Nate Silver Makes Huge Call in Must-Win MAGA State
President Donald Trump’s nightmare scenario is taking shape.
Colin McPherson/Corbis via Getty Images
Democrats have received a significant vote of confidence from polling guru Nate Silver in their bid to flip a Senate seat in deep-red Kansas.
The statistician has shifted his rating of the Kansas race from “tossup” to “Lean D” on his Silver Bulletin Substack, a striking turn for a race in a ruby-red state that once appeared poised to re-elect the Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.
It’s been less than a month since Silver moved the race from “Lean R” to “Tossup,” underscoring just how quickly the political landscape has shifted for Marshall and his Democratic challenger, Adam Hamilton.
If polls are correct, Sen. Roger Marshall is shaping up to be the first Republican to lose a Kansas Senate race in nearly a century.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The latest shift appears to follow an Emerson College Polling survey released Friday that put Hamilton four points ahead of Marshall, with 49 percent of voters supporting the Democrat compared with 45 percent backing the Republican incumbent.
Silver’s polling average now has Hamilton at 49 percent, up from 47.4 percent before the Emerson poll was released, while Marshall remains just below 46 percent.
The Emerson poll follows a CNN/SSRS survey released Thursday that also showed Hamilton leading by four points.
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Kansas turning into a likely Democratic pickup is the clearest sign yet of how badly Republicans are faring this election. President Donald Trump won the state by 16 points in 2024, and no Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race there since 1932.
Trump had been scheduled to appear at a Saturday rally for Marshall, but abruptly scrapped his in-person appearance in favor of a tele-rally. He then reversed course Friday, saying he now plans to campaign for the senator on Sunday in Salina.
Republicans across the country have been contending with a difficult political environment, much of it fueled by Trump’s war and the resulting surge in prices. In Kansas, average gas prices have climbed by more than a dollar since the war began, while diesel has jumped by more than $2.50.
Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, announced his run for U.S. Senate in April.
Nathan Howard/REUTERS
Marshall, however, has drawn particular criticism for his apparent lack of urgency about his reelection campaign.
“I think Roger Marshall probably wins the award for running maybe the worst campaign, and he could have put this race away earlier,” Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor said Friday on Inside Politics with Dana Bash.
“I know that the NRSC told their incumbents, ‘You need to be ready. This is a tough cycle,’” she said. “And he was one who did not apparently heed that.”
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