STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And now let's turn to Kyle Kondik, who's been listening with us. He is managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball. As I understand it, they don't actually use a crystal ball. Is that right, Mr. Kondik?
KYLE KONDIK: Sometimes a magic eight ball, but yeah.
INSKEEP: Oh, magic eight ball. OK, good.
KONDIK: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Anyway, nonpartisan politics newsletter published by the University of Virginia Center for Politics. So I just got to note the polling, and maybe the crystal ball, maybe the eight ball, looks really bad for Republicans. What are the odds, though, of a polling error, that this election is not what it seems to us?
KONDIK: Look, you always have to be cognizant of that. It is fair to say that polling error can go, you know, both ways. I think in recent years, it's been more sort of high-profile and common for polls to underestimate, you know, underestimate Republicans. However, if you go back to the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races just a year ago, in 2025, the polls actually underestimated the Democrats.
Now, where I really worry about polling error is in the Midwest because states like Iowa and Ohio, you know, those are places where we have seen the polls, you know, kind of miss and underestimate Republicans. But, you know, if you just go by the polls right now, you'd say the Democrats are favored in the Senate. And yet the leads are small. And we also have to be worried about potential polling error.
INSKEEP: Oh, I appreciate that caution, especially about the Midwest. Let me ask you about the states that I've been traveling through the last few days, North Carolina and Georgia. Both of them were seen at the beginning of the year as very competitive Senate races, less so now. Why do you think that is?
KONDIK: I think you've got two pretty strong Democratic candidates in both states. And also, you know, North Carolina and Georgia, maybe they're slightly Republican-leaning. And you know, Donald Trump carried them both in 2024. But, of course, he lost Georgia in 2020. But these are the kind of, you know, 50-50-ish sorts of states that you would expect the president's party to struggle to win, you know, in kind of a blue-wave-style midterm, which is what this kind of feels like. It also doesn't seem like the Republicans put their best foot forward in terms of the candidates they nominated in both states.
INSKEEP: Yeah. I want to ask about some of the voters that I've talked with here. I want to summarize. We've talked to 75 people in the last number of days. It seems to me the Democratic voters are pretty determined. They know what they're voting for. Republicans, I want to characterize, in many cases, as disappointed. By which I mean, even if they're still with Trump, and many are, they understand that things are not going well in the country right now. Does that match up with the polling that you see?
KONDIK: Yeah, I think so. And I think also what you see is that there's, you know, generally, Democrats are expressing more enthusiasm about voting. Now, of course, you know, an enthusiastic vote casts the same as an unenthusiastic vote.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
KONDIK: But the polling may tell us something about, you know, the turnout dynamic. It also seems like some polling has suggested that people who think of themselves as, you know, quote, unquote, "MAGA Republicans" may be more excited to vote, and non-MAGA-Republicans a little less excited to vote. And, you know, with the president barnstorming the country, I think Republicans are hoping that the president will sort of wake some of these voters up. But the people who, you know, may not be excited about voting may also be a little bit cooler toward the president.
INSKEEP: What are you hearing about independent voters? And I'm just going to say out loud that classic independent voter tends to lean a little more right than left. But they can vote for a Democrat from time to time. What do you hear from them?
KONDIK: Yeah, I mean, look, it seems like Democrats should probably do relatively well with independents and, you know, unaffiliated voters. It's also the case in a lot of states that have party registration that, you know, the group that's really growing are the unaffiliated. And so they can be kind of hard to pin down. But they may sort of, you know, move with factors like the economy and disapproval of the president. Of course, those are, you know, challenges for the Republicans right now.
INSKEEP: Let me ask about another thing, because here I am in Georgia where Jon Ossoff, the Democratic senator, has a pretty solid lead over Mike Collins, the Republican. But Rick Jackson, the Republican candidate for governor, seems to be in much better shape against Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic candidate, former mayor of Atlanta. Is it possible that even in this partisan environment, we could have a fair number of voters who split their tickets in some places?
KONDIK: Yeah. And look, you just have to go back to Georgia four years ago to find an example of that, because Brian Kemp won reelection as governor kind of going away. But Raphael Warnock was able to hang on as a Democrat in the Senate race that eventually, you know, went to a runoff that he won and beat Herschel Walker in. And, you know, there are going to be some states that produce split outcomes. You know, it always happens. In, you know, states like Maine and Michigan and Georgia and Ohio, you know, Iowa, there's a possibility that you might see, you know, one party win the Senate race, the other party win the governor's race.
INSKEEP: Help me think through one other thing, because we began talking about the president's travel schedule. If you're a Republican, does Trump's presence in your state right now help you or hurt you?
KONDIK: It's a great question. I think it's kind of hard to answer because, you know, back in 2018, you know, the president, I think, was an asset in a lot of the key states that had senate races, particularly the red states, because even though the president's approval rating was negative nationally, it was still positive in some of the kind of, you know, purple and red states that were hosting senate races that year. You know, this time, the president's approval rating is a lot worse than it was in 2018. And even in an Ohio or in Iowa or in Alaska or Texas, states that voted for Trump by double digits, seems like his approval rating is probably negative in those states. And so you wonder how much of an asset the president actually is.
INSKEEP: Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Thanks so much.
KONDIK: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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