WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “Delusional” Republicans Met With “Disbelief” Over “Disintegrating” Senate Map

The Washington Sun: “The path for Republicans to keep their Senate majority is getting smaller by the day — a once-unthinkable prospect for the party”

GOP Strategist: “Things were bad. But they started to go worse recently and if it keeps on this track, it’s gonna be real bad”

Axios: “What once looked like a long shot for Democrats — taking control of the Senate by flipping four Republican-held seats on a map favoring the GOP — looks increasingly plausible”

GOP Sen. Jim Justice: “You’ve got real momentum on the Democrat side […] we may lose in the midterm”

With 36 days until the midterm elections, Republicans are staring down a “disintegrating” Senate map as strategists “expand the imagination of how ugly it could get” amid the “increasingly plausible” possibility that Democrats could retake the majority. 

Republicans’ path to maintaining their slim Senate majority is “getting smaller by the day” after “the bottom fell out” in polling for their Senate candidates, and they share “delusional” forecasts that were “met with disbelief” and “laughed” at by their own donors at a recent fundraising retreat. 

Now, as “top Senate Republicans openly acknowledge they face a tough map in November,” the NRSC has begun diverting time and resources to “defend Senate seats in three states that Trump won by double digits two years ago” as “Republicans coast to coast are getting pulled under by a violent undertow fueled by Trump’s unpopularity.” 

See for yourself: 

Axios: “Delusional” Senate forecast rattles Sea Island retreat

• A pollster for Senate Republicans was met with disbelief on Saturday after telling GOP donors and operatives that they could grow their majority in November’s midterm elections, sources tell Axios.
• “Delusional,” one attendee at the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Sea Island retreat in Georgia told Axios after the presentation by the pollster, Erik Iverson. “The mood is not good,” said another.
• Some in the room laughed when a member of the audience asked if it meant Republicans would also pick up a seat, the source said.
• Attendees questioned why they were not given a full update on each race.
• Top Senate Republicans openly acknowledge they face a tough map in November.
• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told Axios on Wednesday that it’s a “tough environment.”
• The NRSC itself is asking donors for $9 million to help in three states — Alaska, Iowa and Ohio — where President Trump won by double digits in 2024, as Axios scooped on Thursday.
  

The Washington Sun: ‘No One Feels Good’: Republicans’ Senate Map Keeps Getting Worse

• The path for Republicans to keep their Senate majority is getting smaller by the day — a once-unthinkable prospect for the party.
• Republican members for months have acknowledged that rising gas prices and other costs, largely stemming from the Iran war, are a massive problem, especially for their electoral prospects. That talk finally hit reality in recent days as the bottom fell out of polls in a number of states.
• […] big ad buys are being canceled, several solidly red states are starting to look shaky, and piles of money are being diverted to places where Republicans were hoping they wouldn’t have to spend.
• […] Republicans now have turned their attention to a foursome of red states that are likely to determine who controls the upper chamber next year. It’s a position they didn’t expect to be in.
• Ohio and Alaska are atop that list. Both feature incumbents who are facing headwinds that are proving difficult to overcome.
• Republican Sen. Jon Husted is playing defense on numerous fronts against former Sen. Sherrod Brown. Brown has repeatedly gone after Husted’s support for data centers during his tenure as lieutenant governor, with Brown labeling him “the face of data centers” in Ohio.
• “It’s bad out there. No one feels good,” conceded one senior Senate Republican aide. […]
• For Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), the dynamics are even worse than elsewhere on the map. Gas prices are eclipsing $5 a gallon and diesel costs are hovering around $6.70 a gallon — both higher than the national average.
• Far-flung parts of the state are being hit even harder. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) noted the price in one key fishing area was $12.99 gallon.
• “People are feeling it, and they don’t like it. They don’t like it at all,” Murkowski recently told reporters.
• Texas and Iowa round out the quartet, with Republicans showing signs of being rattled in both states despite continued hope that each ultimately will fall into their column. But it’s going to cost them.
• Republicans argued earlier this year that backing Sen. John Cornyn over Paxton would have avoided this exact scenario, which is forcing the party to spend heavily when it may not have needed to otherwise.
• “There’s a limited resource, and I think at some point, you know, the powers that be are going to have to make decisions about where you spend money, and if you spend it for lost causes in some of these places that aren’t looking good, should you move that money to places where it might make a difference,” Cornyn told reporters last week. When asked if Paxton is a lost cause, Cornyn responded. “I’m going to leave that up to the voters.”
• Like Cornyn, the party is not oozing with confidence. One Texas-based Republican strategist told The Sun that they view the race as a 50-50 proposition, after having said in mid-August that they believed it was 60-40 in Paxton’s favor.
• In Iowa, polls shifted against Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in her race against Democrat Josh Turek, showing them in a toss-up. 
• The news gets worse from there. Some in the party are fretting that they’ve had to spend time and resources in Kansas to defend Sen. Roger Marshall’s seat.
• A first-term member, Marshall has been under siege over his purported lack of ties to the state. […] Republicans admit that months ago, Kansas wasn’t anywhere near their radar.
• “I would’ve said that doesn’t sound right,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia).
• “Is it a shitty environment? Absolutely. Does it seem to be getting worse? Absolutely,” a second Republican operative involved in Senate races said.

Axios: GOP election outlook goes from bad to “craptastic”

• President Trump told voters to pretend he’s on the ballot. Apparently they’re listening: Republicans coast to coast are getting pulled under by a violent undertow fueled by Trump’s unpopularity.
• It’s looked bad for Republicans all year, but this week felt different — like the political environment was disintegrating in real time, one ominous data point after another.
• Most worrisome for the GOP, there’s virtually no chance the war ends, inflation cools, interest rates fall, consumer confidence rises, and economic optimism surges before the Nov. 3 election.
• That’s why Republicans fear the undertow imperils so many candidates once deemed safe.
• The big picture: Predicting election outcomes is a risky business, but it may be time to expand the imagination of how ugly it could get for Republicans five weeks from now.
• This week, Trump’s disapproval rating hit 60.4%, the worst mark of his two terms in office, including the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots. Gas prices are over $4 a gallon, diesel has hit $6.50 and no relief is in sight. Seven months in, the U.S. is locked in a standoff with Iran with no apparent exit strategy. Grocery prices are still rising year over year. Mortgage rates hit 7%. And the cost of borrowing across the economy continues to climb.
• The problems for the GOP are everywhere. In the battle for the Senate, once ruby-red Texas looks more in play than ever, and Florida isn’t far behind. Nor is Alaska. North Carolina and Georgia look lost. Maine is problematic.
• The Senate GOP campaign arm is begging donors for another $8.9 million to defend Senate seats in three states that Trump won by double digits two years ago — Alaska, Iowa and Ohio.
• “We’re having problems just getting Republican voters to respond to polls,” said one national Republican pollster. “At what point do we think these guys aren’t showing up at the actual polls on Election Day?”
• What once looked like a long shot for Democrats — taking control of the Senate by flipping four Republican-held seats on a map favoring the GOP — looks increasingly plausible.
• Republicans are now playing defense deep in red America. GOP-aligned groups are spending money in more than a half-dozen districts that Trump won by at least 15 points in 2024.
• “Over the last 90 days,” Cook added, “President Trump’s political standing has transitioned from very unpopular to toxic and now to radioactive.”
• Said another consultant involved with races across the country: “Things were bad. But they started to go worse recently and if it keeps on this track, it’s gonna be real bad.”
• The environment is starting to rival the second midterm election of President George W. Bush’s tenure in 2006, the consultant said, amid the Iraq war and the botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Republicans lost control of both chambers after losing 30 House seats and six Senate seats.
• “The numbers are somewhere between shitabulous and craptastic,” a top Republican advising several federal races across the country told Axios. “It looks worse than 2018 now. Trump is heading to Bush 2006 levels.”

New York Times: Who’s winning the race for Congress?

• Five weeks out from the midterms, Republicans are panicking over prices — and apparently over the president, too.
• In Iowa, Michigan and Ohio, the party’s Senate candidates have urged President Trump to bring an end to the Iran war. In Kansas, an incumbent senator in an unexpectedly tough re-election fight has admonished the administration over immigration raids. Just about every Republican wishes Mr. Trump would just focus on the economy.
• Instead, he spent last week threatening to escalate the war — a move that could further drive up the prices of gas and diesel fuel. He wined and dined President Xi Jinping at the White House and heaped praise on Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, complicating his party’s efforts to take a hard line on China abroad and to vilify democratic socialists at home.
• The state of the Senate map was the talk of the donors and operatives who decamped over the weekend to Sea Island, Ga. There, at a retreat hosted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, attendees focused on how much work the party has to do.
• Republicans are reeling in Midwestern states such as Iowa, Michigan and Ohio, where Mr. Trump is set to hold a rally this week. 
• A key Democratic group, meanwhile, is preparing to conduct new polling in Kansas, according to a spokeswoman for the group. The poll by Senate Majority PAC could be a precursor to new spending on the tighter-than-expected race.
• The biggest single drain on Republican resources, though, is Texas. The main Republican Senate super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, has already reserved $125 million worth of advertising in the race, and Mr. Trump’s super PAC has poured in another $20 million. But even that gargantuan sum is most likely only a down payment. A person familiar with the internal discussions said the full total could easily reach $200 million.

HuffPost: ‘Things Are Going To Get Ugly’: Republicans Are Starting To Panic About The Midterms

• Just a few weeks out from Election Day, Republicans are pressing the panic button.
• Super PACs are pouring huge sums into safely red territory. But post-Labor Day polling increasingly favors Democrats, and consultants are worrying the party’s massive money advantage won’t save their candidates.
• In short: The GOP is staring down a blue wave, with its control of both chambers of Congress at risk.
• “You’ve got real momentum on the Democrat side, and if we don’t watch out, you know, everybody all of a sudden now is just awakened to the fact that we may lose in the midterm,” Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) told HuffPost.
• The general dynamics of the midterm elections have been set for months: Voters are angry about Trump’s handling of the economy and the Iran war, believing he broke his promises on key issues and is more focused on legacy projects and self-enrichment than lowering prices. But it wasn’t clear how far into GOP-held territory that anger stretched, and whether well-funded Republican super PACs could offset it.
• “If money can’t turn some of these races around, things are going to get ugly,” the consultant said.
• A New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday capped off a slew of public polling showing a dire position for Republicans, with much of the blame aimed at Trump. Likely voters gave Democrats a 51% to 43% edge on the generic ballot for Congress and indicated they trusted the party out of power on the economy, immigration, foreign wars, healthcare and handling the deficit.
• Just 36% of voters thought Trump was generally focused on the right issues, and only 32% said Trump made the right decision when attacking Iran earlier this year. A 49% plurality of voters said they would prefer to back a candidate who will check Trump, while just 26% said they would prefer to support a candidate who backs the president, with 21% saying it would not matter either way.
• […] officials acknowledge the situation has deteriorated since Labor Day, a traditional marker of when everyday voters begin tuning into politics. One Republican consultant working on a number of top races responded to a text-message question about recent polling with a single turd emoji.
• Republicans are also beginning to look at triaging races which may get out of reach. Leading party operatives have begun discussing cutting off support for Rep. Mike Collins, who is badly trailing Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s Senate race, according to a Republican source familiar with the discussions.
• Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing their advantages. Super PACs affiliated with the party have started airing ads backing Democratic candidates for Senate in the traditionally red states of Kansas and South Carolina, with party officials particularly high on Adam Hamilton, a pastor challenging Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.)
• Speaking to reporters outside the Capitol on Thursday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), whose folksy loquaciousness has made him a sought-after surrogate for GOP candidates, said he planned to campaign for colleagues in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
• “If you told me six months ago I was gonna be having to spend my time in those three states, I wouldn’t have believed you. Those ought to be fat guy layups for us,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to win there, but the races are close.”

POLITICO: Republicans were bullish about the Senate. Now they’re playing defense in red states

• Republicans are playing defense deep in their own territory as voter anger over price hikes puts more House and Senate seats in play in the midterms.
• New rounds of big spending, visits from Trump administration officials and private conversations among top GOP officials overseeing the battle for control of Congress reveal a party rushing to shore up red seats and states President Donald Trump won handily in 2024.
• In the Senate, Republicans are racing to shore up Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted as the Midwest struggles under the weight of Trump’s tariffs and high diesel prices. 
• GOP leaders are also trying to keep a handle on contests in Iowa and Kansas — and they’ve quietly begun deprioritizing Georgia and even North Carolina, which a growing number of Republicans are privately bracing for Democrats to flip.
• “We need to stop the contagion,” said one senior GOP official, who, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the midterm landscape.
• “The map is hilariously big right now,” said one national Republican pollster.
• Republicans have adjusted their Senate map expectations [and] are more concerned about Alaska and Texas. And their worries about Ohio have escalated amid soaring diesel prices and backlash to tariffs — challenges they’re also confronting in Texas, Iowa, Michigan and Kansas.
• Senior GOP operatives’ own internal polling shows Trump’s approval underwater in deep red states across the country. And an Iowa poll conducted last week by a Democratic-leaning pollster found Democrat Josh Turek with a one-point lead in the Senate race and Trump’s approval at 43 percent in the state he won by more than 13 percentage points in 2024, according to a copy of the poll obtained by POLITICO.
• “As more races come online, it very clearly is a defensive map for Republicans across the country,” said a national GOP strategist working on multiple battleground races.
• One Michigan Republican acknowledged the immense weight of the tariffs in races across the battleground state — including in the marquee Senate contest between Rogers and progressive Abdul El-Sayed, as well as across competitive House races.
• “Everywhere we go, we are getting hammered on it,” the Michigan Republican said. “It’s crushing us.”
• Even skeptical Republicans have been quietly checking in with their colleagues to see if the panic in redder territory is borne out in reality on the ground […] overblown polling. One GOP lawmaker who spoke to Hinson and her campaign team was somewhat surprised by their answers.
• And POLITICO overheard a senior member of Kansas’ Republican party leadership complaining about their state’s tighter-than-expected race at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas earlier this month. GOP Sen. Roger Marshall, the person said, was in some trouble even as Republicans tried to dismiss the seriousness of his Democratic challenger, Adam Hamilton.
• But as economic concerns continue to dominate — with little relief in sight — Democrats are growing increasingly bullish.

TIME: Republican Panic Sets In Over Prospects of a Massive Blue Wave

• With less than six weeks to go until Election Day, the sentiment among Republicans is shifting from nervous to fatalistic, as a pileup of bad news has many convinced they are heading toward an electoral disaster.
• The warning signs are coming in quickly from across the map—much on it from red states where President Trump won comfortably just two years ago. Outside groups backing the GOP are now spending in the millions on Senate races in once-safe territories like Nebraska and Kansas; South Carolina, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Arkansas are all drawing renewed attention amid fears of a historically massive blue wave.
• At a closed-door briefing on Wednesday with his caucus, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina delivered a particularly grim message: 2026 is not going to look anything like 2024. […] According to a person who listened to the briefing, Scott urged “incumbent Senators to run like they were behind so the NRSC” could focus on “a record number of toss-up races.” He told them the NRSC’s priority was saving GOP-held seats in Texas, Iowa, Maine, and Alaska. 
• And while North Carolina and Georgia—two Senate seats Republicans were touting as major targets last year—have featured less prominently in GOP conversations, […]. Still, some are writing those off as all but won by Democrats Roy Cooper and Jon Ossoff. An operative familiar with Scott’s thinking stressed that the NRSC’s strategy remains fluid until Election Day and noted that outside groups could still step in to back up their candidates in those states. 
• A day earlier in Iowa, which Trump won in 2024 by 13 points, state lawmakers received an even starker warning. Radio host Steve Deace, a real player in conservative circles there and a loyal Trump ally, told his followers on Wednesday afternoon that “Iowa House Republicans were informed by their own pollsters that if you are in a +15 district you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a +10 district you’re underwater, and that this might end being an even worse midterm environment than 2006.” 
• There’s similar scrambling in Texas, where a super PAC blessed by Senate Majority Leader John Thune is now on track to spend more than $100 million, an add on of $35 million to the $65 million the group had already booked in advertising to boost Ken Paxton’s bid against James Talarico. The total price tag for keeping the Senate seat is on track to approach $200 million just on the GOP side.
• The dynamic has left Republican strategists deeply frustrated [and] the environment still seems to be trending bluer than anyone anticipated. 
• A simmering fear is that the trendlines may get even worse in the coming weeks. As one Republican strategist told me this week, Election Day cannot come quickly enough.

Wall Street Journal: Even in Reliably Red Kansas, Republican Enthusiasm Is Fading

• At the Kansas State Fair’s Senate debate, incumbent Republican Roger Marshall was on home turf. His town is a short drive for friends and supporters. And the fair serves as an exaltation of farmers, the conservative base that has helped the GOP win every Senate race in Kansas since 1932.
• Yet when Marshall stepped to the microphone last weekend, hundreds of those gathered at an outdoor pavilion booed, hissed, and jeered.
• “Liar!” attendees shouted from the bleachers when Marshall suggested gasoline was cheaper under President Trump than under previous presidents.
• Kansas State Fair debates are notoriously boisterous, with both Democratic and Republican campaigns busing in supporters who give as good as they get. But the lopsided showdown was unusually bad, some Republicans privately admitted afterward. The thrashing laid bare a growing anxiety among GOP officials and strategists nationwide that Democrats are fired up for November, while many Republicans aren’t.
• With Election Day approaching, Republican worries about voter enthusiasm are spilling beyond swing states into red bastions such as Kansas, Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and Nebraska. Trump’s approval rating sits near record lows, and frustrations are growing over the state of the economy, tariffs and the war in Iran. At stake is control of Congress: Democrats need to pick up just three seats to retake the House and four to win back the Senate.
• “If Republicans don’t turn out, we’re in a world of hurt,” warned Danedri Herbert, chair of the Kansas Republican Party.
• Herbert urged national Republican groups to pour more resources and money into Kansas before it is too late. “Kansas gets overlooked a lot because we are reliably red,” she said, “but this is a weird cycle.”
• Republican leaders in Washington are starting to pay closer attention to this state and others Trump won by double digits in 2024. West Virginia Republican Sen. Jim Justice said he is concerned his party’s disaffected voters will stay home.
• Republicans not worried about being re-elected this November are “living in a cave,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “This is all about the economy,” he added.
• Still, leaning against a cattle chute at the Kansas fair, Paul Rhodes, a 73-year-old antiabortion activist who has previously supported Republicans, said he thought he probably won’t vote at all this year.
• “There was always a baseline of support that was solid. It’s wavering,” he said. “ I don’t think they’ll vote Democrat, but they might not vote.”
• A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in recent days found Democrats have only a slight lead over Republicans nationwide when voters are asked whether they plan to vote. But they hold a substantial lead, 59% to 45%, when voters are asked if they are enthusiastic about voting this year, a signal Democratic voters may be more likely to follow through on their intention.
• Republicans may also have trouble retaining support from those in their party who do vote. A Fox News poll released on Sept. 16 found that among Republicans who said they were not part of Trump’s MAGA movement, 12% said they planned to back a Democrat for Congress this year.
• Meaningful shares of non-MAGA Republicans are turning away from the president. In the Fox News poll, 98% of self-described MAGA Republicans approved of Trump’s job performance. Among non-MAGA Republicans, 53% approved, with 46% disapproving.
• When Marshall, an OB-GYN, mentioned Trump’s health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr., the crowd roared in disapproval.
• A visibly flummoxed Marshall was forced to stop talking several times as noise drowned him out. When the debate ended, under the sweltering sun, Hamilton waded into the crowd to greet supporters. Marshall quickly departed.
• Vice President JD Vance campaigned with Marshall near Kansas City on Monday to shore up support for the senator.
• That anyone is even talking about Kansas as competitive is a bad sign, said David Kensinger, former chief of staff and campaign manager to Sam Brownback, a Republican who served as a Kansas governor and senator. “If we’re having to spend resources in Kansas,” Kensinger said, “that tells you what the national environment is like.”
• The Kansas Livestock Association declined to endorse Marshall this year after endorsing him in the past. 
• GOP concerns about enthusiasm also extend to Wichita, an aerospace hub that is home to the U.S. headquarters of Canadian jet-maker Bombardier, a large local employer.
• Amid a continuing dispute with Canada, Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this month, “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES.”
• At a park by the Arkansas River, local residents Mike Garcia and Mark Lawson talked about the Bombardier issue and the economy in general.
• Lawson, 69, a retired factory worker and infrequent voter who previously voted for Trump, views food prices as too high, and said the president promised no more wars. This time, Lawson said he likely will vote for Hamilton.
• “Marshall is in trouble,” he said. “He favors Trump too much.”