Final Polls Show Democrats Ahead in Key Senate Races as Midterms Near, Despite Polling Misses

Final polls before Tuesday's U.S. midterm elections show Democrats leading in the key states that will decide control of the Senate, according to new Times/Siena surveys reported by The New York Times. Polls also suggest Democratic candidates lead in well over the 218 House seats needed to flip the chamber, and are tied or narrowly ahead in the key Senate races, the BBC reported. A recent New York Times poll put the Senate race in South Carolina, which Donald Trump won by 18 percentage points in 2024, as a tie. Recent CNN surveys put Democrats ahead in Texas, Kansas and Maine. Democratic expectations rest on a historically unpopular Republican president, public unhappiness over rising food and household costs, and months of favorable polling. Polls have missed before: Trump outperformed predictions in his 2016 and 2024 victories, and his narrow 2020 defeat came after surveys showed a more comfortable Biden win. Earlier this year, polls suggested Abdul El-Sayed would win Michigan's Democratic Senate primary by double digits, but the margin was 1%. In Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary, a candidate with a lead approaching 20 points lost by a fraction of a percent.

The New York Times, the left-leaning outlet, frames its coverage around the surge itself. Its headline refers to a blue surge and asks whether the numbers can be trusted, while its excerpt stresses that Democrats lead in all the key Senate states in its own Times/Siena surveys. The excerpt available does not detail past polling errors. The BBC, the alternative outlet, is distinctly different in emphasis: it acknowledges the Democratic lead but foregrounds the history of polling misses, including 2016, 2020, 2024 and this year's Michigan and Wisconsin primaries, and cites Clifford Young, president of Ipsos Public Affairs, on how difficult polling has become. Right-leaning outlets had not reported this story at the time of writing, while the left-leaning and alternative outlets had. Those outlets focus on the Democratic polling lead and how far it can be trusted.