Scoop: Dems privately name Texas as most-flippable red state
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Democrats' main Senate super PAC is privately telling top donors that Texas offers their best shot at flipping a deep-red Senate seat, followed by Ohio, where the race remains close.
- Senate Majority PAC also sees victories in Iowa and Alaska as within reach, though the outcomes could take longer to become clear.
Why it matters: Democrats are increasingly confident about Election Day on Tuesday — and sharing their qualified optimism with their biggest donors.
- To retake the Senate, Democrats need to win two of those four states — all of which Trump won by double digits in 2024 — flip North Carolina and Maine, and avoid an upset in Michigan.
- JB Poersch, president of Senate Majority PAC, projected confidence that Democrats will wrest control of the Senate from Republicans during a private donor briefing this week as he walked through the races state by state.
- He also reminded donors that Kansas, where even Republicans are deeply worried, is a state Trump won by roughly 16 points in 2024. But it's in play.
What they're saying: "This matches what we've been saying publicly and privately for weeks. There are signs of optimism in Texas, but it remains a toss-up, as do Iowa, Ohio and Alaska," said Lauren French, a spokesperson for SMP.
- "There is positive movement for Democrats, but it is critical to remember that every seat on the battleground map voted for Donald Trump by double digits," she said.
- "These are deep red states and we're focused on bringing them over the finish line so the Senate can work to provide real relief to families who are being crushed by the cost-of-living crisis."
The big picture: Texas hasn't elected a Democratic senator since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
- Democrats thought they'd end the drought in 2018 and let themselves fall for then-Rep. Beto O'Rourke, who lost to Sen. Ted Cruz by 2.6 percentage points.
- Four years later, O'Rourke tried again to prove a Democrat could win statewide in Texas. He lost the governor's race by nearly 11 percentage points.
- This time around, Democrats have state Rep. James Talarico, who's narrowly led recent polls against Republican nominee Ken Paxton.
Zoom in: During this unseasonably sunny week in Washington, private polls and scraps of data are flying from phone to phone at outdoor cafes as both parties search for a story to tell themselves, their candidates and their donors.
At every table, there are essentially two camps:
- The pessimists find reasons to dismiss every glimmer of hope. Republicans are worried about a "red scream."
- The optimists blow past inconvenient facts that might kill their victory vibes. Some Democrats are "nauseously optimistic."
In reality, optimists and pessimists — in both parties — are flying without instruments.
- Internal polls contradict each other by a point or three, door-knocking data is noisy, and early-vote numbers can be spun to tell almost any story.
The bottom line: On some level, big-dollar donors know they lack the omniscience to read the political landscape with the same clarity they once brought to an IPO's S-1 filing.
- But they also believe they deserve better data and analysis than what's publicly available.
- At the very least, they want private briefings to give them a clearer picture than is epistemologically possible.
- Hence the flurry of briefings. The challenge for the super PACs is to return all the calls — and give donors hope without making promises they can't keep.
