Two weeks out and Nate Silver gives the GOP the value familiar to stats geeks, .05 probability, of holding the House. Throw in generic House ballot polling favoring us democrats by high single digits and it’s pretty much prima facie evidence that if the GOP “wins” they either cheated or outright stole the election. Democratic turnout will be up everywhere, Democrats are winning big in the cities, in the suburbs, and among independents. This is the GOP’s election to lose, and they’re doin’ a damn good job of it!
But the depth of the GOP voter deficit is really revealed when you deep dive into the cross tabs of the polls. Iowa has been polled to exhaustion and the better pollsters like Marist have been generous with the cross tabs, breaking down the results by big city, small city, suburban, small town, and rural geographies. In the U.S. Senate race the GOP candidate is losing everywhere but small towns and rural, and polling only 58% small towns and 52% rural. In the race for Governor the GOP candidate is again losing everywhere but small towns at 65% and rural at 53%. Marist’s polling in Michigan, and Ohio shows similar trends, and a GOP pollster in ruby red South Dakota found the GOP incumbent Governor polling only 52% in the rural northeast part of the state and 55% in metro Sioux Falls, with only a 5% spread between the most rural and urban geographies they polled by. The more rural the geography, the more the GOP is failing!
Throw in GOP voters low motivation and the assumed double digit gap between democratic urban and rural partisan voting goes in the dumpster- In the 2026 election democratic partisan vote may be a U shaped curve with democrats winning big in our traditional urban strongholds and winning some of the most rural regions too- Time for democrats to put more resources in rural America for this election and the future!
