Democrats hold leads in five of the seven critical Senate races polled by The New York Times and Siena University as the 2026 midterm campaign comes to a close, with no clear leader in the other two races.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leads Republican Mike Rogers by a wide 53% to 42% among likely voters in Michigan. Democrat James Talarico tops Republican Ken Paxton by 50% to 43% among likely voters in Texas. Democrat Troy Jackson runs ahead of incumbent Republican Susan Collins by 51% to 45% among likely voters in Maine.
Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown tops Republican Sen. Jon Husted among likely voters in Ohio 49% to 44%. And in Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton leads incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall among likely voters by 49% to 44%.
The surveys find no clear leader races in Alaska, where Democrat Mary Peltola holds 48% support to Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan’s 46%, and in Iowa, where Democrat Josh Turek holds 48% to Republican Ashley Hinson’s 47%.
The polls, which largely fielded through the last few days, align with other recent public polling in several of these states, but the Michigan results suggest a far wider race than other polling. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released last week found El-Sayed topping Rogers by 7 points, and the CNN Poll of Polls on the race suggests a 5-point margin in El-Sayed’s favor.
Should the results of these polls match the results in Tuesday’s election, Democratic victories in the four Republican-held states where they lead outside the margin of sampling error would be enough to flip control of the Senate, if Democrats were also to hold all of their currently held seats.
Even in these late-fielding polls, though, there is still room for movement. With the exception of Michigan, each of these surveys finds the Democratic candidate holding roughly 50% support, suggesting there is room for the roughly 5% of likely voters who haven’t committed to one of the two major candidates to shift or tighten the margins.
The New York Times/Siena University polls were conducted between October 23 and November 1 among likely voters in each states. Margins of sampling error for results from the full sample stand at +/-4.8 percentage points in Alaska, +/-4.4% points in Iowa, +/-4.1% points in Kansas, +/-4.3% points in Maine, +/-3.6% points in Michigan, +/-4.2% points in Ohio and +/-3.3% points in Texas.