What Should We Make Of All These Polls?

Where do things stand?

Sep 17, 2026

Don’t look now, but the Democrats’ Senate nominee has a bigger lead in Texas than in Minnesota.
That’s according to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, showing Democrat James Talarico up 2.6 percentage points over state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX) while in Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D-MN) leads former sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya by 1.8 points.
Statistically, that’s not a huge difference. But Minnesota has historically been one of the bluest states in the country, and its Senate race wasn’t supposed to be competitive this year. Texas is among the reddest, and it hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
A Democrat leading, or even being in the hunt, in Texas could be a sign that a blue wave is coming. But what then to make of Minnesota, where the most recent poll shows a tie between Flanagan and Tafoya?
This is what the fight for control of the Senate looks like in general. Democrats are leading in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, and Alaska. Republicans are up by just 1.1 points in Iowa, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. There have even been polls showing Republicans trailing in Kansas and Nebraska. The White House seems to be taking these numbers seriously.
At the same time, Democrats have not locked down Senate races in Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, or Minnesota. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) outperformed her poll numbers to win reelection six years ago. But that doesn’t explain Michigan, which hasn’t elected a Republican senator since the historic red wave of 1994.
New Hampshire hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since Kelly Ayotte in 2010, during another red wave. Now Ayotte is the governor, and she is heavily favored for reelection. Former Sen. John Sununu, a Republican, could be on the verge of a comeback. Cook Political Report now considers the race a toss-up.
It doesn’t seem very likely that Democrats will win Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska while losing one in Minnesota or anywhere in New England. It’s possible that Republicans have false hope in some of the bluer states where they are currently competitive. They are not actually leading in any of these places, not even Collins, just holding the Democrats to low single-digit leads on average. The initial post-Labor Day polling shows things getting worse rather than better for the GOP.

In the latest Fox News poll, a major driver of this dynamic is people souring on capitalism en masse.

Piker and Hasan’s Osama Bin Laden Echo

Isaac Schorr:

A decade and a half after his death, Osama bin Laden can still count on moronic, morally deranged progressives to parrot his propaganda.
After 9/11, al-Qaeda worked tirelessly to co-opt self-hating leftist movements in both the United States and the West more generally, the theory being that even after watching Islamists murder nearly 3,000 of their countrymen, some would still be chomping at the bit to blame America first. It was a hubristic, surprisingly savvy gambit.
Library of Congress alum and Middle East scholar Raymond Ibrahim first noted this insidious public relations strategy in the 2000s. In its outgoing communiques, al-Qaeda accused the United States of “oppressing and exploiting the Islamic world,” citing its friendship with Israel, support for United Nations sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime and, later, its reluctant waging of the War on Terror as proof.
“Does the prey not have the right, when bound and dragged to its slaughter, to escape? Does it not have the right, while being slaughtered, to lash out with its paw?” wondered a victimized bin Laden.
But internally, al-Qaeda’s leaders struck a much different chord. Their “documents rarely made mention of all those things — Zionism, Bush’s ‘Crusade,’ malnourished Iraqi children — that formed the core of Al Qaeda’s messages to the West,” observed Ibrahim. “Instead, they were filled with countless Koranic verses, hadiths (traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), and the consensus and verdicts of Islam’s most authoritative voices.”
“Put another way,” he wrote, “the language of ‘reciprocity’ was exchanged for that of intolerant religious fanaticism.”
As proof of this phenomenon, Ibrahim pointed to bin Laden’s response to an open letter from a group of Saudi intellectuals asserting that “The heart of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is justice, kindness, and charity.”
“As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s Word: ‘We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us — till you believe in Allah alone,’” replied bin Laden. “If the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy! … Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion.”
Charming, no?
Still, it’s the dead terrorist’s policy-oriented, outward-facing message that his Fabian apologists continue to tout.

Left-wing streamer Hasan Piker tells Axios he believes America conducts more terrorism in the world than al-Qaeda, the terror network that carried out the 9/11 attacks.
“Pound for pound as far as the number of deaths, yes,” Piker said in an exclusive interview for a new episode of “The Axios Show.” Piker added: “We have caused tremendous terror all around the world.”

The Moral Inversion Behind Lindsey Clancy

The Public:

The lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial was accused of domestic violence, has a restraining order filed against him, and is months behind on paying his rent, NBC Boston reported on Friday. This history suggests he may have lied on his juror questionnaire, the local news station noted. After NBC Boston ran its story, a blogger found and exposed the holdout’s full name, photo, and address. “Now that the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case is getting the negative attention he deserves, it’s easy for [Plymouth County, Massachusetts] District Attorney Tim Cruz to agree to a plea deal that gets Lindsay the help she needs,” argued a lawyer in the Boston Herald.
But in effectively revealing the juror’s identity, NBC Boston broke with established journalistic norms and made him a target. “My family cannot leave the house,” the holdout’s brother said. “They are leaving notes at my mother’s house.” Reporters usually only investigate jurors’ backgrounds after they have come forward publicly. For example, when reporters revealed that a juror in the Derek Chauvin trial had participated in a political protest wearing a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt and baseball cap, they did so after the juror had identified himself and given a TV interview. The Clancy holdout, in contrast, had not given interviews, and his name is still legally sealed by the court.