President Donald Trump’s nightmare scenario is taking shape.
Colin McPherson/Corbis via Getty Images
Democrats received a significant vote of confidence from polling guru Nate Silver in their bid to flip a Senate seat in deep-red Kansas.
The statistician raised his rating of the Kansas race from “tossup” to “Lean D” on his Silver Bulletin Substack, a striking turnaround for a race in a ruby red state that once seemed poised to re-elect Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.
It’s been less than a month since Silver moved the race from “Lean R” to “Tossup,” highlighting how quickly the political landscape has changed for Marshall and his Democratic challenger, Adam Hamilton.
If the polls are correct, Sen. Roger Marshall is shaping up to be the first Republican to lose a Kansas Senate race in nearly a century.
This latest change appears to follow an Emerson College Polling poll released Friday that puts Hamilton four points ahead of Marshall, with 49 percent of voters supporting the Democrat, compared to 45 percent supporting the Republican incumbent.
Silver’s polling average now puts Hamilton at 49 percent, up from 47.4 percent before the Emerson poll was released, while Marshall remains just below 46 percent.
The Emerson poll follows a CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday that also showed Hamilton leading by four points.
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Kansas’ transformation into a likely Democratic takeover is the clearest sign yet of the Republicans’ poor performance in this election. President Donald Trump won the state by 16 points in 2024, and no Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race there since 1932.
Trump was scheduled to appear at a rally for Marshall on Saturday, but abruptly scrapped his in-person appearance in favor of a tele-rally. He then reversed course Friday, saying he now plans to campaign for senator on Sunday in Salina.
Republicans across the country face a difficult political environment, fueled in large part by Trump’s war and the resulting price surge. In Kansas, the average price of gasoline has increased by more than a dollar since the war began, while the price of diesel has jumped more than $2.50.
Hamilton, senior pastor of Resurrection United Methodist Church, announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate in April.
Marshall, however, was particularly criticized for his apparent lack of urgency in his re-election campaign.
“I think Roger Marshall will probably win the award for running perhaps the worst campaign, and he could have put this race aside sooner,” Jessica Taylor of Cook Political Report said Friday. Inside Politics with Dana Bash.
“I know the NRSC has told its leadership, ‘You have to be ready. This is a tough cycle,'” she said. “And this is someone who apparently didn’t take that into account.”
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