The Sharpest Election Forecaster That You're Not Reading Enough Of

**Michael Smerconish** (0:11)
Henry Olsen is Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He's a columnist for The Washington Post. I read his stuff. He might be the sharpest election forecaster that you're not reading enough of. He's also the host of the Beyond the Polls podcast. He's a conservative, but the kind who will tell Republicans exactly what they don't want to hear. And lately, he's been doing a lot of that. Henry, thank you so much for being here. You've never been a guest on this program before, but I like your material and I'm happy you're here now.

**Henry Olsen** (0:41)
Well, thank you very much for having me on. I'm glad that you do like the material and want to have me on.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:46)
So let's summarize where I see you have been in the last couple of weeks. In the last month, you've written that the Senate map has stopped being the GOP's friend, that the Supreme Court just threw Republicans a lifeline on campaign money, that Democrats are having their own MAGA moment and had better figure out how to contain it, that JD Vance's entire political future may ride on a deal with Iran.
And then came the death of one United States Senator and a Democratic front runner imploded and the whole board seems to have been scrambled again. As you look at control of the Senate sitting here on, what is it, the 21st of July, 2026, where are we going to end up?

**Henry Olsen** (1:27)
Well, I don't know where we're going to end up because so much can happen. But right now, I would say, Republicans with control, with a reduced majority, with a non-trivial chance of Democratic control.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:38)
In South Carolina, does Lindsey Graham's sister get to keep that seat?

**Henry Olsen** (1:44)
We don't know yet. She has to develop a campaign apparatus. She has to get money. She's running against at least three well-funded challenges in Representative Ralph Norman, Representative Frey and Mark Lynch, who spent millions of dollars against her brother. I'd say it's a 50-50 shot that she makes it right now, given the quality of the campaigners against her.

**Michael Smerconish** (2:07)
And a test, right, of the president's continuing strength within his own party?

**Henry Olsen** (2:12)
Oh, it's perhaps the biggest test, because he's endorsed somebody who has zero political backing.
She has no political experience. She's never run for a campaign. As far as we can see, she's never been actively involved in a campaign, except maybe some phone calls with her brother. This is as close to the freezing-level candidate as you're going to get, you know, Celsius zero. And if Trump can get her over the line, then I think that really shows that he dominates the party. Any one of these three people, plus anyone else who gets in, has a real chance of beating her, either keeping her out of the runoff or beating her in the runoff.

**Michael Smerconish** (2:50)
I said that Henry Olsen publishes in The Washington Post. The Washington Post today, I doubt I'm catching you cold, has a pretty deep dive into Troy Jackson, the presumptive Democratic nominee now in Maine, with Plattner out of the way. Apparently, the guy's got some anger management issues. How big of an issue might this be for him?

**Henry Olsen** (3:10)
Well, I think it could be a very big issue. His anger management issues have been documented. I'm not convinced he would have gotten through a primary, but from a convention standpoint, where he had the progressive activist base behind him, it was a very easy haul.
I think part of it depends on what the people who are involved are willing to say, but certainly it shows that Susan Collins has something to say. He's too left, he's too weird. And in the state that she's won so many times over the past 30 years, that's not an inconsequential advantage.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:44)
Here's the lead. Troy Jackson, a powerful Maine legislator, now running for Senate, once angrily threw a water bottle in a meeting after he couldn't persuade a lawmaker to vote his way.
He yelled at another lawmaker, prompting her to post on social media that straight men were, quote unquote, too emotional to be in politics. And he cursed and shouted in a meeting with the Speaker of Maine's state house until she kicked him out of her office. And then they go into great detail, maybe most notably about this story and how many people wouldn't speak on record who were apparently in the rooms that I just described. I read this story and I said, such is the strangeness of the times in which we live. This is all probably going to be to his benefit in terms of the nomination process among Democrats, because all they seem to want is someone willing to knee Donald Trump in the groin if given the chance.