Democrats have been measuring the drapes in the Senate for months.
The polls look rosy. Texas, Maine, and even Kansas are suddenly in play.
But a former Democrat governor who says he never lost a race just explained what he thinks those numbers are really for.
Blagojevich puts the pollsters on notice
Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich took to X on October 6, less than a month before the November 3 election, with a warning for anybody glued to the Senate polling averages.
“Don’t believe the polls. There will be no blue wave. Once again, fake polling, designed, not to inform but to persuade & suppress turnout, are misleading voters,” Blagojevich wrote, according to Breitbart News.
He leaned on his own track record to back it up. “I know what I’m talking about. As a twice elected Dem governor and 3 time elected Dem Congressman, I never lost an election,” he added.
Then he went out on a limb. “Trust the people. They won’t be fooled. Collins wins in Maine, Texas & Kansas stay Republican, & El-Sayed loses in Michigan,” Blagojevich wrote.
That’s four calls, every one of them against the current polling average in at least one race.
Folks with long memories know the Blagojevich backstory. Illinois lawmakers impeached and removed him in January 2009, a federal jury convicted him in 2011, and he served eight years of a 14-year sentence before President Trump commuted it in 2020. Trump followed up with a full pardon in February 2025, calling the sentence a “terrible injustice.” Blagojevich has spent the years since describing himself as a Democrat who backs Trump.
And whatever anyone thinks of the man, he spent decades inside the Democrat machine. He knows how the sausage gets made.
What the averages actually show
In Maine, US Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) faces Democrat Troy Jackson, who landed on the ballot after the party’s first pick, Graham Platner, exited the race in July. RealClear Polling rates the contest a toss-up, with Jackson ahead by less than a point.
Kansas looks stranger still. US Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) is running against Methodist minister Adam Hamilton, and the polling shows a close race in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.
Michigan is where things get interesting. Abdul El-Sayed, who rode endorsements from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Democrat nomination, now leads former Congressman Mike Rogers by 3.6 points in the RealClear average. But right after the August primary, Michigan Public reported an early poll showing Rogers up by roughly 10.
That’s a 14-point swing in about two months. Maybe voters changed their minds. Maybe the polls did.
Texas gets the most attention of all. James Talarico leads Attorney General Ken Paxton by 3.1 points on average, and Paxton hasn’t led a single public poll since mid-August, according to reporting on the race.
The Texas money that showed up late
To understand Texas, go back to the primary. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) endorsed US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) over Paxton, calling Cornyn a “principled conservative,” and later described the choice as a “business decision.” President Trump endorsed Paxton, and Paxton won.
But the establishment didn’t go quietly. Senate Republican allies spent $90 million in the primary and runoff hammering Paxton over his personal and legal troubles, according to Punchbowl News. Now the party needs those same voters to turn around and back him.
Cornyn himself has been no help. He raised $1.1 million for GOP candidates in six other competitive Senate races, including Rogers in Michigan, and none of it went to Paxton. The Washington Sun reported that a Dallas fundraiser for battleground candidates left Paxton off the invite list entirely.
“Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn told The Texas Tribune. He also complained, “I can’t tell that any of the supporters of Paxton have done diddly squat to reach out to what I would call mainstream traditional Republicans in Texas.”
This is the same Cornyn who served as lead Republican negotiator on the 2022 gun package Joe Biden signed into law. Trump blasted that deal at the time as “the first step in the movement to TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY.”
And the summer told its own story. Talarico had the Texas airwaves largely to himself, spending about $31.3 million on ads while Paxton’s reservations sat just above $150,000 by the end of August. The NRSC wasn’t running coordinated ads with Paxton either, according to Punchbowl News.
MAGA Inc, the main pro-Trump super PAC, dropped a $10 million ad buy in early September. Then the Thune-aligned Texas PAC finally opened the spigot and spent more than $131 million in 17 days, according to Axios.
So the money came. Thune now says Paxton can and will win, “but it is going to be expensive, and we knew that going in.” Cornyn grumbled that the cash “can’t be spent in New Hampshire or Michigan or Alaska or Maine or Ohio.”
But a summer of silence lets an opponent introduce himself to voters on his own terms. You don’t get those months back.
Michigan Democrats closed ranks fast
Compare that to what happened in Michigan. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) backed US Representative Haley Stevens (D-MI) in the primary, and the pro-Stevens side poured in tens of millions in outside money. El-Sayed beat her anyway by roughly 14,000 votes.
Schumer didn’t sulk. “We look forward to working with Abdul and Democrats across Michigan to win this seat in November,” he said in a joint statement. Stevens, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and US Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) all lined up behind the winner.
Nobody in Michigan held a fundraiser that skipped their own nominee.
Pollsters have been here before
Back in 2020, pollsters swore Collins was in grave danger. She won comfortably. The New York Times and Siena College overstated Joe Biden’s support by around nine points in Ohio and ten in Wisconsin and Iowa, according to a Sinclair Broadcast Group review of RealClear figures, and that came after the industry promised to fix the mistakes it made in 2016.
Whether today’s numbers are cooked on purpose or just plain wrong is a harder question. Blagojevich thinks he knows the answer. The record only proves the misses have tended to run in one direction.
And the stakes for President Trump are hard to overstate. The Senate decides his judges, his Cabinet replacements, and whether his agenda survives the final two years of his term.
If Texas falls short, expect the Cornyn wing to say it warned everybody. Expect them to use it to demand a bigger say over who carries the party’s banner in 2028.
But if Blagojevich turns out to be right, the pollsters will have some explaining to do. Again.
“Rod Blagojevich Unmasks ‘Fake Polling’ Favoring Democrats: ‘There Will Be No Blue Wave’,” Breitbart News
“Trump pardons disgraced former Illinois Gov Rod Blagojevich,” NPR
“Why John Cornyn won’t be fundraising in Texas’ US Senate race,” The Texas Tribune
“John Cornyn raises $1.1 million for GOP Senate candidates, but not Ken Paxton,” CBS News Texas
“Texas PAC pours even more cash into the Lone Star State,” Punchbowl News
“PAC spent $131 million in 17 days to rescue Paxton in Texas Senate race,” Axios
“Follow the money pouring into the Texas US Senate race,” The Texas Tribune
“Thune Ramps Up Spending in Texas as Paxton Struggles in Polling,” The Washington Sun
“Senate Republicans increase ad buy, pour millions more into Texas to help Paxton against Talarico,” Yahoo News
“Paxton-Talarico contest on course to demolish Texas record for campaign spending in a US Senate election,” Houston Public Media
“Paxton gets another $5 million boost as Talarico remains ahead in Texas,” Newsweek
“‘This was fundamentally important’: John Cornyn says gun deal shows US Senate can still function,” The Texas Tribune
“We are not a purple state,” C-SPAN
“McMorrow endorses former primary opponent Abdul El-Sayed, calls for unity,” Michigan Public
“Michigan’s Democratic US Senate primary called for Abdul El-Sayed,” WDIO
“Michigan Senator Gary Peters backs Democratic Representative Haley Stevens in contentious race to succeed him,” The Boston Globe
“Polls: Once again hard to believe,” Sinclair Broadcast Group
