The final midterm polls before Tuesday’s vote show Democratic Senate candidates ahead in five Republican-held battleground states and tied in a sixth. Republicans hold the Senate 53 to 47, so Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win control, CBS News notes.
The New York Times and Siena University released those last state polls on Sunday, November 1. They show Democrats leading in Alaska, Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas, and effectively tied in Iowa. The House looks less close. The Cook Political Report favors Democrats in 220 seats, two more than a majority, NPR reported on October 29.
Polls are not results. Most of these Senate leads sit inside the margin of error, and one Democratic seat, Michigan, was shaken up on Sunday after the polls closed their fieldwork.
Democrats need four Senate seats, and the map runs through Trump country
Senate control decides who confirms President Donald Trump’s judges, Cabinet officers and ambassadors for his last two years. The House decides investigations and subpoenas. Republicans control both chambers now, so losing either would hand Democrats a check on the White House.
The Senate math is harder for Democrats than the House. They must hold Michigan, the one top battleground they already hold, and flip four Republican seats. A net gain of three would leave a 50-50 Senate, with Vice President JD Vance breaking ties for Republicans.
Most of the Republican seats in play are in states Trump won easily in 2024, CBS reported. Kansas has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, and Texas has not done so since 1988, The Irish Times noted in its write-up of the new polls.
The final Times/Siena Senate polls
These are the Senate results among likely voters from the Siena Research Institute’s release, with each poll’s margin of error.
| State | Democrat | Republican | Margin of error |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michigan (open, D-held) | Abdul El-Sayed 53% | Mike Rogers 42% | ±3.8 |
| Texas (open, R-held) | James Talarico 50% | Ken Paxton 43% | ±3.4 |
| Maine | Troy Jackson 51% | Sen. Susan Collins 45% | ±4.7 |
| Ohio (special) | Sherrod Brown 49% | Sen. Jon Husted 44% | ±4.4 |
| Kansas | Adam Hamilton 49% | Sen. Roger Marshall 44% | ±4.4 |
| Alaska | Mary Peltola 48% | Sen. Dan Sullivan 46% | ±5.0 |
| Iowa (open, R-held) | Josh Turek 48% | Ashley Hinson 47% | ±4.7 |
In Kansas, Libertarian David Graham took 4%. Iowa’s seat is open because Republican Sen. Joni Ernst chose not to seek reelection.
“Our final U.S. Senate polls show Democrats with leads of 5 to 11 points in Kansas (5), Ohio (5), Maine (6), Texas (7), and Michigan (11),” said Don Levy, Siena’s director. Alaska is close and “Iowa is virtually tied,” he added.
The Times polled the same seven states in September. Democrats gained ground since then in six of them and slipped only in Alaska, according to the Irish Times account. Just 38% of likely voters across the seven states approved of Trump’s job performance.
North Carolina and South Carolina were not in this batch. Polls have long shown Democrat Roy Cooper ahead in North Carolina’s open race, the Irish Times reported. A Times/Siena poll last week found South Carolina’s Senate race tied.
Michigan, the Democrats’ seat at risk, changed on Sunday
The Michigan poll finished before the race’s biggest late twist. On Sunday, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over her own party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, CBS News reported.
Stevens lost the August primary to El-Sayed. The two had clashed in recent days over an outside group’s ad linking US military aid to Israel to grocery prices, which Stevens called antisemitic. El-Sayed said the ad “was not made by me” and that he disagrees with it.
“Our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul, said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away, and he’s right,” Stevens said in a video. El-Sayed brushed it off: “I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the move “a despicable betrayal,” and Trump praised Stevens on Truth Social. Many of Stevens’ own staff resigned, including her chief of staff of eight years, CNBC reported. No public poll has yet measured the effect. El-Sayed’s 11-point lead in the Times/Siena survey gives him the largest cushion of any Senate candidate it polled.
Why the polls could still miss
Siena’s own director hedged. “With so many races within the poll’s total margin of error, a Senate majority for either party remains possible,” Levy said.
There is recent precedent for a miss in exactly this map. Six years ago, Collins trailed in every survey before the election and then won comfortably, the Irish Times noted. The same polls also found that voters who decided only in the last month favored Republicans by nine points. Some voters were still undecided.
Two of the closest states also count slowly. Alaska and Maine use ranked-choice voting, so a race with no majority of first choices can take days to settle. Alaska’s final polls close at 1 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, as our election night guide to poll closing times explains.
The House leans Democratic, with fights in Trump districts
Republicans hold 218 House seats plus an independent who caucuses with them, against 214 Democrats, with two vacancies, according to CBS. A majority is 218.
NPR’s count of Cook’s latest ratings showed 220 seats favoring Democrats, 17 toss-ups and about 30 more potentially competitive seats leaning Republican. The NPR/PBS News/Marist poll gave Democrats an 8-point lead among likely voters on the generic congressional ballot, which asks which party voters want in Congress.
Money shows where both parties expect close fights. NPR found more than $12 million in planned spending each in Michigan’s 7th District and North Carolina’s 1st. Florida’s 14th, 22nd and 25th, New York’s 17th and Iowa’s 2nd and 3rd also draw heavy spending.
Several are tests of Trump-era gains. In Texas’ 15th District, Tejano musician Bobby Pulido is challenging Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz in a Hispanic-majority seat Trump won by nearly 20 points, CBS reported. In Florida’s 22nd, a seat redrawn to favor Republicans, Democrat Pia Dandiya faces Republican Casey Askar after Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel moved to another district. Iowa’s 2nd, which Ashley Hinson leaves for her Senate run, pits Republican Joe Mitchell against Democrat Lindsay James.
Our earlier guide to the 2026 Senate races has more on each candidate. The first polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia, and North Carolina and Ohio follow at 7:30.
