The audio-only version of this episode is here and wherever you listen to podcasts.
We’re a week away from the official start of election season — Labor Day — but the polls are not waiting. New Senate surveys in Texas, Michigan and Iowa are sharpening the picture of the battle for Congress. And polls from South Carolina, Nebraska and Kansas have made Democrats optimistic about competitive races on decidedly red turf.
So is this silly season, when Democrats get their hopes up in states they won’t actually win? Or is a blue wave putting much more of the map in play? Lakshya Jain, founder of Split Ticket and head of political data at The Argument, and Zach Donnini, head of data science at VoteHub, join today’s episode to sort through the evidence.
We discuss why Texas looks different from Democrats’ previous attempts to turn it blue, how much candidate quality could matter in Michigan, and why a favorable national environment likely isn’t enough for Democrats in South Carolina.
We also check in on Zach and Lakshya’s forecasts and the Democratic primary between Ed Markey and Seth Moulton in Massachusetts. (Yes, we are still talking about primaries. Those don’t wrap up until mid-September!)
