at all and unlikely to take the Senate. Between roughly 4 and 6-7 points, they are likely carry the House but Republicans keep the Senate. Once Democrats cross a threshold of about 6-7 points in the NPV, they are favored to win both chambers.

Today’s forecast — a Democratic edge of about 7 points — sits right on that upper boundary, which is why full control is at a pure toss-up in our model.

4. Our track record is very good

Lastly, as I mentioned, the models I have built to forecast congressional elections in the past have been very well calibrated — so much so that betting on them in prediction markets would have netted you money. (This is not financial advice.

This year, we built a very extensive set of backtesting programs to understand how our model would have behaved in past elections, trained only on the data that would have existed before those contests. The results are shown here:

While backtesting does not guarantee future performance, the fact that the model behaves well on out-of-sample data gives us confidence in its explanatory and predictive powers on future elections. Our model’s conclusions are roughly in line with those of other high-caliber statistical forecasters (including where I used to work).

. . .

That’s it for now, but expect more coverage of our forecast on this Substack regularly in the weeks to come. You can find the latest odds here and explore our polling averages for general elections to the House, Senate, and governorships here.

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You can read more about the state of the midterm race in our launch post here.

This article documents how we built the model(s) behind this forecast. We show what goes into it, how the model processes those inputs, and why you should trust us to provide a well-calibrated read on what public data currently says about the state of all 470 elections (435 House + 35 Senate) across the nation.

We also make these estimates available via API download for people who are interested in consuming our forecast programmatically. Feel free to get in touch with us about acquiring this data. Our business partners help fund FiftyPlusOne’s overall mission of safeguarding the collection and aggregation of all public polling in the U.S. for the foreseeable future.

This model methodology has three parts. First, I explain the inputs of the model. Then, I describe how the model transforms those inputs into one cohesive forecast of each candidate’s vote share on election day. Finally, I describe how our model takes potential error in the polls and other predictors into account.

But before that, I want to explain why we are publishing an election forecast in the first place. Then, I show the proof that it works up front.

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1. Why forecast?

One might want to forecast an election for many reasons. Maybe you are a campaign or super PAC and want to determine, statistically, which races are the closest so you can allocate resources effectively. Maybe, as was the case for George Gallup and his contemporaries, you are academically interested in how accurate polls are. You may also think that synthesizing polling and fundamentals data could help you learn about how and why people make decisions when voting. Or perhaps you are a degenerate gambler and would like to wager against the prediction markets. Whatever the reason, the popularity of election forecasting is itself revealed demand for the tools.

However, none of these reasons are why we at FiftyPlusOne forecast election outcomes. Yes, of course, we want to accurately anticipate the result of the election — but as mentioned, our fundamental goal with this business is to be good stewards of polling data. We believe in the democratic value of public polls and their centrality to things like understanding voters’ concerns after elections. It follows that properly understanding the error that is inherent in preelection polling in particular — the limit of most of the public’s exposure to polls — is crucial so that people don’t lose confidence in surveys produced for other purposes.

In other words, we aim to produce a well-calibrated prediction of what an election might look like if public polling is “wrong” the way polls have historically erred (typically in one direction across states/contests), such that we minimize collective shock at errors that lead people to disavow polling entirely.

And if you don’t buy into that, I have a simpler explanation for you: If smart people don’t forecast elections, it won’t mean there are no election forecasts; it’ll just mean there are bad election forecasts. Further, we think forecasting is fun.

We have built what I believe to be the most comprehensive and truly Bayesian model of election outcomes available in U.S. media today. Here’s how it works.

2. Model overview and backtest record

The FiftyPlusOne method for forecasting the House and Senate draws on existing journalistic approaches to election forecasting as well as the academic literature on Bayesian models and correlated election polling errors. Our forecast “model” is in fact four models — three models of (1) what the polls say, (2) what the historical fundamentals say, and (3) what professional race handicappers say, plus (4) an “ensemble” model that combines the out-of-sample forecasts from each component model according to how much each has erred against past elections. We can then use the historical error of the ensemble model to simulate the whole election many thousands of times to work out not just who is ahead, but how wrong polls and other predictors might be, and how the race would move if they are.

Formally, our approach is called Bayesian model stacking (we shied away from the most complex version, Bayesian hierarchical stacking, for lack of development time) and is rooted in academic work showing that combining predicted probability from competing models leads to better forecasts on out-of-sample data. While some election forecasters gather time series of predictors, ignore their uncertainty, and, for example, stick them in a weighted average, our model learns the weight it should put on each component forecast based on the total uncertainty each model has about the outcome of the election — including, in the case of the polling model, the role of factors such as partisan nonresponse.

On top of this insight, we add a step that calibrates the ensemble itself to account for how forecasting errors have been shared across similar states and districts over time.

But enough about the Bayesians and their statistical tricks. I detail more about how the model works in section 3 below. What we really care about is how the model performs.

I have designed no fewer than four national election forecasting models from scratch for major media and industry clients over the last decade. (This was not by choice. Each time I have left an employer, I have had to build a new one). My presidential election model for The Economist beat the competition in the 2020 presidential race and, at ABC News/FiveThirtyEight in 2024, my House and Senate model outperformed both (a) all other statistical forecasters and (b) all the prediction markets in a series of third-party tests. The FiveThirtyEight presidential model in 2024 was also better calibrated than prediction markets in anticipating Trump’s chance of winning the popular vote (about 30 percent in our model, and about 25 percent on Polymarket and Kalshi).

I mention this not to brag, but to point out that the statistical foundations of this new approach (Bayesian methods with model ensembling) have a proven track record. But to further gauge expected accuracy, I also ran our forecast on every federal election from 2012 to 2024 in “out-of-sample” mode — that is, only factoring in the data we had at that point in time (so, in July of 2012, none of the elections from 2012 through 2026). More details on how these tests were conducted are found in section 5.

The out-of-sample forecasts according to our model are as such for both the House and Senate from 2012 to 2024:

There are some cycles you could quibble with (and a few more months of model tinkering may increase accuracy), but this record is, in precise mathematical terms, completely okay with us, especially for our purposes. No statistical forecaster, for example, predicted a Democratic House in 2024, and few were as confident in the party’s chances of holding the Senate in 2022 as we were.

Our forecasts are also well-calibrated at the seat level. On average, a candidate we said was favored to win has lost their race in just 83 out of 2,129 out-of-sample forecasts. Our historical accuracy is 96.2 percent on 1,959 House forecasts issued in 2016-2024 (when most other forecasts were active), and 95.3 percent on 170 Senate forecasts.

Excluding toss-up races (where the probability for the leading candidate is less than 65 percent), our model has never made a wrong “call” in the Senate, and has erred in just eight House races.

While we cannot be sure that future performance will exactly match these historical backtests, I am confident we have done our due diligence in accurately checking the calibration of our novel method. Additionally, the accuracy statistics of 96.2 percent (House) and 95.3 percent (Senate) and Brier score of 0.029 (House) and 0.049 (Senate) rival those of the best public forecasts in the world. (In fact, a predecessor of this model I created for FiveThirtyEight in 2024 generated the most accurate House and Senate election forecasts the outlet ever issued.)

If you want more of the nitty-gritty details of our methodology, read on. To view our 2026 election forecasts and polling averages for the House and Senate, click here.

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3. What we feed the model

In figuring out who is ahead in an election, forecasters typically consult three sources.

First, there are the polls. Polls are great predictors — generally better than the others that follow — because they tell us what voters in a specific race actually say they will do. Where there are recent, competently conducted polls, nothing beats them. The problem is that not all polls are created equal, and most races do not have any — the vast majority of the 435 House districts will never be polled publicly, not even once.

Then there are the fundamentals, predictors social scientists have long included in their models for their predictive abilities. Voters in a House or Senate seat typically vote similarly to how they did the last time around, for example, so forecasters might use the lagged result in a seat or the Democratic candidate’s margin in the last two presidential elections as a predictor in a model. Candidates who are incumbents also typically perform better, and those who don’t raise much money from individual contributors also do worse. Other predictors matter too, and are detailed in section 3.2.

Another good source of preelection forecasting alpha is expert race ratings from major handicappers — Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections — which classify each race from Safe Democratic to Safe Republican. These are human judgments and fallible, but experts often factor in information the other two predictor sets cannot. Handicappers talk to people who run campaigns, the candidates themselves, and are plugged into insider group chats and email chains where non-public polls abound. Even if you have polls and the fundamentals, accounting for expert ratings typically helps performance.

Finally, a word on prediction markets. Other forecasters are increasingly using prediction markets as signals in their forecasting systems. We do not, for reasons I will explain in detail a separate blog post soon. The general position, however, is summed up here: There is a poisonous logical circularity in using prediction markets to update a statistical model when the statistical model is itself being factored into the prediction market. Because of these limitations, our opinion is that if you’re going to inject prediction market data into your forecasting model, you should at least let users view a version that doesn’t rely on such data.

Our model draws on historical polling data going back to 1998, hand-entered race ratings and candidate filings dating to the same year, fundraising figures from FEC filings, and past election results, district boundaries, and demographic data from multiple sources. (Special shoutout to the folks at The Downballot for providing us some early data on presidential vote history and demographics for new congressional districts.)

3.1. The polls

With few exceptions, FiftyPlusOne uses every publicly available poll of the 2026 congressional elections. Each survey is then weighted and adjusted for several factors that might influence its results and the weight it has in our model. We consider:

• When was the poll taken? A poll from March is less predictive of how people will vote than one from October. We thus decrease the weight on older data (by about 3 percent per day early in the cycle, and 14 percent in the final two weeks), and apply a trendline adjustment to older polls to account for how the national environment may have moved since it was taken. The details of the trendline adjustment are given in section 3.1.1.

• Who conducted the poll? Some pollsters produce results that are consistently between 1 and 4 percentage points friendlier to one party over the other. We account for this with what we call a “pollster effect” or “house effect” adjustment. We measure the tendency for each polling firm to produce numbers above or below the average in each race. But, in an improvement relative to other forecasters, we fit the house effect adjustment not only at the individual race level but across races in a given cycle. This gives the model more information about how a pollster may be thumbing the scale, and is the primary reason our model was correctly bullish on Democrats to take the Senate in 2022.

• How did the pollster interview people? We also apply a “mode effect” adjustment, accounting for the tendency of polls produced via different methodologies (live phone, text-to-web, online, etc.) to produce results that are biased in the same direction. This adjustment is fit identically to the house effect adjustment, but groups surveys by sampling and interview methodology instead of by polling firm. It is generally much smaller than the house effect adjustment, with an average mode effect of less than 1 point across cycles.

• Who was surveyed? Polls of all adults, registered voters, and likely voters consistently give different answers. We estimate the systematic gaps between them and adjust polls of adults and registered voters toward the population of likely voters. Typically this adjustment favors Republicans, but in 2026 Democrats have been doing 1-2 points better in polls of likely vs. registered voters.

• Who paid for the poll? Looking at all House and Senate polls released since 1998, our model finds polls sponsored by campaigns and partisan groups overestimate support for their side by about 2 points. We shift these polls back toward the other party accordingly and give them less weight in the model (by about half).

That’s pretty much it in terms of processing polling data, with a few big flags. First, we do not use results of “synthetic” or AI-generated polls — primarily for the same reasons we do not use polls generated by statistical models (such as MRP) that distill national surveys into statewide or district-level estimates; neither are generated by processes that produce independent and normally distributed results, which our models need to capture uncertainty in polling data. And in the case of AI-generated data, we consider these to be predictions not rooted in sampling public opinion, for which we have no track record to gauge accuracy. In the past, we have likened using someone else’s predictions in our model as “using someone else’s barbecue sauce as an ingredient in your own.”

Additionally, we do not use polls that test hypothetical races, such as of a general election that includes a third candidate who has not entered a race yet. If a pollster surveys a race and presents results testing both a two-way matchup between major candidates and a multi-way matchup that includes minor-party candidates that are also running (such as a Libertarian candidate), our model uses the multi-way ballot and disregards the restrictive two-way.

Finally, we do not include polls from firms that fail to meet our methodological and ethical standards. This omits a small number of non-influential data points from our models.

3.1.1. From polls to a polling average

Because polls are subject to various sources of noise, we combine them for each race using an aggregation model. The average in a given race is built using a three-pass exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA), the steps of which are as follows:

1. Windowing, weighting, and adjusting. For any given day, we include all polls of a race that were fielded in the past 90 days. Each is weighted according to its recency (with steeper down-weighting for older polls as we get closer to Election Day) and adjusted for its population. We then apply the trendline adjustment to these corrected poll observations by adjusting each poll for movement in the generic ballot since it was conducted. If, for example, a poll is three weeks old and Democrats have gained 2 points of vote share in the generic ballot in those three weeks, we add 2 points to the Democratic candidate’s vote share in the poll (and subtract 2 from the Republican).

2. Pass 1: trendline-adjusted average. We can then calculate the support for a given candidate on day d by calculating a weighted average of all the surveys from day d-90 to d. Steps 0 and 1 are then repeated on every day of a campaign, which gives us our “first pass” of the EWMA for a given race in a given cycle.

3. Pass 2: house effects. We then adjust each poll for its pollster’s house effect. Each firm’s house effect is calculated in three steps. First, we measure the pollster’s cycle-wide lean: its average deviation from the first-pass averages across every race it polled this cycle. Because a lean measured from just a handful of polls could easily be noise, we shrink it toward zero in proportion to poll volume, keeping n/(n+5) of the measured lean for a firm with n polls — so a pollster needs about five polls before we take its lean at half strength, while a firm with 50 polls keeps over 90 percent of its measured lean.
   
   Second, we allow the house effect to vary by race. We measure how much the pollster’s lean in a specific race differs from its cycle-wide lean, and add back n/(n+20) of that difference, where n is now the firm’s poll count in that race alone. The much larger constant makes this term deliberately skeptical: A race-specific quirk measured from two polls keeps less than a tenth of its value, because house effects are mostly a property of the firm, not the firm-race pair; a pollster that runs 3 points friendly to one party tends to do so everywhere.
   
   Finally, the cycle-wide lean is itself softly anchored to a prior built from the firm’s lean in past cycles, with each older cycle counting half as much as the one after it. This historical prior is deliberately weak — capped at about a fifth of the blend in the House and a tenth in the Senate — so a firm’s past behavior informs the estimate, but does not outweigh the evidence of the current cycle.

4. Pass 3: population adjustment. Last, we align every poll to a likely-voter population frame. We estimate the gap between likely-voter polls and registered-voter and all-adult polls in the current cycle, shrink those gaps toward their historical values for each chamber, and shift non-likely voter polls accordingly. (This is the same adjustment described in section 3.1; polls of likely voters pass through untouched.)

One wrinkle: We do not show averages for a race on our website unless that race has three polls from two separate pollsters, but the version we feed into the forecast model has no such gate. This has two effects: First, you may see slight differences in our polls-based forecast for a race and the average for it. These are separate models serving separate purposes. And second, it increases the sparsity of the polling signal for the eventual model. The “polling average” from contests with fewer polls thus deserves less weight in our forecast. The next section explains how we account for that.

3.1.2. Inferring the polling average in unpolled seats (the “now-cast”)

A polling average only knows about seats that have actually been polled. But what if a race has no polls at all? For the many races nobody surveys, we use our now-cast polling model, which we published in early July, to estimate what a poll would say based on surveys in similar seats. The linked post contains a full technical description of the now-cast model, which I recap here.

The now-cast’s job is to predict what the polls would say in a seat if it were polled today. The best predictors of that outcome are (a) the generic ballot today and (b) the way the seat would have voted, relative to the nation as a whole, in the past presidential election. We calculate this for every seat, polled and unpolled, and use it as the starting point for the now-cast.

Then, we use a regression model to predict the results of actual district-level polls given that starting point. This model also considers whether an incumbent is running in a seat, and how that incumbent has performed in previous elections. We can then use the coefficients from that model — which capture how much better or worse Democrats and Republicans are doing nationwide, plus the residual for incumbents from each party, relative to baseline expectations — to predict the polling average in the remaining, unpolled seats.

For a seat with polls, the now-cast reanchors the predicted polling average to the seat’s real polling average. This anchoring is loose when there is only one poll in a seat and very tight as the polls pile up. Concretely, the anchor allows about 2 points of slack at one poll, tightening rapidly to a floor of roughly a third of a point — an allowance for residual house effects and party overperformance — by about five polls.

The now-cast makes its projections for all House and Senate seats simultaneously. It simulates the election thousands of times based on how off the now-cast has been in past elections, and how much uncertainty there is today about the polling average in each seat.

3.1.3. From now-cast to forecast

Finally, the now-cast looks ahead to Election Day. This produces a polls-only forecast that can be used to calculate win probabilities for each candidate in each seat.

The forecast adds three variables to the now-cast in each seat:

First, we add the expected national change in support for the party out of power over the remainder of the election. In a midterm, the president’s party has almost always lost ground between the summer and Election Day, so we nudge every seat toward the out-party — Democrats in 2026 — by the amount of swing we have historically seen from this point on the calendar. That change is measured across the 1998–2022 midterms, and in our model today is 3 points over the whole cycle, and 1.7 points from July 30. That means if our generic ballot average was D+5, the polls-only nowcast would expect the party to win by 6.7 points come November. This prediction has a margin of error of about 4 points.

Second, we add individual race-level movement to account for the chance something happens in a given contest that is not shared with other seats. The further out we are, the more room there is for things like primary outcomes and candidates dropping out to change the result of the election. The range of potential seat-level variation our model simulates as of late July is about 5 points.

Finally, seats with no polls carry an additional layer of error: Their margins are drawn from the now-cast’s imputation of what polls there would say if we had them. This imputation comes with a large amount of historical uncertainty — a range of about 9 points of margin in the House and 8 in the Senate, with heavy tails allowing for the occasional much-larger miss.

With those three additions, the polling model is complete: For every seat, polled or unpolled, our first component forecasting model produces a projected two-party vote on Election Day, and an uncertainty interval around it.

But polls are not the only source of information we have about a race. That’s where the fundamentals come in.

3.2. The fundamentals

The fundamentals model is a structural model of each seat’s two-party margin, trained only on the history of past congressional elections and no polls. The job of the fundamentals is to tell us what to expect in a race from the things we know before anyone is surveyed at all — things like how the seat votes historically, who is running, and whether they have raised a lot of money or have a strong electoral track record.

Our fundamentals model is a Bayesian regularized logistic regression model that takes in all regularly scheduled congressional elections from the past 20 years and tells us how much each of these fundamentals correlate with candidate performance. Here is everything the fundamentals model looks at. There are five predictors, in roughly the order they matter.

1. Seat partisan lean. We calculate the baseline partisanship of a seat by taking the Democratic candidate’s share of the vote in the last two presidential elections in a state or district, subtracting that candidate’s share of the national popular vote, and then blending the two observations, giving 80 percent of the weight to the more recent and 20 percent to the more distant. Then, we add that number back to 50 percent. This value tells us (in terms of two-party vote share) what we would expect to happen in a seat in a completely tied national election. In an era of nationalized, straight-ticket voting, this single variable does most of the work, mapping nearly one-to-one onto congressional margins.

2. Incumbency. We also include a variable measuring whether an incumbent is running and if so, for which party. Our model finds incumbents win a few points more of the vote share than their district’s lean alone would predict — though, as we will see, less than they used to. We program in the default assumption that first-term members, who have not yet built a full personal brand, get half the credit as other incumbents.

3. Candidate experience. We also measure whether a candidate has held prior elected office. State legislators, mayors, and former officeholders run measurably ahead of first-time politicians — usually by about a couple of points — and, like incumbency, this can only help the side that has it. We measure experience differently for the two chambers: In the House, where the distinction that matters most is simply whether a candidate has won anything before, experience is scored as a binary: one point for winning any prior elected office, zero for a first-time candidate. In the Senate, where the field ranges from state representatives to sitting governors, we use a graded zero-to-three scale: A candidate gets one point for winning state-legislative and local offices, two for being a member of the U.S. House or other major statewide official, and three if they are a current or former U.S. senator or governor. Experience points are only given to candidates that have won their office in an election; being appointed to serve as a senator is not the same as having faced voters. In 2026, a point of experience is worth about 1.3 points of two-party margin in the House and about 0.9 points in the Senate, so a maximally experienced Senate candidate facing a first-timer starts with a roughly 2.5point head start.

4. Fundraising. The fundamentals model also takes into account how much each candidate has raised from individual donors, which we parse from bulk FEC filings. Specifically, the model factors in the Democratic candidate’s share of the two parties’ combined receipts from individual contributors. We omit fundraising data from races where we have missing data, such as when a candidate hasn’t filed their paperwork on time. Fundraising is a stronger predictor of candidate performance in the Senate vs. the House.

5. Previous performance. Finally, for incumbents we include a variable we call the “personal vote,” which measures how much they have historically over- or under-performed their district’s partisan lean as calculated in the first step above. We build this variable by studying a candidate’s whole career and weighing recent performances more strongly. In the past, we have directly modeled these variables for editorial purposes, but decided to use a more parsimonious approach this year while we test out this new projection model.

Importantly, whereas other forecasters’ models often assume the value of things like incumbency and fundraising is fixed in the training period, ours allows coefficients to drift over time. As Lauderdale and Linzer (2013) argued in their study of fundamentals-based forecasting, the normal approach to fundamentals modeling produces predictions that are both less stable and less certain than their tidy regression coefficients make them look; a predictor that mattered a great deal in one year can fade in the next, and a model that pretends otherwise will be overconfident out of sample.

So rather than fit one fixed coefficient per variable, we let each one drift from election to election, and we carry its uncertainty forward into the forecast rather than hiding it. Each coefficient in the model is allowed to move as a random walk over time (specifically, we use a dynamic linear model with a logistic link function). The image below plots the influence each predictor has on a candidate’s share of the two-party vote:

For every seat, the fundamentals model produces an expected two-party vote share for the Democratic candidate and — just as importantly — an honest measure of how unsure it is. That uncertainty is not the hairline standard error of a regression coefficient; it’s the full predictive spread, which is wider, and which grows in exactly the competitive seats where the structural story is most contestable. Both the estimate and its uncertainty then go into the blend (Section 4), where the fundamentals are just one of three voices.

So far, all of the factors going into our model have been quantitative. Quant is great, but let’s talk about the qual:

3.3. Race ratings

While they are not “objective” indicators the way polls and fundamentals are, we have found a lot of value in incorporating expert race ratings into our prediction models. The three major national handicappers — the Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections — each place every federal election on a scale from Safe Democratic to Safe Republican. These ratings undoubtedly consult a lot of the same data we do (they may even shift according to forecasting models), but they also factor in data we don’t have, such as private campaign internals that handicappers get shown and we never do.

We produce a forecast from expert race ratings in a three-step process. First, we turn the labels into a predicted margin of victory for the candidate. This step is necessary to translate the language of the rater (e.g., “safe” or “likely”) into the language of our model (vote share). Using a historical dataset of race ratings going back to 1998, we score each rater’s call on a scale running from +3 (safe Democratic) through 0 (tossup) to −3 (safe Republican). We then take these numeric ratings and train a regression model to predict the realized election margin given the consensus rating across every seat a rater has ever graded. We estimate this model separately for each chamber. We then apply this model to current race ratings to translate them into vote shares.

Second, we correct for handicappers’ tendency to lag the national environment. By studying historical ratings we have found that handicappers tend to move too cautiously. In particular, in midterms, they are reliably slow to shift competitive races toward the party out of power. The chart below shows this dynamic. Pooling ratings from different time horizons over the last five midterms, a seat still rated a tossup 180 days out from the election finished, on average, about 3 points in the out-party’s favor. A seat Cook rated lean-against the out-party that early came in a dead heat (+0.3 for the out-party). So in tossup- and lean-rated seats, we nudge the margin implied by race ratings toward where the national environment currently is — as measured by the generic ballot — by an amount that would have historically shifted the ratings closer to election outcomes. This amount is largest early, when the handicappers have the most catching up to do, and fades to nothing by Election Day, as the ratings converge on the result.

Third, as with the other models, we measure how reliable this method is at predicting elections historically, and then account for uncertainty. We do this by running the ratings-only forecast on past elections, only training the ratings-to-margins model and environment-adjustment models on the data from previous cycles and applying them to the year in question. We then measure how accurate the model would have been in out-of-sample years, and use those values to simulate what could happen if the raters are wrong, in every race, while adjusting for predictable changes in the national environment.

This process gives us a quantitative distillation of a qualitative outside check on our other models. In some cases, race raters catch things the other models miss, and we want to use that information in our forecast too.

But how do these three forecasts get combined into one single estimate?

4. How we combine the three models

This is where things get pretty cool. Because we have trained three independent forecasting models, with point estimates and uncertainty intervals for every seat, we can combine these predictions based on the uncertainty we have about them. (Math-heavy paper here.)

We calculate an “ensemble” forecast for each seat by assigning a weight to each model’s prediction based on how accurate it is on out-of-sample data. The more precisely a source model has pinned down past races, the more it counts. Since polls are historically the best predictors of election results, the polls model has tighter uncertainty intervals than the other models, and tends to get higher weight.

By weighting by uncertainty, instead of some ad-hoc value assigned to each model uniformly, the model also puts more weight on predictions that are more confident. For example, the weight on the polls model is larger in races with a dozen recent polls (because the uncertainty on the polls forecast is lower), while a race with no polls leans more on fundamentals and ratings. And the balance of the weights also shifts naturally across the calendar: In the spring, when polls are sparse and uncertainty from potential change between spring and Election Day is high, polls naturally take a back seat. But as November approaches and the potential for polls to shift decreases, the polls model takes on more weight.

We do make several adjustments to the base weights derived from uncertainty intervals. First, we have found that non-polling indicators are less accurate in Senate races where no incumbent is on the ballot. Open Senate seats with no incumbent get less weight on both fundamentals and ratings. Additionally, when the polls in a heavily polled race disagree sharply with the structural estimates, we slightly increase the weight on the polls; this helped our model correctly anticipate Senate victories for Democrats in red states in 2012. Finally, we are careful not to over-shrink competitive House races toward safe ratings, because doing so has historically made predictions for surprise upsets that the polls saw coming worse. (We think this problem is related to the one that causes race raters to lag national data.)

By Election Day in a typical cycle, the House forecast is roughly half polls, 40 percent fundamentals, and about 10 percent ratings. The Senate leans harder on polls later, since Senate races are polled far more heavily. Four months out, those numbers roughly invert and the fundamentals lead in both chambers.

It is worth underscoring something, however: The weights above are expected values based on the number of polls and accuracy of the fundamentals and ratings in past cycles. Because the ensemble’s weights are based on the uncertainty of the input models, they are subject to deviate from the historical trends. If we have more polling this cycle than in the past, the model will be more polls-based.

At this point in the ensemble, we have point predictions in every seat. But the weighting of the component models has removed their uncertainty, so we need a method to add that back. And how do the predictions in each seat get added up to national forecasts?

4.1. How we account for uncertainty in the ensemble model

Warning, it’s about to get nerdy.

By far the thing we spent the most time on — and perhaps the most important factor, since it affects the headline probabilities readers consume and share — was correctly estimating the uncertainty in our predictions. Our forecast model has to correctly estimate uncertainty from two major sources: time and polling.

Temporal forecast error is rather trivial to assess. We simply take the historical point-in-time ensemble forecasts for each seat, and calculate the average absolute error by chamber. The errors of our ensemble and each component model are shown by forecast time horizon in the chart below.

The second source of error is trickier to get right. When polls miss in one state or district, they tend to miss in others. In 2016 and 2020, they understated support for Republicans nearly everywhere. In 2012 and 2022, they underestimated Democrats. So if our forecast is 3 points too Democratic in one Pennsylvania district, it is probably 3 points too Democratic in Ohio and Michigan too. A model that treats each race as an independent coin flip will badly understate how lopsided election night can be — it will tell you a 40-seat swing is essentially impossible, when the country produces one every decade or so.

4.1.1 Five levels of error

But the precise way to take into account these correlated errors is largely up to the modeler. By extensively evaluating our historical forecasts over the last 20 years, we have determined the following error structure is the best way to account for uncertainty in our model(s). In each simulation, our model adds values for the following errors to the predictions in each seat:

• a national error — how far off the whole forecast is this year;

• a chamber error, because the House and Senate can miss differently;

• regional errors, because polls can be fine in the Southwest and badly off in the Midwest;

• state-level errors, for the House model;

• a cluster error for groups of demographically similar House districts — built from each district’s age, income, education, urbanization, and racial composition — which lets the model miss in, say, heavily Hispanic seats without missing everywhere; and

• an individual race error, larger where there are few polls and where our three sources disagree with each other.

We calculate the amount of error in each group by measuring exactly how wrong the model has been in past elections, at each specific point on the calendar. The uncertainty we publish in July is the uncertainty this model has typically had in past Julys.

So how do we actually measure those five errors, and how do they make it into the simulation? This is the job of a final Bayesian model — which we call an error “meta-model” — whose training data is not polls or election results, but our own forecasting system’s past mistakes.

To build a training set, we run the full ensemble retroactively on every cycle since 2006 in strict out-of-sample mode and record its error for every seat, in both chambers, at every weekly snapshot from about 155 days out through election eve. That yields on the order of 100,000 seat-week forecast errors. With each error, we also record everything the meta-model needs to know about the prediction to train the error model: the cycle, the chamber, the seat’s census region and demographic cluster, how many days remained until the election, how many polls the seat had, how sharply our three component models disagreed with one another, and, crucially, how uncertain the ensemble itself claimed to be about that seat at the time.

The error meta-model then decomposes each error into the sum of the shared shocks listed above: one national shock per cycle (shared by both chambers), a chamber shock, a regional shock, a cluster shock for demographically similar House seats, and an individual seat error.

What the model is actually estimating is the standard deviation, or sigma, of a distribution that produces the amount of error we historically observe at each level. Each sigma — one for each level of error from the above list — follows a simple two-parameter curve over the calendar: a level on election eve, and a growth rate that scales as a square root of the days left until Election Day. From this we know (a) how much error belongs in each component of the forecast model, and (b) how much the error from each level increases as we get further from the election.

One short aside on the individual seat error: Unlike the other terms, which are additive draws from distributions of error, the seat-level error term is a direct function of the seat-level errors of the individual component models from step 3. It’s trained as a multiplier on the ensemble’s weighted-average uncertainty for a seat, with two fitted model parameters that inflate uncertainty (a) where polls are scarce and (b) where polls, fundamentals, and ratings point in different directions.

The error model is fit with a fat-tailed Student-t likelihood whose degrees of freedom equal the number of training cycles — a way of being honest that, however many individual seat errors we observe, we have only watched about ten elections actually happen.

4.1.2 Simulating the election

Once we know how much error belongs to each geographic level, we can use a technique called Monte Carlo simulation to figure out what might happen in the future if the data is as wrong as it has been in the past.

First, what is a Monte Carlo simulation? The name — a reference to the famous casino in Monaco — describes a surprisingly simple idea: When a forecasting problem is too complicated to solve with pen-and-paper math, you can instead play it out many times by varying the parameters of the underlying model and then analyzing the simulated results. This technique works because of the law of large numbers.

Suppose, for example, you wanted to know the probability of being dealt a full house in poker. You could derive that probability from combinatorics, or you could shuffle a deck, deal yourself five cards, write down what you got, and repeat the process a hundred thousand times; the share of hands that came up full houses would land very close to the true answer.

An election forecast poses the same problem at a much larger scale. We have 470 races, each with its own uncertainty, all tangled together by shared sources of polling and other error. There is no tidy formula to derive, given that uncertainty, the probability that Democrats win the House or Senate. So we use simulations instead: For each of 40,000 simulations, we take the seat-level predictions from our model and then add onto them the potential error from each source listed.

Each simulation “draws” one national shock, one shock per chamber, one per region, one per state, and one per House cluster according to the probability distribution of each that is spit out by the meta-error model. For example, if simulation No. 23,001 says the polls were 3 points too Democratic nationally, every seat in that simulation shifts together. On top of that, there’s the possibility that one party’s Senate recruits do better than its House recruits, and that the polls in the Midwest miss by a bit more on top of the national error. Add up all those errors in each simulation, apply them to the ensemble forecasts of median vote share in each seat, and you have yourself a spreadsheet of 40,000 different ways the election could go.

From here, the forecast model just needs to do some simple arithmetic to produce the numbers you see on our forecast page. We can count up, for instance, the share of simulations in which each candidate wins their race — that is their win probability. We can tally the number of seats each party holds in every simulated election, and the share of simulations in which that number reaches 218 in the House, or 50/51 in the Senate, is the party’s chance of winning the majority. Every forecast number you see on our forecast page comes from these simulations.

Two flags on this: First, the simulated shocks are drawn in such a manner that they cancel out on average at the state, region, and cluster level, so they can never change our central estimate or who is favored in a seat. And second, while the number of simulations is quite large at 40,000, it is not so large that it eliminates random variance in our predictions across different model runs. Sometimes the error can change by a few decimal places.

5. How we know it works

As mentioned in section 2, we know our method works well because we have tested it on past congressional elections.

The graphic below shows the match between our model’s predicted probability of victory for a candidate and their realized probability of victory, bucketing by probabilities in a certain range (e.g., 15-30 percent to win, 30-50 percent, etc.). This chart shows probabilistic calibration over the entire prediction time series, from 200 days before the election to midnight on Election Day.

At the current juncture, our probabilities are slightly underconfident at the seat level; candidates who we give a 75 percent chance of winning win their races on average about 82 percent of the time. But we are reassuringly rarely wrong. This chart shows the predicted vote share from our model for House and Senate races not rated as Safe Republican or Safe Democratic:

But how do we actually produce these historical predictions?

Everything we have described so far — the polling model, the fundamentals, the ratings crosswalk, the ensemble weights, and the error meta-model — has dozens of parameters that had to be estimated from historical data. That creates an obvious potential for data “leakage” (we sometimes call it “time-traveling” internally here at FiftyPlusOne): A model tuned on the very elections it is evaluated against will always look brilliant on paper, but will overstate accuracy for races it wasn’t fit to.

To guard against this problem of time-traveling, we borrow a concept from machine learning called a “train-validate-test split.” This process loops through each election to train the underlying regression models only on a subset of data from prior years, validates model parameters using the held-out data from prior years, and tests model performance on the target year. We actually do this method four times: once for each of the underlying component models, and again for the error simulator, using only out-of-sample predictions from prior years in the latter stage.

That’s a lot of information that’s frankly hard to parse even for experts, so here’s a workable example. To evaluate the model’s forecast of, say, the 2018 midterms in July 2018, we rewind the clock and hand the model only the information that existed as of July 2018 — the polls that had actually been published by that date, the race ratings as they stood on that day, the fundraising totals filed by then, and the historical predictors and results of only previous cycles, and only as of July in those previous cycles. The data for elections from 1998 to 2016 then enters a loop of train-validate model training. For each cycle, only the data for the prior cycle enters our set of component regression models, trained in the Bayesian programming language Stan (named after the guy who invented Monte Carlo methods), and then makes predictions for the given cycle.

After this loop is complete, we have out-of-sample predictions as of July for every cycle from 1998 to 2016, to understand the probable predictive power of the data in July of 2018. We then exit back to the outer prediction step for 2018. The forecast then passes the data for July 2018 through the various component models that were trained on 1998 to 2016 data ensembles them using the weights trained on 1998 to 2016 data, and simulates error using the predictive distributions of the error model trained on the out-of-sample predictions from 1998 to 2016.

We repeat this process for every week of every cycle, c, from 2006 to 2024, running the train-validate-test loop for all elections held over the past 20 years (c - 20), which gives us a time series of out-of-sample forecasts as we would have issued them on those days of the campaign. When the 2018 version of the model makes its predictions, it is exactly as ignorant of 2018, 2020, and 2022 as the real 2018 version would have been. There’s no time-traveling to future years.

(In the interest of full transparency: There are two small, deliberate exceptions, where a fixed table of weakly informative priors is shared across test years for computational reasons. Neither contains outcome data, and neither meaningfully moves the results. It just helps our backtest models fit faster, so it takes a day instead of weeks to train and test a given model spec.)

Across every regularly scheduled House and Senate election from 2006 through 2024, this process generates roughly 100,000 individual seat-week forecasts, each paired with the result that actually happened. That archive of predictions is the raw material for the claims we make of accuracy and calibration in section 2 of this article, and it doubles as the training data for the error meta-model described in section 4.1.

One last question a skeptical reader might ask: Couldn’t we have simply tinkered with the model until the backtest looked good? To a degree, any modeler shapes their model with one eye on historical performance (what we call “researcher degrees of freedom”).

This is a fair objection, and only true out-of-sample prediction — on future elections — can prove our model’s forecasting ability is as good as our backtesting suggests. All we can do now is promise that our computer code is coded correctly, and we hope you trust us that we are trying to produce the most accurate read of pre-election polling and other data possible, not simply take a victory lap and promise unparalleled accuracy. Remember, FiftyPlusOne’s overall mission is to provide a well-calibrated translation of polling data to probabilistic forecasts to help the public consume such polls in a smarter way, not to sell you something or make a million dollars betting on elections.

For transparency, we have also published our model’s raw backtests for public scrutiny on our GitHub page.

6. Odds and ends

A couple of small details are worth explaining to the most technical readers in our audience.

Our model makes predictions for the Democratic and Republican candidates’ share of all votes cast for one of the two major parties in a seat. This is an oversimplification of the way elections happen in reality that helps the model fit faster and predict better; it doesn’t really matter for control of a Senate seat that’s 60 percent to 35 percent in favor of Republicans whether the Libertarian is at 4 or 5 percent.

Sometimes, however, there are more than two major candidates in a race — or two major candidates from the same party. Here is how our model deals with those:

• Ranked-choice voting (Maine, Alaska). We use the final round of ranked-choice polling, comparing the leading Democrat to the leading Republican — which is how the votes actually resolve, since minor candidates are eliminated and their ballots transfer to the front-runners rather than being summed. For Maine’s Senate race, with one candidate per party, this is exact. Alaska is our one real approximation: We get the party that wins the seat right, but if two Republicans reach the final round, we do not sort out which of them wins.

• Top-two primaries (California, Washington). The top two primary finishers advance regardless of party, and eight 2026 races so far are between two candidates of the same party — seven California Democrat-vs.-Democrat contests and one California Republican-vs.-Republican (Washington state has not yet held its primary). Party control of those seats is certain; the question is which candidate wins. We model that separately, from incumbency, fundraising, and field size, trained on past same-party contests in those states.

• Louisiana’s jungle primary. This year, every Louisiana House race will put all candidates of all parties on the November ballot, with a December runoff if nobody clears 50 percent. We simulate both rounds, including runoffs between two candidates of the same party.

• Primaries that haven’t happened yet. When a party has not picked a nominee, we do not split its vote among the contenders — that would make each look like a loser even in a safe seat. Instead, each simulation picks one potential nominee, weighted by incumbency and fundraising, and then simulates the general election with that candidate. We then pool all of these possible outcomes to forecast the chance that “a Democrat” or “a Republican” wins that seat.

• Strong independents. In Montana, independent Seth Bodnar is running alongside Democrat Alani Bankhead against Republican Kurt Alme, and polling far better. Because our pipeline builds every race as Democrat versus Republican, an independent is invisible to it — which meant we were forecasting the wrong contest. We now run that seat as a mixture of two scenarios, one where the Democrat is the effective challenger and one where the independent is. How likely each is, is a judgment call we make and disclose rather than a measurement.

• No major party challenger. When a race is between an independent and a major-party candidate, our fundamentals model treats the independent as belonging to the other party. This is the case in Nebraska’s Senate race in 2024 and 2026, for example, where Democrats decided not to run a candidate and the election ended up being between independent Dan Osborn and incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts.

And that’s pretty much it! If you have questions, you can reach out to us at data@fiftyplusone.news.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is this a prediction? No. It is a forecast, a probability distribution over outcomes. If our 70 percent favorites lost every time, the model would be broken; if they won every time, it would also be broken. Empirically, candidates we give a 70 percent chance of winning win about 70 percent of the time.

• Why does the forecast disagree with your own polling average? Because the average is only one of three inputs, and early in the cycle it is not even the heaviest one. A race can have one poll showing a tie while the fundamentals and the handicappers both say it is safe. The forecast will say it is probably safe, and history says that is the right call in July.

• Democrats keep overperforming in special elections. Why doesn’t the model show it? In our testing, we found that including special elections as a predictor of the national political environment worked until 2018, then fell apart. We think this is because the group of voters turning out in special elections is now systematically different from the group turning out in November.

• Does it account for redistricting? Yes. When a seat is redrawn, we recalculate historical election results in the new seats, and we discount the incumbent’s personal vote advantage. Historically, when an incumbent has been drawn into a new seat, they have retained about 70 percent of their incumbency advantage and personal vote. Seats that were redistricted also have slightly more uncertainty than other seats.

• The model says 3 percent for something that seems impossible. Is that a bug? Probably not. Our model prices in the chance of systematic changes in the political environment that otherwise seem impossible, such as 9/11 disrupting the 2002 midterm cycle. After 2020, when generic ballot polls were historically off, our model also simulates fat-tailed polling error to account for systematic, unforeseen partisan non-response bias.

• Why did the number move when there was no news or new data? Usually this happens when an old survey becomes so old that the polling average in a given race drops it from the training data.

• Can I get the underlying data? Yes — see our downloads page or get in touch with us.

Corrections and model changelog

Corrections. While we do not anticipate making any errors, sometimes they happen. We will document any big corrections here.

• August 7: The 2020 presidential numbers we used for Florida’s new congressional districts were wrong. All 28 of them were about 4.8 points too Republican. The corrected figures were pushed this morning, and the model has now been re-run with them.
  The effect of this error was small, because the 2020 past elections numbers only get 15% of the weight in each district’s partisan lean (the 2024 results, which were already correct, get the other 85%). Florida’s expected Democratic seats went from 6.9 to 7.2, and the chance of a Democratic House majority nudged from 89% to 90%. All seat-level probabilistic differences were under 3 percentage points except in FL-22, which moved from tilt Republican to a genuine toss-up (45% → 51% chance for the Democrat). Nothing outside Florida moved at all, and the national projected win probability and seat total for either party was unaffected. We regret the error.
  

• August 3: An error in our 2024 historical presidential election results data in California’s new congressional districts was detected and corrected on August 2. While the error was caught before publication, the model was not rerun to reflect this change publicly. This impacted most redrawn seats by less than a point, but moved the Democratic candidate’s chance of winning CA-22 up from 72% to 88%. We apologize for the oversight.

Model changelog. While we do not anticipate having to fix anything with the model, sometimes it’s necessary to make small tweaks to our data input or processing pipelines as we watch how the model responds to new data. In rare cases, we notice a problem with the underlying statistical models and have to fix them. We will document any changes to our model here.

• September 11, 2026 - Missouri has a new congressional map. Well, an old map that they’re using again. After a sustained back-and-forth between the Secretary of State, the state supreme court, and U.S. Supreme Court, the state is back to using its pre-2025-gerrymander electoral boundaries (last used in 2024). The model has been updated to use these new old boundaries.

  
  

• August 3, 2026 - Forecast published

• July 20, 2026 - Model code frozen, watching production time series for two weeks to verify forecast moves as expected with new data.

All eyes are turning to the 2026 midterms, but while November is still months away, some of the most important battles of this year’s election cycle are already underway in the primaries. These intraparty contests tell us not just which candidates will appear on the ballot this fall, but which ideological factions, political figures, and interest groups are influencing the future direction of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Through June 30, nearly 2,000 people have appeared on the ballot this year in Democratic and Republican primaries for Senate, House and governor across 31 states. Carrying on the tradition of FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement-tracking primary project that began in 2018 and ran through the 2024 election cycle, we are compiling primary race endorsements from several key endorsers — President Donald Trump, progressive leaders and organizations, party committees, women’s groups, and Israel-focused advocacy groups — to examine what types of candidates each party is actually nominating, and what that might tell us about where the parties are headed.

So far, our data tells us that both parties are being pulled by several highly energized factions. As Democrats have duked it out over Israel policy and generational change, progressives are winning primaries in numbers rivaled only by their banner year in 2018, challenging moderate and longstanding liberal members alike. Among Republicans, Trump’s backing has become his party’s gold standard — though his endorsement strategy helps explain his nearly bulletproof record. And women’s groups on both sides of the aisle are seeing success, but partisan gaps remain large, as female candidates continue to consolidate gains in the Democratic Party, while Republican women struggle to keep pace.

The table below summarizes primary win rates among all candidates endorsed by each of the groups and individuals we are tracking, through the primaries held on June 30.

Of course, there are still hundreds of primary contests yet to come. We’ll continue tracking every endorsement and every outcome to check in on how each group does at the end of the primary cycle, so stay tuned.

Paid subscribers to 50+1 get access to premium analysis, plus sortable tables and complete data access on our polling website. If you want to follow the 2026 cycle with the best data at your fingertips, become a paid subscriber.

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Progressive candidates are on a heater

There’s no question that it’s been a good year for progressive candidates. Well-funded and little-known challengers alike have toppled Democratic incumbents or bested competitive primary fields across the country, sparking comparisons to the 2018 progressive wave that ushered “The Squad” into Congress. Across most progressive organizations and politicians we track, around two-thirds of their non-incumbent endorsees have prevailed in primaries so far this year. Of course, there was some overlap in who each group endorsed, but all in all, 51 non-incumbent candidates have been endorsed by at least one progressive group we tracked, and 28 of them won or advanced to the general election, for an overall success rate of 55 percent.

These numbers are roughly in line with the success rates of progressive endorsees in recent cycles going back to at least 2018. More notable, though, is the number of progressive candidates that are winning primaries. Every endorser we track has already seen a higher number of its non-incumbent endorsees win just halfway through the 2026 primary season than the total number of candidates they endorsed in 2024, and many are right on the heels of their total numbers from the last midterm cycle in 2022. That means more progressives will appear on general election ballots in November and, most likely, in Congress next year.

One major story surrounding the progressive movement this year has been the number of aggressive challenges to longstanding Democratic incumbents, including not only moderates but older progressive-leaning members too. Three Democratic incumbents have lost their primaries to progressive challengers this year: Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman in New York, and Diana DeGette in Colorado. Notably, all three are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; instead of attacking them broadly from their ideological left, their challengers focused specifically on each incumbents’ support for Israel — we’ll talk more about those dynamics later — as well as Espaillat and DeGette’s ages. Another CPC member, North Carolina Rep. Valerie Foushee, narrowly fended off a similar progressive challenge by just one point, and almost certainly benefitted from an early primary that took place in March, before the momentum behind progressive candidates really began to build.

California also saw a wave of generational challengers this year, and some of the most successful were progressives: Three incumbents in California — Jimmy Gomez, Doris Matsui, and Mike Thompson — each advanced through their nonpartisan top-two primaries with less than an outright majority of the vote and will still have to go head-to-head with notable progressive challengers in the November general election.

Progressives also saw their share of high-profile losses, but even some of those made a splash and helped shape the party narrative in safe-blue seats. In Colorado’s Senate primary, for example, Julie Gonzales received less institutional support from progressive groups in her longshot bid against Sen. John Hickenlooper, but overperformed by earning 47 percent of the vote despite being outspent more than 10 to 1. And in a slew of crowded open-seat races in Illinois, multiple progressive candidates helped define races and draw big spending, but also frequently split the vote, yielding some wins for more moderate candidates with only a plurality of the vote.

Most of progressives’ activity took place in deep-blue territory, where their candidates tend to have the best chance at winning a general election: Around 80 percent of progressive-endorsed candidates on our list were running in districts rated as “solid Democratic” by the Cook Political Report. However, progressive groups did go head-to-head with the party campaign apparatus to notch a couple key wins on moderate territory.

The DCCC faced intense intraparty criticism for putting money behind Jasmeet Bains in California and David Baldacci in Maine, who both lost to progressive opponents. These swing-seat faceoffs stood alone in our dataset by pitting notable progressive candidates directly against the DCCC, which endorsed exclusively in “tossup” and “lean” seats. Bains was the only DCCC endorsee to date who’s faced a progressive on our list, Randy Villegas, while Baldacci also faced two more progressive candidates, though not ones endorsed by organizations we track. (Elsewhere, all of the committee’s other endorsed candidates won in primaries through June 30, including 18 incumbents and 9 who are vying for open or Republican-held seats.)

Looking ahead to the second half of the primary season, one of the biggest progressive vs. establishment battles of the season will play out in Michigan’s Senate primary, where progressive favorite Abdul El-Sayed faces Rep. Haley Stevens, who’s earned a rare primary endorsement from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. (His only other endorsee was Gov. Janet Mills in Maine.) Meanwhile, a bounty of House Democrats remain at serious risk of losing to notable progressive challengers.

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Trump’s endorsement is the GOP golden ticket

As we’ve found in the past, Trump has endorsed more primary candidates in each election cycle since his first term as president. As he continues to tout his reputation as a GOP kingmaker, his activity this year continues that trend. Altogether, the president has already endorsed 178 Republicans in primaries held through June 30 — almost as many as the total number he endorsed in 2022 and 2024. Of these, 173 endorsees have won, representing a 97 percent success rate.

As in past cycles, that number is arguably inflated by who Trump chooses to endorse: Most of his picks are incumbents (72 percent of his endorsees), who tend to win primaries at extremely high rates regardless of endorsements, or candidates with no primary opponent at all (41 percent).

Among the 128 incumbents he endorsed, only one lost: Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, who was forced into a runoff but dropped out amid an affair scandal, handing the nomination to Brandon Herrera. Trump endorsed Gonzales before the scandal broke, but seemed to informally back off the endorsement shortly ahead of the election. (After Gonzales dropped out, he endorsed Herrera ahead of the general election.)

Even if we narrow the list to non-incumbents running in a contested primary, Trump’s record drops to a still-strong 41 out of 45 wins, or 91 percent. In two of these races, Trump technically neutralized his losses by endorsing twice: After his pick in Oklahoma’s 1st District advanced to a runoff, the candidate’s campaign collapsed amid (another) affair scandal; Trump then switched his endorsement ahead of the runoff. He also hedged his bets by endorsing both runoff candidates in the South Carolina governor’s race. Interestingly, Trump’s only two other primary endorsement losses also came in gubernatorial races: Iowa and Georgia.

But in Congress, Trump’s endorsement reigned supreme. Campaign committees traditionally play a leading role in recruiting congressional candidates and consolidating support around an eventual nominee, but a look at how the president’s endorsements map onto those made by the committees points to Trump’s dominance there.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has endorsed far fewer House candidates than Trump — just 23 — and boasts a 100 percent success rate. Notably, the committee didn’t endorse against Trump in any instance, and all but three of its endorsees also had Trump’s backing. (Two of those, Reps. David Valadao and Brian Fitzpatrick, were moderate incumbents in uncontested primary races. The other, Laurie Buckhout, won a contested five-way race that saw candidates jockeying to align themselves with Trump.) In one indication of how closely the committee has aligned itself with Trump, earlier this year it rebranded its longstanding “Young Guns” candidate development program, which supports GOP candidates in key battleground districts, as “MAGA Majority,” promising to provide support to candidates who “embody the Trump agenda.”

On the Senate side, the National Republican Senatorial Committee did take a couple swings against Trump, but lost in both cases. NRSC leadership formally endorsed eight candidates — six in open races and two incumbents. The six non-incumbents were also endorsed by Trump and won, while the two incumbents, Sens. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana and John Cornyn in Texas, lost to Trump-backed challengers Julia Letlow and Ken Paxton, respectively.

The circumstances of both Cassidy’s and Cornyn’s losses demonstrate how Republicans have increasingly looked to Trump, not party committees or congressional leaders, for public signals of who the party should rally behind. In both cases, the NRSC endorsed its incumbents in mid-2025, but that did little to head off challengers: In Louisiana, Trump publicly encouraged Letlow to enter the race in January 2026, and in Texas, party leaders reportedly worked for months to convince Trump to back Cornyn, before being snubbed by a late endorsement that seemingly sunk the incumbent’s chances.

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Women continue to overperform in Democratic primaries

As we’ve done in cycles past, we took a look at how female candidates are doing in primaries, tracking endorsements by women’s groups and digging into what kinds of races and seats women are running and winning in.

Endorsements by women’s groups — who recruit, train, and support female candidates — were once again a reasonably strong predictor of success for endorsees in both parties. On the Democratic side, EMILYs List has endorsed 34 candidates in primaries held so far this cycle, and 79 percent of them (27 candidates) won their primaries, much higher than the 47 percent win rate for Democratic women overall.

Republican women’s groups did even better. Candidates backed by Winning for Women won or advanced in 92 percent of their races (22 of 24), and Maggie’s List-endorsed candidates won 83 percent of theirs (24 of 29). That’s more than double the 35 percent baseline win rate for all women running in Republican primaries so far this year.

Looking specifically at open primaries — where endorsements tend to have the most value as candidates seek to stand out from the field — EMILYs list endorsees have seen somewhat lower success rates than in recent years, while GOP endorsees have rebounded from a poor showing in 2024. Of course that could change, as many contests remain and these groups endorse selectively. In races so far, EMILYs List has endorsed 22 candidates in open primaries, and won 16 of those (73 percent), Winning for Women endorsees have won six of eight open primaries (75 percent), and Maggie’s List endorsees have won nine of 14 (64 percent).

That endorsement math is one thing. The candidate math is another. And on the candidate supply side, the GOP is still trailing Democrats. So far, 321 out of 983 Democratic primary candidates have been women (33 percent), compared with 168 out of 842 Republican primary candidates (20 percent). Democratic women are even better represented among primary winners, making up 44 percent of their party’s general election nominees so far, compared to just 18 percent of Republican nominees.

That share is fairly stable for both parties compared to the last several congressional election cycles, as shown in the table below, with one exception: Women are just 27 percent of Democrats’ nominees for Senate seats thus far.

Not only are more Democratic women winning primaries; they are also winning in districts where their chances of winning the general election are better. Notably, 54 percent of Democratic nominees in races for congressional tossup seats are women, compared with just 15 percent for Republicans, which is just two candidates. Both of those Republican women are incumbents (Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa’s 1st District, and Sen. Susan Collins in Maine), while Democrats have so far nominated six non-incumbent women to challenge sitting Republicans in tossup races.

There’s a big partisan gap in women running in safe seats as well. Women are 44 percent of Democratic nominees in solid-blue congressional seats, but just 14 percent of Republican nominees in solid-red seats. That pattern isn’t new: It reflects a much older pattern in how parties recruit women. Historically, women have been tapped to run as “sacrificial lambs” in less winnable races, while the most-winnable seats go to men. Democratic women have broken from that mold in recent cycles, while Republican women still seem stuck in it.

A lack of coordination and broader institutional support from the party could be another reason that Republican women’s success lags behind Democratic women’s. For instance, in Texas’s 34th District, both GOP women’s groups we’re watching backed former Rep. Mayra Flores, who Trump had endorsed in her earlier bid; this time, he endorsed against her, and she lost. Women’s groups also clashed with Trump in two other Texas districts: the 38th, where Winning for Women and Maggie’s List backed different women, and the 10th. Trump’s pick won in these contests, too. This dynamic was present in 2024 as well, when Trump endorsed against notable female candidates in primaries for North Carolina’s 13th District, Kansas’s 3rd District, and Indiana’s race for governor.

On the Democratic side, EMILYs List has also had some endorsement clashes. While they’ve only endorsed against the DCCC once so far in this cycle, they’ve endorsed against at least one progressive group in six races. They’ve also backed the same candidate as a progressive group in four races, and the same candidate as the party committee in 12 contests.

Pro-Israel groups are playing both offense and defense this year

One of the biggest dividing lines among Democrats in this year’s primary cycle this year has been over support for Israel. Pro-Israel groups like AIPAC (and its super PAC, the United Democracy Project), Democratic Majority for Israel, and J Street have each been major players in the primaries so far.

Pro-Israel groups in the last primary cycle made big moves to unseat progressive incumbents, but they’ve found that script flipped on them in at least a few races this year. Much of these groups’ activity has focused on shoring up existing allies in Congress: Each group has endorsed at least 50 incumbents so far, and saw at least a 95 percent success rate. That said, as we mentioned in our discussion of progressive endorsements, pro-Israel groups were on the losing side of some high-profile upsets, with several incumbents that they backed falling to progressive challengers who hammered them for their pro-Israel stances.

Beyond this, all three groups have seen mixed success in backing non-incumbent candidates. But they’ve also taken steps that have made it difficult to draw a clear and cohesive conclusion about the success of their endorsees this year.

That’s perhaps most true of AIPAC, one of the biggest spenders in the entire primary cycle to date and a leading force in opposing progressive candidates. According to our endorsement-tracking system — which counts AIPAC endorsements that are posted directly on its website or direct spending by UDP in support of a candidate — the group has only endorsed two non-incumbent Democrats so far this cycle: Adrian Boafo, who won in Maryland, and Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who lost in Illinois. But AIPAC and UDP support and oppose candidates in lots of other ways, including spending money against a candidate without explicitly endorsing another.

Back in February, for example, the group started off the cycle with a high-profile loss: the special election primary for New Jersey’s 11th District, where it spent over $2 million to oppose Tom Malinowski, largely through ads completely unrelated to his stance on Israel. That strategy is widely seen to have backfired and helped push a more progressive candidate across the finish line.

In other cases, AIPAC’s activity isn’t captured in our dataset because the organization and its allies often funnel their money through shell PACS that can receive funding from other sources besides AIPAC, making it difficult to track.

That was the case for multiple congressional races in Illinois, where AIPAC funneled money into multiple shell PACs with varying degrees of success. In Illinois’s 9th District, the AIPAC-affiliated Elect Chicago Women and Chicago Progressive Partnership PACs each spent millions to unsuccessfully support Laura Fine and oppose more progressive candidates Daniel Biss and Kat Abughazaleh. They also spent a small sum supporting another progressive, Bushra Amiwala, in the same race, in an attempt to split the progressive, pro-Palestinian vote. In the 8th and 2nd districts, Elect Chicago Women and another shell PAC, Affordable Chicago Now, successfully spent huge sums to push Melissa Bean and Donna Miller across the finish line, respectively. But their money couldn’t quite elevate their pick, Melissa Conyears-Ervin, above a crowded field in the 7th District.

AIPAC has also endorsed 66 incumbent Republicans in primaries so far this year, and all but four of them won. The group only backed one GOP challenger, Ed Gallrein in Kentucky’s 4th District, contributing to one of the most expensive primaries to date: the effort to unseat maverick Rep. Thomas Massie, who notably earned the ire of President Trump.

But AIPAC isn’t the only pro-Israel organization playing an active role in primaries this cycle. DMFI has been very successful, with seven of their 10 non-incument endorsees winning in contested races. A smaller organization focused solely on Democratic candidates, DMFI has often overlapped with AIPAC since its founding in 2019, but usually hasn’t played the same role of political boogeyman in primaries, even though it too is a major participant in the shell PAC game.

The third group we tracked, J Street, often breaks from the others. A more liberal pro-Israel group that supports a two-state solution and an end to war in the region, J Street has cast a broader net with its endorsements rather than going all-in on select candidates. In the first half of the year, J Street endorsed multiple candidates in the same race eight times. That’s not necessarily a new strategy for the group, though, and it seems to have worked out pretty well for them this year, even if it muddles their overall success rate. While half of their non-incumbent endorsees won in contested primaries, one of their preferred candidates won all but five of the 22 races of this type that they endorsed in.

J Street-endorsed candidates also performed well when directly up against AIPAC- or DMFI-backed candidates. While several candidates won with both J Street and another group both backing them, candidates endorsed solely by J Street beat out an AIPAC or DMFI pick in four contests. The group’s only loss in these head-to-heads was in California’s 32nd District, where J Street endorsed against incumbent Rep. Brad Sherman, while AIPAC and DMFI supported the congressman.

In the latter half of this primary season, pro-Israel groups will face big tests, particularly in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary where AIPAC is spending heavily to boost Rep. Haley Stevens over Abdul El-Sayed, and in Missouri’s 1st District, where pro-Israel groups played a major role in ousting former Rep. Cori Bush in 2024, and are now opposing her comeback campaign.

We’ll be tracking all of these storylines throughout the rest of the primary season, and we’ll be back in the fall with more comprehensive rundowns for each. We’ll also make our full dataset available for download and reuse at that time.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in accessing our partial data through the June 30 primaries, reach out to us here.

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article inadvertently classified Julia Letlow as a candidate running in an open primary, but she ran against incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy. The table “Women’s group endorsees tend to do well in primaries” and corresponding text has been updated to reflect this.

Methodology

Endorsement data for this article was pulled from the official websites of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, the Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, Winning for Women, Maggie’s List, EMILYs List, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Democratic Majority for Israel, J Street, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. We also sourced endorsements from Donald Trump on Truth Social, and from Chuck Schumer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren on X, Instagram and from news reports. (The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has not formally endorsed any candidates in 2026.)

For this project, we considered an endorsement to be any statement made by Election Day in a race supporting a candidate’s campaign and/or urging people to vote for them. We included endorsements made after an initial primary but before a runoff election with a note.

Additionally, we considered spending in support of a candidate by the United Democracy Project as an endorsement of that candidate by AIPAC, since the UDP explicitly bills itself as the super PAC of AIPAC, and AIPAC rarely, if ever, formally endorses non-incumbent primary candidates.

Candidate information and certified election results were sourced from official state election websites. We did not include races that went to a primary runoff that has not yet been decided. When calculating primary success rates, we generally included candidates who won their partisan primary or advanced to the general election. In California, the top two primary finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Race ratings for individual seats were sourced from the Cook Political Report. Gender for candidates was sourced from the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.

Historical endorsement data was sourced from FiveThirtyEight’s public datasets.

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There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about the Democratic Socialists of America, as DSA candidates across the country have been running (and winning) in primary races in deep blue districts and cities. So today we’re taking a look at the official DSA platform to find out how the American people feel about some marquee DSA policies. For each policy we’ll examine the DSA platform language and take a look at polling about those issues. Of course, we don’t have time to look at every policy on the website, so we’ve chosen a handful that seem to be getting the most attention.

Healthcare

The official DSA platform language on healthcare is as follows.

Guarantee universal healthcare at no cost to individuals, including complete access to reproductive and gender-affirming care. Expand healthcare access and quality by investing in new public hospitals and clinics. Make all medical education and training public and free.

The first bit here on guaranteeing universal healthcare is commonly referred to as “Medicare for all.” Generally speaking, the idea of the government providing healthcare to every citizen is above water with the American people. For example, in a recent survey by Tavern Research for Zeteo and the Searchlight Institute (Jun. 24 - 26, 2026), 52 percent of likely voters said they would support “the U.S. automatically enrolling every American in a comprehensive government-administered health insurance plan,” while just 19 percent opposed the idea.

However, when you give people more information, support often drops. For example, when the pollsters added information to the question indicating that such a program would be “funded through significantly increased federal taxes,” support fell to 40 percent, and opposition rose to 29 percent. And asked whether they would switch from their current private health insurance plans to a federal program with similar monthly payments, only 30 percent of respondents said they would switch while 70 percent preferred to remain with their current provider.

As for access to reproductive healthcare and gender affirming care provided by the government, it doesn’t seem that the DSA has the public on their side. In a 2024 study by the University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation (Jun. 18 - Jul. 3, 2024), voters were asked to rank how acceptable certain policies are on a scale of 0 (totally unacceptable) to 10 (totally acceptable). Limiting federal funding for abortion was rated as unacceptable (0-4) by less than half — 45 percent — of respondents nationally. Twenty percent rated it as a 5 out of 10 — which the pollster referred to as “tolerable” — and 35 percent rated the policy as acceptable (6-10). Regarding gender affirming care, a 2025 poll from the Pew Research Center (Feb. 10 - 17, 2025) showed only 22 percent of Americans support requiring health insurance to cover gender transition-related medical care, so it seems unlikely that a majority would support the government funding it.

Green New Deal

The official DSA platform language on the Green New Deal is as follows.

Workers must lead our democratic transition to a green future. Pass a federal jobs guarantee. Implement massive investment in sustainable, publicly owned energy and transit infrastructure. Phase out the use of fossil fuels. Reclaim and repair our earth’s resources for all.

Voters have indicated support for a federal jobs guarantee for years. In 2024, Jacobin found that, on average, support for such a program was almost 60 percent. More recently, polling from The Argument/Verasight (May 29 - Jun. 3, 2026) found that 71 percent of voters supported a program “where the federal government would guarantee a job to any adult citizen,” with pollster Lakshya Jain writing that this was “among the most popular proposals I’ve ever tested in any poll.”

Americans also support increased funding for transportation infrastructure, according to a June poll by Morning Consult/The Associated General Contractors of America (Jun. 1 - 7, 2026). In that poll, 47 percent said that they thought federal highway, bridge, and transit funding should be increased, 32 percent said it should be kept the same, and only 7 percent said it should be reduced. When it came specifically to transit, 70 percent said they supported more funding for public transit systems, with just 18 percent opposed.

However, on phasing out fossil fuels, the DSA seems to be going in the opposite direction as the American people. According to a March survey from the Pew Research Center (Mar. 16 - 22, 2026), the percentage of Americans who say that expanding fossil fuels should be a higher priority than expanding wind and solar energy has grown from 20 percent to 42 percent in the last 6 years, while those saying renewables should be a higher priority has shrunk from 79 percent to 57 percent. And slightly more Americans — 38 percent — say the federal government should encourage oil and gas drilling than say it should discourage it — 28 percent.

On the other hand, the Pew survey also finds that Americans strongly support the government encouraging production of wind and solar power, with 65 percent saying so, while just 9 percent say the government should discourage production of renewable energy. So while the DSA may not have the public in hand on phasing out fossil fuels, an increased focus on developing renewable energy could be more popular.

Israel/Palestine

The official DSA language related to Israel and Palestine is as follows.

Recognize the rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of return, the right to resist military occupation, and the right to self determination in a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. End all military and economic aid to Israel. Prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza.

American opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shifted dramatically, according to decades of polling from Gallup. In the most recent survey (Feb. 2 - 16, 2026) Americans say their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis — the first time this has been the case in Gallup polling going back to 2001. Both independents and Democrats are more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis, while Republicans are significantly more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians. Favorable views of Israel have fallen to their lowest level since 1989.

Throughout the poll series, Americans have supported an independent Palestinian state. Support has reached a recent high of 57 percent with just 28 percent opposed, higher than at any time since 2003. However, the survey does not specify that such a state would have Jerusalem as its capital, as called for in the DSA platform. While I was unable to find polling with that specific provision, it’s likely that — as we see with Medicare for all — support would decline when specifics were detailed in poll questions.

As to ending military and economic aid to Israel, the DSA seems to have the public closer to their side. In a July poll from Emerson College (Jul. 19 - 20, 2026), 61 percent of likely voters said that the federal government spends too much on aid to Israel. However, completely ending aid may be less popular than simply reducing it. A July survey from Ipsos/The Washington Post (Jul. 8 - 13, 2026) showed that only 29 percent of Americans supported fully ending military support to Israel. Another 26 percent said it should be reduced. So while Americans agree with the DSA that our federal budget spends too much on Israel, it’s not clear that they’d be on board with a complete termination of funding.

Criminal Justice Reform

The official DSA language related to criminal justice and policing is as follows.

Demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor. Treat drug addiction and mental illness as health issues, not crimes. End qualified immunity and empower civilian oversight bodies with real authority over the police.

When it comes to abolishing the police and prison system, the DSA is decidedly on the wrong side of public opinion. A July poll by Change Research (Jul. 13 - 17, 2026) asked about some DSA-related policies, including this. Asked if they supported “ending prisons and policing as they currently exist, including cutting police budgets toward zero and releasing people from prison,” just 13 percent of voters said they supported the policy, while 80 percent were opposed. In a simpler question from an RMG Research/Napolitian News Service poll (Jul. 13 - 14, 2026), 68 percent of voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported “defunding the police,” while 15 percent said they would be more likely.

Nevertheless, there are some elements of the DSA platform that are popular with voters. In a 2025 poll from YouGov (Oct. 28 - Nov. 3, 2025), voters favored ending qualified immunity by 23 percentage points, 54 to 31. And policies related to police oversight had enormous support, including making it easier for the federal government to charge officers for using excessive force (supported by 69 percent) and creating a federal registry for complaints against officers (supported by 72 percent).

The YouGov survey also showed mixed opinions on redirecting funding to public services. Asked whether they would support “budgeting less money for your local police department and more for social services (for instance, funding social workers and mental health professionals),” 46 percent of respondents said they were in favor, while 38 percent were opposed and 16 percent were unsure. But as with the more recent surveys, opinion was clear on defunding the police: the policy was underwater by 40 percentage points.

There are, of course, many other policies in the DSA platform that have varying levels of support among the public. For example, their call to invest in new, publicly-owned housing is generally popular, while their call for reparations to Black Americans is not. Many of their policies related to electoral reform would find favor with the American people, such as ending Citizens United and getting money out of politics. Others might not, like ranked choice voting. Still others might be more mixed, such as making Washington, D.C. a state.

Opinions on the DSA platform reflect the complexity of how Americans view policy. The details underlying each proposal span the gamut of popularity, with some aspects overwhelmingly favored among the electorate and others deeply underwater. How these candidates ultimately fare in future elections may hinge on which policies they emphasize, and whether they are able to jettison the least popular ideas in order to win over voters.

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Other polling nuggets

• A poll from Politico/Public First (Jul. 13 - 15, 2026) found that voters across the political spectrum overestimate how much gas prices have increased since Trump took office. While gas prices have, on average, increased just $0.67 since Trump’s inauguration, according to Politico, 23 percent of respondents say gas has risen in their area by $3 or more. Another 17 percent said prices have risen by between 2 and 3 dollars, and 25 percent said they’ve risen by between 1 and 2 dollars. Of course, respondents may be having a difficult time with the timeline here. Gas prices fell in the first year of Trump’s administration before rocketing up due to the conflict in Iran, so respondents may be comparing current prices to the more recent lows rather than the beginning of Trump’s term.

• Opposition to AI data centers continues to grow, according to the latest Emerson College poll (Jul. 19 - 20, 2026). A significant majority, 63 percent, of likely voters said they would oppose data centers “being built in or near your community,” up from 42 percent in December 2025. Just 27 percent said they would support the centers, down from 33 percent in December. Opposition is strongest among Democrats, with 77 percent opposed, compared to 66 percent of independents and 47 percent of Republicans.

• Nearly one in three Americans are sharing their bed with at least one furry friend according to a YouGov poll (Jul. 24, 2026). Thirty-one percent said they sleep with at least one pet, including 10 percent who said they sleep with 2 or more. And unlike the divisive issues of our time, sleeping with a pet is bipartisan: 32 percent of Democrats, 30 percent of independents, and 30 percent of Republicans are all sharing their beds with at least one furbaby. Sweet dreams, folks.

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Polling averages update

All numbers are as of 1:00 PM Eastern on July 24, 2026.

2026 U.S. House generic ballot

The Democratic margin in the 2026 U.S. House generic ballot rounded to 6 points this week, up from 5 points last week. Currently, 49.3 percent of likely voters intend to vote for a Democrat in November, compared to 43.7 percent who plan to vote for a Republican.

Trump’s job approval

President Trump’s approval rating among adults decreased this week, from 37.1 percent approval to 36.8 percent. At the same time, disapproval rose from 58.9 to 59.4 percent.

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