Are the Democrats heading for a midterms landslide?

Sarah Smith (0:00)

It's less than a month until those crucial midterm elections. And to say Democrats are excited is an understatement. They are practically giddy, because there is new polling showing them doing unexpectedly well in some solidly Republican rural states. But they are facing problems in some traditionally Democrat states as well, which they will need to hold on to. But how much can we trust the polls? And is there still time for Republicans to turn it around? Welcome to Americast.

SPEAKER_2 (0:31)

Americast, from BBC News.

SPEAKER_3 (0:33)

Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league.

SPEAKER_4 (0:39)

The tide is coming, and this time we intend to win it all.

SPEAKER_5 (0:46)

So he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.

SPEAKER_6 (0:57)

When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

Sarah Smith (1:09)

Hello, it's Sarah. And very excitingly, I have popped in to the worldwide headquarters in London, England.

Justin Webb (1:16)

And it's Justin sitting right next to Sarah and equally excited and delighted that you're here, Sarah. And we're going to be joined later on by John Anzalone, who is not only a highly respected pollster, he worked with President Obama, he worked with others as well, but also really crucially is someone who is very much plugged in to what's going on at the moment with his polling and at the moment being, of course, in the run up to the midterms and specifically when it comes to the Senate, because that I think is what we're going to be concentrating on today, this extraordinary rolling story that there seems to be that the Democrats, who really were not going to be in the running at all, were they, Sarah, are suddenly not only in the running, but potentially according to the polls, possibly going to get a majority in the Senate after the midterms.

Sarah Smith (2:04)

That's right. And not by winning, according to the polls, as you say, we don't know if they're correct or not, not by winning the states that you might think were the most likely to flip to Democrats, but they are polling astonishingly well in what we would call deep red for Republican states, ruby red states like Texas, Kansas, Alaska, possibly Iowa. These are places that voted for Donald Trump just two years ago by double digits, by 10, 11, 12, more percentage points supporting Donald Trump now, according to the polls, looking like they could elect Democratic senators, some of them for the first time in decades.

Justin Webb (2:41)

Yeah, and Kansas for the first time in like 100 years. I mean, it really is as extraordinary as that. And Texas as well, you think, you just don't think of Democrats being elected statewide in Texas for an awful, awful long time. So before we go any further, let's just make it clear what this means in terms of what would then happen in the Senate, because the Democrats need four Senate pickups, don't they?

Sarah Smith (3:08)

Net. So say they were to lose one or two, two Republicans, they would need to win five or six. But yeah, they need to flip a total of four seats. And that's quite a big ask, because remember, there's 35 seats up, not all 100 of them. And the seats that are up this year are not ones that it's easy for the Democrats to pick up, or six, nine months ago, it didn't look like it was going to be easy for the Democrats to pick up. That's what we used to say, isn't it?

Justin Webb (3:32)

It's a bad map for the Democrats, people would say, and they'd nod as if, yes, bad map for the Democrats. And that was conventional wisdom, as ever, is gone.

Sarah Smith (3:40)

Yeah, yeah.

It's absolutely fascinating. And there are local reasons in some of the different states why this is happening. So the most surprising ones that we'll be talking about, Texas and Kansas, where it just seems astonishing that we're even discussing the idea that a Democrat could win, are both places where you have got a particularly strong Democratic candidate and a particularly weak Republican. And I think we'll delve into this a bit more with our guest. As you look across the country, it's really interesting that there is a nationwide story of dissatisfaction with the president of people saying they're more likely to vote Democrat. But once you dig into it, there are usually local reasons in most of the states that might flip to do with the candidates or particular circumstances that exemplify that what appears to be a nationwide trend.