Midterm Senate Polls and Gerrymandering Impact
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What happened
As U.S. midterm elections approach, control of the Senate is expected to turn on a cluster of competitive statewide races, with RealClearPolitics (RCP) averages as of the morning of October 26 showing several of those contests within a few points. The New York Times published an analysis titled "The Surprise Tossups" on how gerrymandering shapes the midterm elections. The Federalist reviewed Senate elections in the Trump era (2016–2024) in the 13 states generally treated as most competitive in 2026, comparing final RCP averages with actual results to estimate each state's typical polling error, then applied those averages to the October 26 RCP figures. That comparison reported that polls had, on average, underestimated Democrats in New Hampshire (by 3.4 points) and Minnesota (by 2.3) and underestimated Republicans in North Carolina (1.7), Michigan (2.5), Iowa (3.6), and Maine (4.3), with Georgia, Texas, and Ohio nearer even, and too little prior polling in Kansas, Nebraska, Alaska, and South Carolina to draw firm error estimates.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage never tests whether Senate polls have been systematically off, so a reader never learns that prior misses would recast which races look like tossups. Right-leaning coverage never mentions gerrymandering, so a reader never sees maps as the reason contests surprise. That first frame, in the New York Times, discusses only how gerrymandering shapes the midterms. The second instead walks through Trump-era Senate polling versus final results, state by state, in the Federalist.
Right-leaning coverage leads with whether each party should hope the polls are accurate. Left-leaning coverage leads with district lines and never ranks a Senate race. Right-leaning coverage in the Federalist opens by noting Democrats "hoping that the polling is right" as a path to Senate control. It then reorders thirteen competitive states after adjusting for past error. Left-leaning coverage does not name any of those states.
Does gerrymandering have any bearing on which statewide Senate races become tossups?
Bottom line
The New York Times never cites a Senate poll on surprise tossups, and the Federalist never cites gerrymandering even while flipping Michigan from a Democratic poll lead to a Republican edge.
The receipts — 3 facts one side's coverage lacks
- New Hampshire Senate polls undersold Democrats by an average of 3.4 points during the Trump era
- Michigan Senate polling underestimated Republicans by an average of 2.5 points during the Trump era
- Maine Senate polling underestimated Republicans by an average of 4.3 points during the Trump era
The Left View
The New York Times frames the midterms around unexpected competitive races—"surprise tossups"—and treats gerrymandering as what shapes which contests are in play and how the elections unfold. In that telling, map-drawing, not only national or statewide polling, is the force that determines where tossups appear.
The Right View
The Federalist argues there is "no way to know for sure" whether current polls are right, but that Trump-era Senate polling errors, applied state by state, offer a clearer picture than unadjusted RCP averages. After those adjustments it says New Hampshire, Georgia, and North Carolina "are almost surely headed into the Democrats' column," that among the rest Democrats need five wins to take the Senate and Republicans six to keep it, and that if past patterns hold, control "will most likely hinge on the results in Texas and Michigan—and on" Alaska and Kansas. It contends Iowa, New Hampshire, and Minnesota "aren't as close as polling suggests," Michigan is "likely closer than polling suggests," and "the candidate with the best chance in Maine is likely the one trailing in the polls," citing Susan Collins's history of outperforming surveys, including by about eight points in her two most recent pre–Trump-era races. Republicans, it notes, speculate that conservatives are "more distrusting of pollsters and therefore less apt to respond."
Our Take (balanced)
The left's strongest argument, as presented, is that gerrymandering structures the midterm battlefield so that "surprise tossups" come from how maps are drawn, not merely from polling noise; the supporting material given is the Times's focus on gerrymandering as what shapes those elections. The right's strongest argument is that Senate polls in the Trump era have repeatedly missed in the same direction in specific states—New Hampshire and Minnesota toward Democrats; Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, and Maine toward Republicans—and that Collins has outperformed polls dating back to 2008, so unadjusted leads may misstate which races are actually close; the supporting evidence is the multi-cycle RCP-versus-result comparisons. The central unresolved tension is whether races that look like surprise tossups are misread primarily because of how maps are drawn, or because of persistent, state-specific polling error that may or may not repeat—and the two accounts largely talk past each other on map-based House dynamics versus statewide Senate polling.
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