Mike Rogers (R) vs. Abdul El-Sayed (D)

I. The Race

Mike Rogers (Republican) has been at the political game a long time. He is a former Army officer and FBI agent who then served seven terms representing the old MI-8 in the U.S. House. He ran “unsuccessfully” for Michigan’s other Senate seat in 2024, which was “won” by Elissa Slotkin with late mail dumps after Trump had been declared the winner of the state. Now he takes aim at the other seat, which is open due to the retirement of Democrat Gary Peters.

Abdul El-Sayed (Democrat) is 42 and born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrants. He calls himself a “physician” due to his medical education, but is not a licensed practicing physician. If elected, he will be the first Muslim U.S. Senator, but he must first get past the obstacles of many Democrat groups opposing his candidacy and his DSA-aligned positions like the abolition of ICE and adoption of Medicare-for-all in a Trump-won state.

II. State Profile

Michigan has come the longest way from the pits of a massive Obama margin than any other state. Here is what the state looked like for a +16.4% Democrat win in 2008:

Obama won 46 of Michigan’s 83 counties that year; for context, Kamala Harris only carried 9 counties in 2024. He even had more votes in 2008 than Donald Trump did in 2024. This is largely owed to the disintegration of the Democrats’ stranglehold over the white working class voter, which we’ve also seen take place in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. This trend began with the 2010 midterm Tea Party wave and was visible in Michigan’s 2012 presidential returns when Obama still won the state by a comfortable margin (+9.5%), but coughed up 26 counties he had carried in 2008:

Along came a GOP presidential nominee who, unlike Romney, picked up these disaffected former Democrat voters in droves and snuck past Hillary Clinton in 2016:

Trump “lost” the state in the criminally corrupt 2020 election, which saw the use of mail-in ballots double from 2016 and his massive lead reverse itself while America slept, but made things “too big to rig” in 2024. Here are Trump’s presidential margins in three races:

2016 Trump +0.2%

2020 Biden +2.8%

2024 Trump +1.4%

In the old school of Republican thought, the way to make Michigan red was to use Monroe and Macomb Counties to cancel out Wayne County, and then ride the tide in the rest of the state. Democrats get most of their punch from Wayne (Detroit), but also huge margins from Oakland (the former Republican suburban county north of Detroit) and Washtenaw Counties (home of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. Macomb County, which features the key House race for MI-10’s open seat, is perhaps the most instrumental county in Trump’s transformation of the Great Lakes State:

Macomb, essentially the home of the “Reagan Democrat,” has gone from giving Obama a margin of +36,121 in 2008 to +69,683 for Trump in 2024. That’s a movement of 105,804 net votes toward Trump from the 2008 Obama blowout (and this is even counting the Democrat mastery of mail-in ballot collection in the Midwest, so it would be much higher).

Rogers must keep the Trump coalition intact, and is well positioned to do so given El-Sayed’s various weak points and Rogers’s own establishment Republican leanings, which will play well for him in the traditionally Republican strongholds in western Michigan dating back to the 19th century, such as Ottawa County and parts of Kent County (Grand Rapids), which has been lost in the Trump era.

Key Statistics

• 68.2% White, 15.5% Black, 8.3% Hispanic

III. Market Assessment

Yet another market swung by polling and narratives shows the Democrat nominee significantly over-valued.

IV. History

Michigan’s last Republican Senator was Spencer Abraham, who was elected in the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” He only made it one term before being ousted in 2000 by Debbie Stabenow, who has all the charisma of a cardboard box. Still, she managed to get reelected three times, having the luxury of running with two Democrat midterm tailwinds (2006 and 2018) and alongside an Obama statewide victory (2012). The 2018 margin for the three-term incumbent Stabenow tells us a lot about this year’s race between Rogers and El-Sayed:

Running into a 2018 headwind, up-and-comer John James (who is the Congressman for MI-10 running now for Governor this year) lost to Stabenow by just 6.5% – a margin 3.1% to the right of Gretchen Whitmer’s concurrent first gubernatorial victory. Keep in mind that Stabenow was the incumbent with maximum name recognition running in a year in which these midwestern state’s hadn’t become heavily “MAGA” down-ballot after Trump’s shock victories. This election example alone should rule out some of these ridiculous poll margins El-Sayed has been credited with recently.

Stabenow retired, and then handed her seat over to seditionist Elissa Slotkin, a useless spook who should be prosecuted. Not that I have much of an opinion on the matter:

Don’t Ignore the Color Revolution Sitting in Plain Sight

Turned away in 2024, Rogers is now after the other seat. Democrat Carl Levin won it in 1978, and then held onto it for six terms. Gary Peters ran upon news of Levin’s retirement in 2014 and won an impressive margin despite a dominant GOP year, but then ran into the Trump momentum and barely held on (an election he would have lost if fair) against James in 2020 (1.7% margin). Smelling the coffee of a reddening Michigan, Peters is now moving for retirement and letting Rogers and El-Sayed battle for the prize.

One final note – Gretchen Whitmer would have walked into this seat this year. She didn’t, and that is your tell that she will probably be announcing for president next year.

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Rogers ran uncontested for the GOP nomination. The Democrat Senate primary was a Category 5 dumpster fire that has massive implications for the General Election contest:

El-Sayed squared off against Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, who both fit the mold of “boring Midwestern white woman.” Democrats have become experts at fielding them for Wisconsin Supreme Court seats and others throughout the Midwest, realizing they are losing their base. Either of those two candidates would have beaten Rogers by 3 or 4 points this year. McMorrow hilariously got driven from the race by completely made-up polling from “Wedgewood Polls” and aired out her feelings last week:

As one of the candidates featured in these polls – the infamous one in late June that showed me plummeting into single digits (which was at odds with our internals) – here's the impact of this "experiment"

– Donations dried up
– Volunteers were devastated and pleading for https://t.co/kJL9N7o7X3…

Mallory McMorrow (@MalloryMcMorrow), Oct 20, 2026

El-Sayed dramatically underperformed his polling, and barely squeaked past Stevens, a U.S. House Representative, by 14,893 votes. I personally believe the Democrat machine in Detroit was playing games with mail-in ballots and blaming it on massive black support for Stevens that somehow didn’t appear during in-person voting. You can read a deep-dive on this dysfunctional primary here:

Did Michigan Give Us a Gift or a Curse?

El-Sayed primary victory has led to a rift like none other in the country today, and it makes the Texas GOP drama look like a picnic. Special interest Democrat groups, including Jewish and Black groups, are openly against him and expressing this opposition in very public fashion. Voters are giving interviews talking about voting Republican for the first time, and black public officials in Detroit are campaigning to have people leave that race blank. Bad, bad, bad for the guy who is an overwhelming favorite in the betting markets.

VI. Polls

It seems like just yesterday we were getting polls showing Rogers leading. From the end of September through just last week, El-Sayed led the RCP average by just 1.5%, well within the margin of error. Now, we have three polls showing El-Sayed up by 6 or more, which has bloated the overall average to +3.2%. A 7-point margin for El-Sayed appears absolutely ludicrous given his liabilities as a candidate and the open opposition against his candidacy.

VII. Media Ratings

Three of the four reviewing bodies tilt or lean the race for El-Sayed. My views are more in line with Cook, who calls it a “toss-up” – clearly not buying the polling.

VIII. Party Registration

Michigan does not register voters by party; however, it has very strong correlation to voter movement in Pennsylvania, which has a long-standing Republican drift that has only recently been interrupted in the run-up to the primaries. This has made for a fundamentally different race than the one Stabenow held by a relatively unimpressive margin in 2018.

IX. Election Considerations

Here is a compilation of what I’ve written in my MI-7 and MI-10 forecasts:

· Unique Corruption – Michigan has been exposed for covering up voter registration fraud rings, particularly in a major 2023 news story involving one in Muskegon County active during the 2020 election. Notably, similar registration fraud rings were exposed this cycle in Pennsylvania in multiple large counties. The state’s Attorney General, Dana Nessel, has threatened election integrity activists with imprisonment and police persecution for drawing attention to Michigan’s endless examples election-related malfeasance.

· Automatic Voter Registration – Michigan operates Automatic Voter Registration, which has only entrenched Michigan’s voter registration corruption, as evidenced by the state having hundreds of thousands of more voters registered than there is an available pool of eligible voters statewide. The Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, has suggested the state is helpless to clean its voter rolls and responds harshly to citizens who expect the state to run fair elections. As a reminder, more than 83% of Michigan’s total population (including minors) is registered to vote, when only 77% of any population is over the age of 18 and therefore old enough to cast a ballot.

As I wrote in the MI-7 article:

No state with the number of registered voters exceeding voting-age population can be trusted to run fair elections, and if control of the House hinges on MI-7, even the Democrat establishment will go to bat for Lawrence and trust they can bend him to their will in a hypothetical majority.

Michigan, thanks to the work of Jocelyn Benson as Secretary of State, does not run an elections system any real analyst should consider secure of trustworthy. Ask Mike Rogers, who lost to Elissa Slotkin in the wee hours of the morning once all the mail-in ballots came in after Trump was declared the winner of the state.

My evaluation of Michigan’s 2024 election with regard to election integrity can be found here:

Michigan – 2024 Election Compendium

X. Summary and Election Estimate

In 2018, Stabenow managed to carry Macomb County narrowly over James, who almost won Kent County, which has since drifted away from the GOP. Rogers won Macomb by almost 10 points against Slotkin in 2024; granted, he was running with Trump on the ticket, but Slotkin presented herself as a well-rounded moderate. El-Sayed pretends to be nothing of the sort, and has entire voting blocs aligned against him. Stabenow was able to limit the damage in the overwhelmingly red rural counties still adjusting to Trump’s surprise 2016 victory; Rogers will dominate those.

The biggest variable to me comes by way of what happens in Wayne County. Stabenow won it by over 264,000 margin in 2018 over James. The black population of Wayne County is nearly 37%, and if they are sitting out, crossing over in even modest numbers, or leaving the ballots blank, then it will doom El-Sayed’s campaign. Right now, Wayne County ranks 18th out of 83 counties for its share of the 2024 presidential vote put in, but in-person early voting has been up for a week and Democrats are known to front-load their votes. It is very possible, with over 350,000 ballots left to go to even match their 2022 gubernatorial count, that Wayne will have a turnout disaster like we are watching unfold in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, impacting the Brown-Husted race. Genesee County, home to Flint, lags behind Wayne County and may wind up even worse off in a place where Democrats need the votes.

El-Sayed, for all his shortcomings, still dominates the decision matrix (at the mercy of ratings and polls that aren’t always right):

If nominated, McMorrow and Stevens would have led in those same four categories. I would have favored them both to win this race, along 70/30 odds with a likely margin of victory around 3.5%. El-Sayed the candidate is the difference maker in this race. He has a definite chance to win, but based on where the 2018 election with an established incumbent landed, the decade-long trend of Michigan, and all of the groups Democrats need on their side opposing El-Sayed, I consider his ceiling excruciatingly low – perhaps 1.5% or less.

This race is potentially going to be the closest Senate battleground race, and I think Democrats will be lacking for turnout in areas they need it most. Based only on what I think are unique circumstances surrounding El-Sayed, I am nudging this toss-up toward Rogers, who has his own likely low ceiling owed to Michigan’s Republican headwinds.

Forecast for Michigan U.S. Senate

I don’t leave things on “toss-up.” This is merely based on what I think will arise due to El-Sayed’s major liabilities as a candidate.

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.

Jon Husted (R-inc.) vs. Sherrod Brown (D)

I. The Race

Jon Husted (Republican) is serving out the Senate term won by Vice President JD Vance in 2022, and under Ohio law is required to stand for this special election for the completion of the term. Before serving in the Senate, Husted was Ohio’s Lieutenant Governor.

Sherrod Brown (Democrat) is looking to make his way back to the Senate after having won three terms there (2006, 2012, 2018) before losing to Senator Bernie Moreno in 2024, when President Trump carried the state by 11.2%. If Brown wins, he will have to run again in 2028.

II. State Profile

Ohio was once the premier bellwether state in presidential politics. From 1896 through 2016, Ohio failed to vote for the winner of the presidency only twice – in 1944 and 1960. We all know the 2020 election had its issues, but I tend to believe Ohio would have stuck with its record as an accurate predictor in a fair race.

Kamala Harris won 6 of 88 counties in Ohio’s 2024 presidential elections. Only five of them have meaningful vote counts:

• Cuyahoga County (Cleveland)
• Franklin County (Columbus)
• Hamilton County (Cincinnati)
• Lucas County (Toledo)
• Summit County (Akron)

Contrast the above results with how the map looked in 2008:

The interior of Ohio, while won by McCain, was mostly just pink. Key Trump-backing counties in the northeast, such as Mahoning County, were still plenty blue. Despite being a two-time Obama state, Trump had no trouble carrying the Buckeye State all three times he ran:

2016 Trump +8.1%

2020 Trump +8.0%

2024 Trump +11.2%

The key to understanding Ohio in 2026 is to first recognize it is nothing like the state Brown first won election to the Senate in back in 2006.

Key Statistics

• 69.3% White, 15.5% Black, 8.5% Hispanic

III. Market Assessment

Polymarket bettors give Brown better than two-to-one odds to unseat Husted and return to the Senate.

IV. History

The seat Brown currently seeks has been in Republican hands since 1998, when George Voinovich won the seat and held it for two terms. He gave way to Rob Portman, who won it in 2010 and 2016 before stepping away for Vance:

It is important to note that Vance, running for an open seat, prevailed over Tim Ryan – who once had impeccable blue collar Democrat credentials that far surpass those Brown seeks to impute to himself.

Brown held the other Ohio Senate seat for three terms after knocking off none other than Mike DeWine, Ohio’s current Republican governor and resident Trump hater in the mold of John Kasich, in 2006. He was reelected in 2012, and again in 2018 with a high turnout:

Those bullish on Brown’s chances today will point to a swing of 14.9% away from the 2016 presidential margin to Brown in 2018, but Ohio is much different today than it was even then and has gone more the way of Indiana than it has remained in the mold of “Trumplican” states like Pennsylvania or Michigan. Just in the map above, it will be difficult for Brown to carry northeastern counties and avoid the crimson-shaded margins of the interior his opponent is likely to pile up.

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Husted ran unopposed in his primary to secure the GOP nomination. Brown faced a primary challenger, but ran over him like Ohio State would a MAC squad in September:

VI. Polls

Despite Husted having led in several recent polls, pro-Brown pollsters (some disreputable) have flooded the zone and given him an average lead of 2.6% in the RCP file:

VII. Media Ratings

It doesn’t appear to me that any of the reviewing bodies are buying the polling and have all chosen the safety of the “toss-up” rating.

VIII. Voter Registration by Party

Ohio does not register voters by party. It closely resembles Pennsylvania, which does register by party and has a strong rightward trend for more than a decade.

IX. Election Considerations

Here is what I had to say in my write-up of the greatest unforced error in the race for the majority, OH-7:

Fortunately for Miller, Ohio has done a relatively strong job of sealing up election loopholes and has ensured they have control over the limited mail-in balloting that exists in the Buckeye State. I wrote up Ohio’s election details in the aftermath of the 2024 election for those of you interested in understanding how election integrity impacts races there. In short, there will be no late night ballot dumps impacting this race.

Industrial Midwest – 2024 Election Compendium

X. Summary and Election Estimate

Ohio has had a solid decade to marinate in its new Republican orientation. This means the interior counties are much more crimson-shaded than they once were, establishing a higher presidential baseline for Brown, no longer the incumbent, to overcome. Democrats, as they struggle in other states, require overwhelming margins in Cuyahoga and Franklin Counties to stand a chance in statewide races now that the white working class has shifted to Trump’s GOP. And therein lies the problem for Brown.

I keep a daily tracker assessing Ohio’s turnout each day for mail returns and in-person early voting. I then sort it by percentage of the 2024 presidential vote already cast. Franklin and Cuyahoga, which are presumably front-loading Democrat-heavy early votes, languish well into the bottom half of 88 counties sorted by this measure; until just a few days ago, Montgomery County (Dayton) was dead last.

MAGA counties dominate the list of counties sorted by 2024 presidential vote county already cast in this state that has a massive in-person on Election Day voting propensity. If Brown isn’t going to cash in massive margins in Cuyahoga County, where the City of Cleveland itself is lagging big-time, and the crazies in Columbus (Franklin County) aren’t into the election, then where in the hell is he going to get his votes from?

The above graphic shows implied partisan turnout through yesterday using primary voting history. It stands at just D+5.2%, which is redder at this point in time than 2024, when Trump won by +11.2%. Election Day in Ohio is overwhelmingly red, and if Cleveland and Columbus are dragging heavily on turnout, the incumbent Husted has a major edge.

The decision matrix narrowly favors Brown:

Yet the political makeup of modern-day Ohio and the turnout patterns in early voting place Brown at a major disadvantage despite his name recognition and prior success with Trump in the White House.

Forecast for OH Senate

If Ohio red counties do what they do on Election Day, voters remain old, and urban turnout stays in the toilet, this race is Husted’s – and potentially with some breathing room to spare. Brown’s ceiling at this point is very low.

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.

Zach Nunn (R-inc.) vs. Sarah Trone Garriott (D)

I. The Race

Zach Nunn (Republican) is an Air Force Reserve Colonel with serious combat experience. He was once a member of the Iowa legislature, and has represented IA-3 since first being elected in the 2022 GOP House victory and now seeks his third term.

Sarah Trone Garriott (Democrat) is an Iowa state senator with a background in religious studies. She is running a “kitchen table” campaign that is relatively careful about not becoming “Trump-centered,” with the understanding that Iowa supported Trump by a wide margin. This is her first attempt at Congress.

II. District Geography

Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District (IA-3) occupies the southwestern portion of the state (all but the very corner), and contains the capital city of Des Moines and its most electorally significant suburban areas – and a total of 21 counties. Since Iowa doesn’t gerrymander, this seat (just like IA-1) is extremely competitive. A Republican state that wanted to win would figure out how to split half of Des Moines into IA-4, which is overwhelmingly red. As such, the clash between urban/suburban and farmland produces tight margins in presidential and House elections. Here is how President Trump fared in all three of his races in the current boundaries of IA-3:

IA-3 sits well to the left of the state as a whole. Trump had to carry Iowa by over 13 points in 2024 just to take IA-3 by 4.3%; he hasn’t been helped by the suburban drift of Dallas County, which is just west of Polk County (Des Moines), that has taken place over the past decade. The rurals are about volume of turnout. The metropolitan Des Moines area is about persuasion.

III. Market Assessment

Polymarket bettors overwhelmingly favor Trone Garriott, who is vastly overpriced.

IV. History

Des Moines and the rest of Iowa’s districts have moved around a lot in recent decades. In 2010, the last election of the first decade of the 21st century, Iowa’s U.S. House map looked like this:

Iowa lost an electoral vote going into the next decade and then split its lines in a different pattern, putting Des Moines and IA-3 into a district more closely resembling the one Nunn is defending now. Republican David Young, running for reelection alongside President Trump’s first campaign in Iowa, won his 2016 race by 13.7%. Young then turned around in 2018 and lost the seat by 2.2% to Cindy Axne, who proceeded to narrowly defeat him in a 2020 rematch.

IA-3 met the key warning sign for a 2018 flip – a seat with a major metropolitan area in which President Trump massively underperformed the Republican House candidate. The districts were redrawn yet again, and in their current form, Nunn knocked Axne out in the 2022 GOP House takeover, and by a very narrow margin of just 0.7%:

Thanks to Trump’s statewide blowout, Nunn ran up a very impressive margin compared to what IA-3 is normally capable of:

Nunn must hope that rural turnout is overwhelming knowing just how strong the shift in metropolitan Des Moines was in 2018.

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Neither Nunn nor Trone Garriott faced a serious primary challenger; therefore, there is no lingering drama impacting either party for the General Election.

VI. Polls

No mainstream polls have run for this race since March.

VII. Media Ratings

Every major reviewer favors Trone Garriott; Inside Elections is the only one thinking it may come down to the wire.

VIII. Party Registration

While Republicans have a larger numerical advantage over Democrats today than they did in November 2024, this isn’t the case in IA-3. Democrats have made up 3,129 net registrations, dropping the Republican advantage by a full point. Most of this damage has been sustained in Polk County, where Democrats have out-registered Republicans roughly two to one. Unlike cases in which a registration gain is tied to roll maintenance, this is a legitimate Democrat gain.

IX. Election Considerations

This is what I had to say about Iowa’s elections in my IA-1 piece:

One thing is for certain, and that is that Iowa runs excellent elections. A lot of this is owed to the current treasurer, Roby Smith, who started turning the screws on election reforms as a state legislator before the 2020 election. Iowa has manageable early voting windows, control over the mail-in balloting process, and a voter registration system that doesn’t automatically register voters.

X. Summary and Election Estimate

Nunn is sitting in a seat that, much like AZ-1, has stabilized its political leanings. Trump underperformed in the old boundaries in 2016 relative to the GOP representative, and that representative was bounced in 2018 when the “suburban swing” bill came due.

My proprietary mapping of IA-3 above shows a zoomed-in bubble of Polk County and the eastern edge of Dallas County, which contains key suburban territory Nunn will need to hold his ground in. Any suburban swing, plus high turnout in core Des Moines in the blue-coded (“Democrat”) precincts combined with lagging rural turnout puts this election on ice and gives Democrats a key flip in what is one of the most important races for the House majority.

The decision matrix favors Trone Garriott:

Based on the established swing of IA-3 and the Des Moines metro in the first Trump midterm, legitimate Democrat gains in voter registration, and Trone Garriott’s money advantage, I consider her the favorite. I would normally be inclined to rate her at 65/35, but given Nunn’s popularity, success, and early voting splits similar to his 2024 win, I think he has a better-than-normal chance to hold the seat – certainly much better odds than Mariannette Miller-Meeks has to hold IA-1.

Forecast for IA-3 House

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.

Greg Abbott (R-inc.) vs. Gina Hinojosa

I. The Race

Greg Abbott (Republican) seeks his fourth term as Texas governor, the office he was elected to in 2014. Prior to that, he served as Texas Attorney General for almost the entirety of Rick Perry’s tenure as governor.

Gina Hinojosa (Democrat) is a union lawyer and sitting member of the Texas House of Representatives. She was first elected to that chamber, and seeks to become the first Democrat to win the governorship since Ann Richards did so in 1990.

II. State Profile

The overwhelming theme of all 2026 analysis of Texas should be the same – if all of that red votes, then Texas will be red. The struggle with all of the work put into that endeavor so far ties directly to the fact that Texas has open primaries and does not register voters by party, whereas Florida closes primaries and does have party registration. We can watch it live as every vote comes in and know definitively in which direction the electorate is headed.

Texas’s presidential baseline is perhaps more imposing to Democrats’ long-term hopes than any before it, even those elections George W. Bush won by more than Trump’s +13.7% margin in 2024. The bedrock of that victory was a historic performance with Latino voters – 55% of them backed Trump:

While some of its urban counties, especially Dallas and Travis, have gone the way of their counterparts in the past 20 years (mega-blue), Harris (which contains Houston) and Bexar (San Antonio) have large working-class populations which have kept the county margins from getting out of control against Republicans. The rural areas of Texas are overwhelmingly Republican, and even more so now that rural South Texas has lurched in the same direction.

Democrats must have low Republican turnout, large swings in a small handful of counties, and overwhelming turnout in four blue bubbles (Harris, Bexar, Travis, Dallas Counties) to win a statewide election in Texas – something they haven’t done since 1994.

2026, thanks to its place on the calendar and in the electoral cycles, gives them their best shot in years to do just that, and they mostly have their eyes set on the Senate race between James Talarico and Ken Paxton, which I will profile after the end of in-person early voting.

Presidential Margins

• 2016 Trump +9.0%
• 2020 Trump +5.6%
• 2024 Trump +13.7%

Key Statistics

• 40.2% Hispanic, 39.3% White, 11.6% Black, 5.1% Asian

III. Market Assessment

Polymarket bettors find Abbott the favorite, but by far lower odds than they would have in any of his three runs had these platforms been widely used in the past.

IV. History

In 1978, Republican Bill Clements rode a midterm wave to become the first Republican governor of Texas since Reconstruction. What followed behind him throughout Texas was a windfall very much like the one observers have seen materialize in Florida under Ron DeSantis. In 1980, Ronald Reagan flipped Texas’s electoral votes, thus beginning a streak of 12 consecutive Republican presidential wins remaining intact to this day.

Clements was unseated in 1982, but won the office back in 1987 and served another term. Democrat Ann Richards became the last from her party to serve as Texas governor when she won it in 1990 against human gaffe machine Clayton Williams, whose undisciplined commentary and antics cost him the race. Richards, in hindsight, is more conservative than most governors who call themselves Republican today; however, the partisan realignment caught up to her in 1994 and she was ousted by our future 43rd president, George W. Bush. As indicated above, 1994 was also the last year Democrats carried any statewide offices.

Thus began the stretch of GOP dominance in the governor’s mansion that remains intact today.

Bush won reelection in an absolute massacre in 1998 that is as red as Trump’s 2024 map:

He then won the presidency and handed the office off to Rick Perry, who was then serving as Lieutenant Governor (elected in 1998, first Republican in position since Reconstruction). Perry won the office in 2002 and was reelected in 2006 and 2010. Abbott, if reelected, will pass Perry as longest-tenured Texas governor provided he serves out the entirety of his fourth term.

Abbott swept into office in the 2014 midterm wave, and believe it or not, there was plenty of tough talk about turning Texas blue back then. The Democrats ran a state legislator named Wendy Davis, who earned the nickname “Abortion Barbie” for her looks and views on infanticide. Here is how it worked out for her:

With Trump in office, Texas faced a strong Democrat tailwind for the first time in many years. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke challenged Ted Cruz for his U.S. Senate seat, and gave him a hell of a run – even exceeding Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential vote count. Abbott faced a weak opponent, former Dallas sheriff Lupe Valdez, and beat her by a margin of +13.3%.

Abbott’s most recent reelection came against O’Rourke in 2022, who ran with faded star power and in the wrong cycle to attempt an upset:

The 10.9% margin of victory was Abbott’s lowest yet, but there was very little expectation that Texas was in play and no one was overly invested in making sure the pedal was slammed to the floorboard like they are today in pursuit of turnout. Trump cleared Abbott’s vote count by more than two million just two years later.

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Abbott faced a primary in 2026, but wound up beating Pete Chambers by over 70 points. Despite the frustration of grassroots Republicans with some of his policies responsible for transforming DFW and Central Texas into unrecognizable messes, the requirement to defeat Democrats will ensure he carries practically every rank-and-file GOP vote.

Hinojosa made her way through a weak primary field, and won convincingly:

VI. Polls

RCP shows Abbott’s polling average at +3.4%, with almost none willing to put him over a majority of the vote. This is a bit strange considering he’s never won less than 54.9% while running for governor.

This also happens to be the time of year when polls magically show a burst in support for Republicans in Texas, but I’m not so sure that is coming soon given the importance of the Senate race to the national propaganda narrative.

VII. Media Ratings

Only three reviewers have a hat in the ring in this race, and they all “lean” for Abbott – taking the cautious route.

VIII. Party Registration

Texas does not register voters by party, but it has become painfully obvious to many that they absolutely should. I am in full support as an analyst because I’m sick of being gaslit by flawed primary participation models.

IX. Election Considerations

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’m relaying what I wrote in my assessment of the decisive House race, TX-34:

Texas, being such a huge state with an overwhelmingly urban and suburban population, has people rung up on election corruption charges all the time – including in South Texas.

Still, Texas has strong control over what few mail-in ballots are sent out, and the risk for widespread corruption in this race (relative to others I’ve profiled) is low.

X. Summary and Election Estimate

I am going to start off by saying that one of the things I most look forward to about this cycle concluding is that it will be another two years until I have to watch Texas politicians go on news television or podcasts, spin up giant crocodile tears, and tell the audience that this is the time Texas is turning blue.

No blue states have politicians that act like that, even in states that are turning red. All of my figures, as I presented consistently in 2024, showed that Trump was going to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona, which all had either Democrat governors (not Nevada) or significant Democrat political power in the state. You know why? Because saying crap like that makes sure your enemy keeps the turnout surge going and beats you.

I’ve heard it over and over – “if all the votes currently in were counted, we would lose!” Yea, and if we stopped the game after the road team scored a run in the top of the first, the home team would lose, too. So, I have a compromise. How about we put the next 4 million or more votes in the ballot box, and then count?

History suggests strongly that Abbott will be reelected, and so does this handy, dandy graphic:

New transplants to Texas, if you believe this graphic (and I do), are R+20 by implied partisanship. They are to the right of the existing electorate, which hasn’t elected a Democrat in a statewide race since 1994. These people, hundreds of thousands between every election cycle, did not move to Texas just to see it turn blue, and I can assure you they are the highest propensity GOP voters you will find. They are all going to vote, and will vote for Abbott and Paxton 1:1, along with Bo French and all other GOP candidates on the ballot.

Now they are turning out, even in the assessments of the left-wing modelers who want to wish-cast blue Texas into existence. It is imperative that every Republican turns out to vote. While I am confident in Abbott’s reelection, I have no doubt (as proven by Cruz underperforming Abbott by 10.7% in 2018) he will run ahead of Paxton. Abbott needs to win in a blowout, preferably north of ten points. Another positive sign is that Andy Beshear, head of the Democratic Governors Association, won’t throw serious money at Hinojosa’s effort to oust Abbott.

It seems like they know the polls are off, which is good news for Paxton, too.

Abbott is trouncing Hinojosa financially, and leads every applicable category in my decision matrix:

Forecast for TX Governor

Texas Republican governors, like those in Georgia, have a longer leash because the suburbanites willing to stab the party in the back down ballot don’t really want someone running the state to increase taxes and turn it into failed states they see in the news. It is possible that Abbott, running for a fourth term, may post his lowest margin yet if turnout is through the roof – but that same high turnout will ensure enough red on the map votes to keep him in there. Abbott has also done well with Hispanic voters and stands to benefit from the massive realignment in that demographic pulled off by President Trump.

Abbott needs to win big, and that will help everyone relax over the Senate race. If everything falls into place, given Hinojosa’s lack of appeal, a 2018 margin isn’t out of the question.

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.

Derek Merrin (R) vs. Marcy Kaptur (D-inc.)

I. The Race

Derek Merrin (Republican) is a former member of the Ohio House of Representatives who is locked into a 2024 rematch with Kaptur, but this time with much friendlier district boundaries at his disposal.

Marcy Kaptur (Democrat) is the longest-tenured woman in Congress, and seeking a twenty-third term after barely surviving Merrin’s surge in President Trump’s statewide romp in 2024. For perspective, I turn 42 next month; Kaptur was wrapping up her first term when I was born.

II. District Geography

Ohio’s 9th Congressional District (OH-9) occupies the northwest corner of the Buckeye State and contains Toledo as its major metro area. These boundaries have been redrawn since the 2024 election thanks to the requirements of Ohio law, and OH-9 seems to be the seat in the bipartisan arrangement that was most gift-wrapped for Republicans to take over. OH-13, held by Democrat Emilia Sykes, was close in 2024 but made bluer by the redistricting commission, and OH-1 covering the southwest corner and Cincinnati was weakened (for Democrats) a little, but probably not enough to tip over in the 2026 cycle.

The new map removed the following from OH-9:

• Sandusky County
• The northeastern edge of Wood County closest to Toledo

The map added these counties:

• Henry County (Trump +46.5%)
• Paulding County (Trump +55.9%)
• Putnam County (Trump +68.5%)

Trump won the boundaries of OH-9 as they were in 2024 by 7 points. His performance was not quite enough to get Merrin past the entrench Kaptur.

Here are the approximate recent presidential margins for the new boundaries:

• 2016 Trump +5.0%
• 2020 Trump +6.0%
• 2024 Trump +11.0%

Key Statistics

• 74.5% White, 12.0% Black, 7.2% Hispanic
• 86.0% Urban, 14.0% Rural

III. Market Assessment

Despite the geographical disadvantage, Polymarket bettors are still throwing in with Kaptur – a heavy favorite in the market.

IV. History

To write a history of OH-9 in its various shapes and descriptions over the past four decades would essentially be to write a biography of Kaptur. She has hogged the seat for far too long as a career politician posing as a public servant.

Prior to the 2024 race, and thanks to much friendlier ideologies and boundaries, Kaptur never had a close call. She often won by Pelosi margins, taking over 70% of the vote. In 2024, with Trump on his way to a +11.2% win statewide in Ohio, Kaptur barely held the line against Merrin:

2,382 votes, just 0.7%, separated her from her GOP challenger. Tom Pruss, the libertarian on the ticket, and given who is voting Democrat in OH-9, I’d bet his presence on the ticket hurt Merrin the most. Either way, Merrin is back for round two, and this time in a district with four more points of presidential margin at his back.

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Kaptur, unlike many entrenched Democrats, faced no challenger in the Democrat primary.

Merrin had to fend off a field of opponents, and prevailed by a +18.8% margin over Josh Williams, the second place finisher:

The GOP primary was full of mud-slinging and personal attacks, but the candidates have moved on and backed Merrin – and so has President Trump.

VI. Polls

These polls were pulled from The New York Times:

The McLaughlin poll is old, but shows a four-point lead for Merrin. A recent Democrat-sponsored poll shows a tie, which is not a good poll for Kaptur given who paid for the result. I will award a slight edge to Merrin in this category.

VII. Media Ratings

Decision Desk is a Kaptur believer, but the three other reviewing bodies I consider have the race scored a “toss-up.” Until the most recent update, Inside Elections favored Merrin, albeit narrowly.

VIII. Party Registration

Ohio does not register voters by party; however, based on similar county profiles in Pennsylvania, it is highly likely OH-9 would have a notable rightward drift in registration if we had such information.

IX. Election Considerations

Here is what I had to say in my write-up of the greatest unforced error in the race for the majority, OH-7:

Fortunately for Miller, Ohio has done a relatively strong job of sealing up election loopholes and has ensured they have control over the limited mail-in balloting that exists in the Buckeye State. I wrote up Ohio’s election details in the aftermath of the 2024 election for those of you interested in understanding how election integrity impacts races there. In short, there will be no late night ballot dumps impacting this race.

X. Summary and Election Estimate

Ohio Republicans, at fault for showing mercy to Democrats when they could have flipped three seats, got the redistricting job done enough to imperil Kaptur’s seemingly endless career. They have set OH-9 up for a clash of two worlds: MAGA-land vs. Toledo. Have a look at my proprietary mapping of the new boundaries:

This map excludes some of the far northeastern portion of the district, but I’m presenting the snippet this way with clarity in mind. Those crimson-shaded precincts are what I label “Super MAGA” precincts. Trump had 66.7% or more of the vote there in 2024, and there are no signs of leftward lurching. Lucas County, the home of Toledo, even has some friendly Republican precincts (regular red shade, no leftward drift, won by Trump but with less than 66.7% of the vote), so the entire county isn’t destroyed by the urban spread.

Toledo itself has a mix of Democrat-rated precincts (blue, Trump at less than 30% of the vote and often in low single digits for overwhelmingly black precincts) and working-class precincts with rightward momentum (solid purple). In a geographic arrangement like we find in the new OH-9, Kaptur needs two things to happen to win:

• Poor turnout in the crimsons
• Massive turnout in the blues of Lucas County

Right now, Lucas County ranks 62nd out of 88 counties in Ohio, close to the bottom quarter, in terms of how much of its 2024 presidential vote count it has already turned out in 2026. To make matters worse, the turnout in Lucas County that has already happened is disproportionately from precincts less likely to overwhelmingly back Kaptur. If the city doesn’t vote, she can’t win.

The decision matrix for this race looks like this:

Just as I have given Merrin the edge for inconclusive (but telling) polls, I gave Kaptur an edge for race ratings because she has just one outlet thinking she will win. Kaptur’s only real advantage is with money, a field in which she has massively benefitted because every special interest group in America is trying to save her career from what looks likely based on what I can read (and I don’t read polls).

Forecast for OH-9 House

I feel fairly confident Kaptur has reached the end of the line. This seat, just like the redrawn NC-1 seat, is a must-win for Republicans if they hope to hold their majority in the House. It is too strong presidentially, with voters trending almost uniformly in the right direction, to lose unless the entire brand is weighed down with too much baggage to defend all the seats up for grabs successfully.

Democrats can take the House without holding OH-9 (and NC-1), but if they manage to keep this seat, then I don’t see them missing out on the majority. Still, the fundamentals remain – if Toledo doesn’t vote, Kaptur goes into retirement.

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.

With the American midterms on the menu, “commentating Netherlands” is settling in for the show. Viewers expect a range of opinions, as befits a public broadcaster, but are treated to the one uniform opinion: “Democrats must win; Republicans are crazy; Trump is a criminal.” Whoever does not share this subtle analysis is not decent either.

The Dutch debate about America has nothing to do with America, and everything to do with the Netherlands. Your opinion of America, let alone of Trump, determines where you stand and whether you are decent, and if you are not, you deserve to be met with silence. Behold the “democratic debate.”

In 2008 I lived in New York and decided to become a “Republican watcher.” A niche and at the same time lonely profession, but for me a world opened up in the “other America.” I attended the conventions in the presidential election, both the Democrats’ in Denver and the Republicans’ in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The NOS was in Denver with a sizable delegation in rented caravans. For Barack Obama was the anointed one, awaiting canonization. At the Republicans’ convention there was a single NOS radio journalist, who left early because of a flood elsewhere.

On stage, Sarah Palin was launched as the vice-presidential candidate, and the media immediately banished her. But she voiced something that was widely felt in non-urban America, and on which the later candidate Donald Trump built: the gap between voters and Washington, DC.

In 2015 Trump launched his campaign and was immediately declared “crazy.” In Washington everyone laughed at him; the fool of the day. At his first campaign appearance, in August 2015, he flew his plane (lettered: TRUMP) over a football stadium with 30,000 people in Mobile, Alabama.

I thought: “Something is happening here, this is an American ‘Pim moment,’” and wrote in De Volkskrant (September 2, 2015): “Can Trump ultimately win? Yes he can.” The editors printed it, probably shaking their heads.

A year later, on a street in New York (coincidences do happen), I ran into Bret Stephens, head of the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. I knew him from my Brussels days as head of The Wall Street Journal Europe. He invited me to lunch. I told him Trump stood a real chance, given those reactions in the stadium. A kind of “Pim effect.”

He knew who Pim Fortuyn was and suddenly became very angry. “Trump cannot win, not a single chance: zero!” But Trump won. Stephens traded the Wall Street Journal for the New York Times. Pollsters, too, believed Trump mathematically could not win, but politics is not mathematics. The Dutch television panels were shrouded in tears that election night.

The coming midterms are Trump’s last and most difficult. That he is a narcissist everyone knows (TikTok prime minister Jetten is one too): for many politicians, narcissism is in fact an inexhaustible source of energy. Compared with Europe, America has a strong economy; a liter of gasoline costs about 2.65 euros in the Netherlands (half of it tax), and 0.90 euros in America. Trump plays the lead role in world politics and relies on a loyal MAGA base at home.

In midterm elections turnout is usually low: the main task is getting your own supporters to the ballot box. At the same time, the Democrats have radicalized to the left and in some states are fielding candidates who are too radical even for an average Democrat. Dutch journalists often take their cues from CNN, but that is a “mini-channel” compared with the conservative FOX News. Then there is the Trump factor: he is campaigning in all the swing states, for every vote.

Everything is close. Republicans are often “under-polled,” as the 2024 presidential election showed once again; they distrust pollsters. The Republicans have a reasonable chance of keeping the Senate; the House of Representatives is neck and neck.

It will be nail-biting at the Dutch television panels. Will it be a bonfire of joy or (once again) a vale of tears?

Michael Whatley (R) vs. Roy Cooper (D)

I. The Race

Michael Whatley (Republican) is an attorney who served in the Bush 43 administration before working in the energy industry and chairing the North Carolina Republican Party. He was RNC chairman during President Trump’s winning 2024 campaign, and now looks to fill the Senate seat being vacated by noted backstabber, Thom Tillis.

Roy Cooper (Democrat) has been a politician for 40 years, serving in the state legislature, as Attorney General, and then as governor from 2017 through 2025, when he was replaced by current governor, Josh Stein. He looks to become the first Democrat elected to represent North Carolina in the U.S. Senate since Kay Hagan, who won her last race in 2008.

II. State Profile

North Carolina has grown tremendously since the start of the century, when George W. Bush won it twice by more than 12 points. It represented, perhaps after only Indiana, Barack Obama’s most significant upset in the 2008 election:

Since then, it has been won by four consecutive GOP presidential nominees:

2012 Romney +2.0%
2016 Trump +3.7%
2020 Trump +1.3%
2024 Trump +3.2%

That 2020 result, which ran 2.4% left of 2016 despite a monumental move in voter registration toward Republicans, has ironically put me at odds with Whatley for five years. I argue that election was tainted by the expansion of mail-in balloting, and he has rebutted my positions repeatedly. Nevertheless, the state is constantly growing and changing, and risks turning into Georgia if Republicans don’t right the ship. The difference between a Democrat presidential win of North Carolina and a Republican one is much different than we would have envisioned it 20 years ago.

North Carolina’s Appalachian west and the southeastern coastal areas have turned a hard shade of red, whereas they were once Democrat-leaning or light pink. In the Trump era, Mecklenburg and Wake Counties (Charlotte and Raleigh, respectively) have become real liabilities – countered only by the reddening of the perimeter of the state. Had Trump won Romney’s margins outside of Wake and Mecklenburg, he’d have lost the state in 2020 and 2024.

North Carolina, as evidenced by their frequent Democrat governors, do split tickets. Here is the map from Stein’s 2024 victory, concurrent with Trump on the ticket:

As I will demonstrate with party registration figures later in this article, North Carolina does not possess widespread loyalty to the Republican Party, especially in rural areas like it does in states like Texas, Georgia, or in the heartland. The largest metro areas are hardcore Democrat strongholds now, and the combination of these two factors gives Democrats a chance to win despite GOP progress throughout most of the state’s geography.

Key Statistics

60.5% White, 20.2% Black, 10.7% Hispanic

III. Market Assessment

Polymarket bettors feel even more confident in Roy Cooper than they do in Jon Ossoff in neighboring Georgia.

IV. History

Republican Jeter Pritchard left the United States Senate in 1903, and with it, so did North Carolina’s GOP influence on the chamber for many decades. It was until 1972 that the Tar Heel State elected another Republican when it sent Jesse Helms to Washington, D.C. He declined to run for a sixth term in 2002, and was replaced by Elizabeth Dole, whose husband was none other than the legendary Bob Dole.

Her opponent in 2008, Kay Hagan, rode Obama’s statewide upset and ancestral Democrat strength to her own victory, and by a large margin:

With North Carolina trending red during the Obama days, Hagan was ousted by Tillis in the 2014 GOP wave in a 1.6% squeaker in which hardly anyone voted:

Tillis was reelected in 2020, and only by 1.7%, after Democrat Cal Cunningham had a late-breaking scandal that most likely shifted things to the incumbent. Tillis then went on to antagonize the Republican base and hamstring President Trump at every turn, leading to Trump making it clear that he could retire or be brutally primaried like John Cornyn or Bill Cassidy.

The other Senate seat, currently occupied by Republican Ted Budd, has had a mix of Democrats and Republicans stretching back to 1981. In short, history shows Democrat competitiveness in the Senate even in recent, redder times, with an incumbent who never won by more than 1.7% leaving the seat open in a year that is supposed to be favorable to Democrats.

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Cooper faced five candidates in the Democrat primary, but bludgeoned them mercilessly in taking 92.0% of the vote. It was decisive, and as a result, there is no Democrat intraparty drama in the way of the General Election.

Whatley also prevailed by a decisive margin, beating Don Brown by 49.0%.

Brown said after the primary that he was “1,000 percent” behind Whatley and would do everything he could to help him defeat Cooper. The field of GOP candidates hasn’t contributed to any drama, but there exists a serious divide between Republican factions that has given the party unity advantage to Democrats in a big way.

VI. Polls

Removing outliers from the RCP Average, the standard poll of the Senate race shows Cooper up 7-10 points over Whatley.

It should be noted that Cooper drastically underperformed his polling during his 2020 reelection bid, and I expect the same will be true in 2026.

VII. Media Ratings

While all reviewers favor Cooper, it appears Inside Elections and Sabato think the polls are overstating Cooper’s strength, as well.

VIII. Party Registration

This is going to be a split decision. North Carolina sits nicely to the right of its 2024 voter registration index both in terms of overall and active registrations, giving a more optimistic GOP outlook for the long run than I can provide here in the short run. On the flip side of the coin, Democrats have made modest but noticeable gains in voter registration since summer, and have even barely flipped back the overall registration lead at the closing of the books leading into this election (numbers above reflect the balance at the beginning of October).

This is a push – Whatley has a deeper bench to pull from than Trump did, but Cooper has the recent momentum – which is mostly confined to urban areas like Wake, Mecklenburg, and Durham Counties.

IX. Election Considerations

I have posted at length about North Carolina elections in my posts forecasting the House races in NC-1 and NC-11, and don’t need to reinvent the wheel here.

North Carolina only recently passed Voter ID, and has reasonably basic safeguards in place. It is not extremely easy to cheat in the state (exempting the mail-in heavy 2020 quasi election), but loopholes exist in the event of a close election, like that for the Supreme Court in 2024 – when the Democrat candidate “won” by 734 ballots after weeks of UOCAVA and provisional ballot drips.

X. Summary and Election Estimate

Republicans are off to a rough start in North Carolina’s early voting period, but take heart – it’s not because they’re not voting. They actually have more votes banked now than at this point in 2022. The Democrats are busy front loading. Key blue strongholds Chatham, Orange, Durham, and Buncombe Counties hold the top four spots for percentage of the 2024 presidential vote already turned out in 2026, and the GOP rurals occupy almost all of the bottom 40 percent of 100 counties in the same measure.

The good news here is that this will close a lot this week. Democrats are front-loading their high propensity voters, and can’t sustain that pace. North Carolina has a much stronger Republican preference in federal elections than statewide elections, so I suspect that Cooper’s ceiling is limited and not likely to reach double digits. Regardless, Cooper has a serious advantage in my decision matrix:

Cooper has roughly four times the receipts and twelve times the cash on hand that Whatley does; it has been noted that Whatley’s advertising has been rolled back and the GOP has moved on to other races as funding priorities. These are not good signs, and spoken plainly with an understanding of North Carolina’s ancestral Democrat tendencies and competitive Senate races even in GOP years like 2022, Cooper is clearly on his way to a win that could only be upset by a massive drop-off in urban participation this week:

Forecast for NC Senate

The biggest risk to mailing it in on this Senate race is that Republicans will depress turnout needed to flip NC-1 and hold onto NC-11, and a good long-term goal given Democrat functionality in a few key metros would be for Republicans to start investing heavily in an urban strategy so North Carolina doesn’t turn into another Georgia. This race is a must-win for Democrats, and without it, there is no path to a Democrat majority in the Senate.

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.

Jay Feely (R) vs. Amish Shah (D)

I. The Race

Jay Feely (Republican) is a former NFL kicker and TV sports analyst now trying his hand at politics. He is looking to replace David Schweikert, who is leaving AZ-1 open after eight terms in the U.S. House because he decided to run for governor and get absolutely destroyed by Andy Biggs.

Amish Shah (Democrat) is a physician and former member of the Arizona House of Representatives. He failed to unseat Schweikert in 2024 and, although he has a reputation as a moderate from the legislature, has recently cozied up to many DSA-adjacent figures and positions.

II. District Geography

Arizona’s 1st Congressional District (AZ-1) occupies the northeastern corner of Maricopa County, including affluent cities like Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, and Fountain Hills, as well as segments of northeast Phoenix, which are more favorable for Democrats.

Despite its considerable Republican voter registration advantage, this district’s boundaries have been tough for President Trump and aligned Republicans for the past decade.

Presidential Margins

Practically everyone reading this will agree that the 2020 election in Arizona warped a lot of figures, including the margin in what is now AZ-1. Still, the Trump margins for all three of his races run far to the left of the GOP registration advantages for each year, and are mostly linked to GOP defectors in swanky places like Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, which featured nice gains for Trump in 2024 (which I will dive into in Section X).

Key Statistics

• 69.9% White, 16.4% Hispanic
• 91.5% Urban, 8.5% Rural

III. Market Assessment

Polymarket bettors have wagered heavily on Shah, whose shares are clearly overpriced.

IV. History

Prior to the 2022 election, most of the territory of what is now AZ-1 was called AZ-6, represented by Schweikert. Trump won those boundaries even in the 2020 election by roughly 4 points. The redistricting of Arizona post-2020 cut out more Republican-friendly areas of north Phoenix and replaced them with more Democrat-friendly neighborhoods closer to downtown, hence the reason for paper-thin margins this decade. Here is how the old boundaries, which still included the affluent establishment Republican areas in the district today, shifted from 2016 to 2018:

Despite being an overwhelmingly Republican district at the time, the 2016-18 shift met all the warning signs prominent that year. Trump underperformed Schweikert in the district thanks to the McCain feud and his perceived lack of Republican “street cred” in 2016, and in 2018, the margin essentially matched Trump’s. This was good enough to hold the seat, but the gaps in KS-3, CO-6, and other suburban seats weren’t enough to give the GOP incumbents room to breathe.

This anti-Trump trend continued through the awful 2020 election, when Schweikert held on by just 4.4% against Hiral Tipirnini. In two races since the seat has been redrawn, Schweikert’s margins have been equally uncomfortable:

• 2022 +0.8%

• 2024 +3.8%

I would have expected Schweikert to have a larger margin in 2022, a GOP House popular vote midterm victory, than I would have thought he’d get in 2024, when he won by 3.8% against Shah; this seems like a positive sign that Shah is seen as out of touch with the district and not likely to capture a tailwind like the one we saw in 2018 (which Republicans also didn’t see as vulnerable, and spend accordingly).

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Both parties had seriously contested primaries, and Democrats have the worst fallout.

The deep pockets, lobbyist groups, and Democrat establishment all wanted broadcast journalist Marlene Galan-Woods to win the Democrat nomination. She came up 5 points short to Shah, who had no choice but to run toward the left-wing grassroots organizations – a pathway to victory in the primary but a potential millstone for the General Election.

Republicans also had a hotly contested primary. Rachel and I were pulling for former State Representative Joseph Chaplik, who is more aligned with the grassroots, but Feely pulled 49.8% of the vote and won the nomination, highlighting the continued divide between Republican establishment and the MAGA coalition in Arizona.

VI. Polls

Poll sourced from The New York Times:

Only one poll is on file for this stretch run, and it tells us next to nothing with 14% undecided and the race within the margin of error.

VII. Media Ratings

Sabato has this race as a “toss-up,” but the other three favor Shah by varying degrees likely predicated by the 2018 swing.

VIII. Party Registration

Party registration changes in AZ-1 only slightly favor Shah, as Democrats have closed the gap by less than 3,000, and less than half of a percentage point. These are net gains, a product of both parties losing membership since the 2014 election. It gives TPUSA a slightly diminished bench from which to chase ballots, but isn’t representative of a fundamental shift in voter behavior evident by registration analysis.

IX. Election Considerations

It will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who has followed the battle for election integrity in America that Arizona is one of the worst states in the country for transparency, handling of mail-in ballots, long counts, and “bipartisan” cover for these activities. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, supposedly four Republicans to one Democrat, have constantly interfered with the efforts of Justin Heap, the new County Recorder, to streamline as much of this process as possible in a short period of time.

X. Summary and Election Estimate

At face value, AZ-1 looks like a perilous contest for the Republicans, facing an open seat, in a midterm year that is supposed to favor Democrats; however, there are three factors that give the Republicans the best odds of the two decisive house seats in the state:

Candidates. Shah beat out Galan-Woods, the media personality the Democrat and Maricopa establishment was trying to nominate for the race. He has had to adapt his positions and while he’s not a card-carrying DSA member, appealing to the new left is what got him the nomination. On the other side of that coin, Republicans nominated the establishment candidate, too.

Unfortunately for Shah, AZ-1 is a very establishment district, as observable by how far left of its registration it has been voting in the Trump era. Feely has come under fire for his positions on guns and for being wishy-washy with his past statements (and for some of his alliances, like those with the Clintons). It will be impossible to hang the “too extreme” label on Feely, as Chaplik’s opponents would have done with him.

The turbulence has settled down. There was a lot of volatility in this portion of Maricopa County at the beginning of the Trump era, but the almost all of the Republican precincts became more favorable for Trump in 2024. Here is my proprietary mapping of the district:

There are no “Super MAGA” (Trump with over 66.7% of the vote), but the positive indication here is that unlike VA-2, the district isn’t covered in yellow (precincts won by Trump but with at least 3% of leftward drift). The red precincts here are, for the time being, “friendlies.” The precincts in purple are heavily Latino, and those with solid coloring had movement toward Trump despite going for Harris overall.

Early turnout. As I sat down to write this assessment, Maricopa County released a bunch of ballots that went R+12.1%:

To understand how massive that is, it’s eight days until the election and Republicans just secured a drop that ran right of overall registration (R+10.7%, shown above). Overall returns in AZ-1 sit at R+4.1%. As this trend escalates, likely due to Latino voters sitting on their hands with lower enthusiasm, Feely will become more and more likely to hold the seat.

🚨NEW SWING SEAT UPDATE: Arizona Republicans are showing up for @jayfeely. Today’s Maricopa drop in CD1: 13,373 ballots @ R+12.1. GOP lead in early returns grew from R+3.2 to R+4.0. 5,850 more R than D ballots.

Ari Daniel Bradshaw (@AriBradshawAZ), Oct 26, 2026

Shah leads every applicable category in my decision matrix, although Feely has plenty of money coming in from outside spending:

However, despite having these advantages at his disposal, I think candidate quality and the TPUSA ballot chase differential puts this race on its head:

Forecast for AZ-1 House

As with all of my 55/45 calls, I consider this race a flip of the coin, with the lean being owed to either the core set of fundamentals or, in this case, a steady stream of data. The latest ballot drop and the success in low prop voter turnout appears to be making a dent, and I think Feely is massively undervalued in this race. Shah will need to see a major uptick in Latino Democrat turnout and hope there are a lot of soft Republicans voting for Hobbs that will tick Democrats all the way down the ballot.

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.

With American forces gone from Erbil, Iran has lost the justification it long invoked for attacks on the Kurdistan Region.

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Eric Flores (R) vs. Vicente Gonzalez (D-inc.)

I. The Race

Eric Flores (Republican) is a first-time candidate looking to capitalize on recent Republican gains in South Texas. He is an attorney with an accomplished legal career and also a member of the Texas Army National Guard (infantry officer).

Vicente Gonzalez (Democrat) was first elected to represent TX-15 in 2016. Now representing a twice-redrawn TX-34, Gonzalez, also an attorney, seeks a sixth term. As a member of the House Blue Dog Coalition, he will need to create maximum distance from the radical left in order to win in much more challenging electoral terrain.

II. District Geography

Texas’s 34th Congressional District (TX-34), newly redrawn for the 2026 General Election, stretches from the U.S. border with Mexico along the Rio Grande River all the way north to Nueces County. It includes all of Cameron, Willacy, Kenedy, and Kleberg Counties, and all of Nueces except for the innermost precincts of Corpus Christi. It is truly an expert draw from the Texas legislature. The only question is whether it is ripe for the picking in what is supposed to be a strong Democrat year.

President Trump, thanks to his massive improvement with Latino voters nationwide, won both the newly drawn district (+10.5%) and the old TX-34 boundaries (+5.0%).

Presidential Margins

He won neither the old nor the new boundaries in 2020, but ran these new boundaries 10 points right of where they had been in 2016. A 13 points bump to the right put TX-34 in double digits, punctuating a generational performance in South Texas for a GOP presidential nominee.

Key Statistics

90.3% Hispanic, 7.9% White

84% Urban, 16% Rural

The newly redrawn district, one of the big GOP targets, cut out a McAllen-heavy portion of Hidalgo County and replaced it with the portion of Nueces County described above.

III. Market Assessment

On Polymarket, Gonzalez is the trading favorite, albeit heavily overvalued.

IV. History

Gonzalez started out in TX-15, winning a +19.6% margin over Republican Tim Westley in a district that ran from the southern end of San Antonio straight south to McAllen. He won reelection in 2018 by +18.9%, but a close call in 2020 force him to reassess his career aspirations.

Facing Trump’s unexpected strength in South Texas, Gonzalez defeated Monica De La Cruz, who now represents TX-15, by just 2.9%. He announced the next year that he would switch over to TX-34; he wound up facing Republican Mayra Flores, who had captured the seat in a special election in March 2022:

Gonzalez rode a much stronger Biden baseline than he had in TX-15 to a +8.5% win over Flores, and successfully defended the seat concurrent with Trump’s massive conquest of South Texas, albeit narrowly:

Mayra Flores (of no relation to Eric) ran 7.6% left of Trump, falling just short of unseating Gonzalez. Gonzalez’s worries stem from TX-34 being redrawn from the Trump +5.0% turf that got him past Mayra Flores by 5,177 votes to Trump +10.5% looping in the most conservative portions of Nueces County.

The longterm trend for the Democrat brand in South Texas looks very bad:

V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results

Both Gonzalez and Flores had to deal with primaries. Gonzalez won his comfortably while running against a challenger to his left, yet another data point that the future political coalitions of America feature Latinos opposing the emerging DSA:

For Republicans, it was the battle of the Floreses. Eric knocked off Mayra, who was eager for yet another rematch with Gonzalez. The two eventually buried the hatchet, but Mayra seems frustrated in most of her online commentary since endorsing Eric. I doubt any lingering beef will impact the General Election.

VI. Polls

Polls pulled from The New York Times:

Flores published an internal poll showing him in the lead in June; two other polls from mid-August to present have Gonzalez with an average lead of 5 points. It should be noted that Latinos are very difficult to poll, and no 2024 polls detected Trump’s 55% share of the Texas Latino vote.

VII. Media Ratings

All four major reviewers are looking at this as a tight race. Two have it still labeled “toss-up,” and Decision Desk and Sabato lean it for Gonzalez.

VIII. Party Registration

Texas does not register voters by party; however, no counties with large Latino-majority populations in other states that I know of have a meaningful move to the left by registration since the 2024 election.

IX. Election Considerations

Texas, being such a huge state with an overwhelmingly urban and suburban population, has people rung up on election corruption charges all the time – including in South Texas.

Still, Texas has strong control over what few mail-in ballots are sent out, and the risk for widespread corruption in this race (relative to others I’ve profiled) is low.

X. Summary and Election Estimate

This is another race that is very tough to predict. To Gonzalez’s advantage, most voters in the new TX-34 boundaries to the south of Nueces County are still Democrats. They vote in Democrat primaries because the GOP has very little true infrastructure built in South Texas, and there are very few standard Republican social clubs like those that can be found in every red suburb in the Lone Star State. Anecdotally, I knew a man in a previous life (a gringo) who was as pro-Trump as they came, but he voted in Democrat primaries because it was inevitable a Democrat would win the local race, and he wanted a say-so.

Times are changing. I’m not convinced the Republicans won’t hold most (or all) of Trump’s gains. Roughly 40% of Texas counties shifted more Republican from the 2016 presidential election to the 2018 Texas Senate race, and they were largely Latino – potentially saving Ted Cruz’s campaign. Recent data from Yuma County, Arizona – a strong comp for the Rio Grande Valley, looks very good for the GOP.

TX-34 looms as a must-win for any hope of a GOP majority, especially since OH-7 and NC-11 are jump balls thanks to unforced errors. Essentially, Flores is going to need to hit the Latino working-class hard and hold the emerging red suburbs of Cameron County (where they actually do vote in GOP primaries), limiting margins of defeat in core Brownsville and rolling out every last right-winger in the northern end of the new boundaries.

If Latino margins blow slightly left of 2024, Gonzalez can still hold the district based on his incumbency and the familiarity of his voters with the party; however, if the gains stick, then Flores can introduce a brand-new lay of the land for Republican politics in South Texas.

My decision matrix gives Gonzalez the edge in three of four applicable categories:

Gonzalez knows the drift of the district, and that’s why he’s been over-the-top in rejecting the woke agenda and championing his “blue dog” credentials. If he manages to hold on in 2026, he’s probably going to be gone in 2028 with a return to presidential trend lines. I consider this race a pure flip of the coin, only edged to Gonzalez for incumbency, party infrastructure, and midterm dynamics (which may not apply for this very unique district). Multiple sources in Texas have confirmed to me that the race is viewed as very tight.

Forecast for TX-34 House

Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.