The path to Democratic control of the Senate is widening as the party’s fortunes improve in five reliably Republican states, according to new polls from The New York Times and Siena University. Voters are not sold on the economy, especially in Alaska, where nearly three-quarters of voters said the state’s economic conditions were only fair or poor. In Iowa, Kansas and Ohio, two-thirds or more of those surveyed rendered the same judgment on their state’s economic conditions.
Voters took a slightly more optimistic view in Texas, where 44 percent of voters said the economy was excellent or good, and 56 percent said it was only fair or poor. In Texas, Talarico and Paxton are running even on immigration. Mr. Trump had a 10-percentage-point advantage on voters’ trust to handle immigration in Times/Siena battleground polls conducted in September 2024. Republicans’ edge has shrunk to just three points in the most recent round of Senate battleground polls.
The dynamic is especially striking in Texas, where 12 percent of voters listed immigration as the top driver of their vote, more than in any other state. Voters in Texas are evenly split on who they trust more to handle the issue, the Republican Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, or the Democratic candidate, James Talarico. Republican frustration with Trump is evident, particularly when it comes to gas prices in the Midwest.
Across the five states, Mr. Trump’s approval rating sat at just 40 percent. That included 20 percent of voters who supported him in 2024, but who now said they disapproved of his job performance. Even as Mr. Trump’s numbers have fallen since the summer, his base has largely continued to back him.
That makes it even more striking to see half of Republicans in Iowa — and nearly half of Republicans in Ohio and Kansas — disapprove of the president’s handling of gas prices. Across all other issues, in every other state polled, Republicans did not come anywhere close to this level of disapproval. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown has a sizable advantage on data centers.
Sherrod Brown, a Democratic former senator trying to stage a comeback in Ohio, has focused heavily on data centers in his race against Senator Jon Husted, a Republican — and it seems to be working in his favor. Mr. Husted supported data center investments in his state while serving as its lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2025, and Democrats have cast him as the “face of data centers” in Ohio. (Mr. Husted has tried to recover on the issue by sponsoring a bill intended to protect consumers from high energy costs linked to data centers.) Most Ohio voters say they are opposed to data center construction. And by a wide, 11-point margin, voters favor Mr. Brown over Mr. Husted to handle the issue, the largest advantage for any candidate across the states when it comes to data centers. Even 11 percent of Republicans in the state say they prefer the Democrat’s position.
Still, only 3 percent of voters in Ohio said that data centers were the most important issue driving their vote. Though small, that proportion was much higher than in any other state, where hardly any voters mentioned the issue.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing