Consider This from NPR - What money and maps can tell us about the midterms

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

It's four weeks until midterm Election Day. Polls put the chances of a Democratic takeover of both chambers of Congress much higher than they were a few months ago. President Trump is focusing his efforts on rallying his base in states he won big in 2024, like Nebraska. But will that persuade voters unhappy with the state of the economy and deeply dissatisfied with Trump?This episode was produced by Connor Donevan, Tyler Bartlam and Jason Fuller, with audio engineering by Tiffany Vera Castro. Our director is Jonas Adams.It was edited by Megan Pratz, Kara Platoni, Tinbete Ermyas, Sarah Handel and Jeanette Woods.Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's consider this where every day we look deeply at one big news story. Today, where four weeks from midterm election day and a whole lot of races are in play, polls put the chances of a Democratic takeover of both chambers of Congress much higher than they were a few months ago, which might explain why the National Republican Senatorial Committee put out this video that sounds a little like the halftime speech of a coach who's down by a score. Stakes are high. No matter what state you're in, the margins are. too thin, work your tail off.

Republican super PACs are shoveling money into races that were expected to be gimmies. President Trump is focusing his efforts on rallying the base in states he won big in 2024, like Nebraska. Senate Majority Leader John Thune defended that decision last week. Obviously, all across the country, we need the president to turn out voters that are his voters. In a non-presidential year, in a midterm election, the challenge is always voter turnout. It's election conventional wisdom that the midterms are a referendum on the sitting president, not a choice between the parties.

But that didn't stop Thune from trying to draw a contrast. Irrespective of where things are today and what the price of diesel is today, if you want a better future for your family, as you look at this election, the choice is in front of you. To me, it's a no-brainer. It's a clear choice for the American people. Consider this. The money and the map are signaling extremely competitive midterms. And speaking of diesel, we'll look at how the Trump administration is trying to prevent high fuel prices from becoming a political disaster for Republicans. From NPR, I'm Sasha Pfeiffer. It's Consider This from NPR.

The midterm election is happening as we speak. More than a million people have already cast their ballots, and more than a billion dollars in political ads are planned across key House and Senate contests. NPR's Stephen Fowler has been following the money and the electoral map, and he joins us now. Hi, Stephen. Hey there. So a month out from Election Day, if you had to describe the landscape of the midterms in a single word, what would that word be? Chaos. It's a midterm election of a second term president who's deeply unpopular with voters with a foreign war that's contributed to high prices and whose other policy priorities aren't being well received. I mean, history points to the party in power losing seats in the House and Senate. Majorities are narrow enough on paper that Democrats could take control of both chambers, but the Democratic Party isn't popular either. Republicans have an unprecedented cash advantage they're using in key races, and redistricting wars have changed the lines for about one in ten potential voters.

It's basically like one big game of whack-a-mole, with each day there being even more moles popping up and even more expensive mallets doing the whacking. All right, let's talk about some of those expensive mallets, as you put it. When you think about the races that are the most competitive, what can you tell us about those? We don't have a crystal ball to see inside election results in November, but sitting here at my desk, I'm looking at decisions made by both parties that show what they're trying to cook up in this last month. The first thing I want to flag is a decision made by Republican super PACs to pull millions of dollars from North Carolina Senate race. Polls have consistently shown Democratic former Governor Roy Cooper ahead, so this signals a decision to sort of triage that race and redirect money to. to more competitive Senate races that Republicans hope to hold on to to keep their majority. And over the weekend, we did indeed see that money invested into another competitive race.

Stephen, based on your reporting, I want to get your assessment of which Republican races you think need the extra cash. If we look at the Cook Political Report, it lists seven toss-up seats, including the ones in Texas and Ohio, which you reported are quite expensive. It's not there. Not Texas, not Ohio. I'm thinking Maine or Alaska? Nope, and it's not Michigan or Iowa either. It's Kansas, a state where President Trump won by 16 points in 2024. It's just a sign of the environment we're in and how worried Republicans are. And that has to please Democrats.

So what are they doing as far as signaling with their money and their messaging? Just this week, the Democratic House campaign arm added six districts to its red-to-blue target list of flips. It's now up to 46 seats. A lot of it's aspirational and stretches into places that Trump won by double digits, like a House district in Little Rock, Arkansas, for example. At the same time, though, Republicans have invested considerable money in some of these places, too, to boost their candidates and attack Democrats, as polls show this combination potentially of a supercharged Democratic turnout, independence backing the Democrats, and a meaningful amount of Republicans staying home.

We know not to put too much faith in polls. We know anything could happen between now November 3rd. What else will you be watching for amid, as you describe, the chaos of this cycle? The polling snapshots in time that we've seen of likely by, voters suggest a potentially big blue wave in a month. But the big asterisk caveat here is that we don't know yet if likely translates to actual voter. As in-person voting gets underway in more places, early voting, we'll pretty quickly get a sense of where that energy is, especially in states like Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia, where I'm based, where the majority of people

cast their ballots before election day. It also makes the money moves more important to watch, because there's a lot of races where last-minute spending or campaigning decisions may come too late to change the momentum. That's NPR Stephen Fowler in Atlanta. Thanks, Stephen. Thank you. One concern for voters ahead of the midterms is the high price of fuel. The price of diesel in particular has skyrocketed this year. So President Trump has released an executive order aimed at lowering that cost by making one kind of fuel more accessible. It's often called red-died diesel. And NPR's energy reporter, Willa Rubin, is on the line to explain to us what that is. Hi, Willa. Hello. How are you? I'm good. So what is?

is red-dye diesel? This is a great question. I put this to Will O'Neill, principal analyst at S&P Global Energy. He is a follower of all things diesel. Red-dye diesel is diesel with red dyeing. That's it. And the reason this diesel is dyed red is because it's taxed differently, because it's used differently. And how is it used different? Well, it's used for agricultural equipment and other things that go off road. It's not for vehicles that go on the highway. And it's usually exempt from federal taxes. On the other hand, regular diesel has a federal tax of about 24 cents a gallon. Now, normally, you can get in trouble with the IRS for driving with dyed diesel on highways. The red makes it easier to catch someone who filled up their tank with the wrong stuff.

Here's Will O'Neill again. Because it's effectively a form of tax evasion. Now, the latest executive order says, died diesel will be allowed. on highways through the end of the year. No IRS fines. So I assume if it is exempt from federal taxes, that is the way it's supposed to save people money. It's cheaper. Cheaper, yes. It could help farmers, truckers, other workers who use diesel to do their jobs. The executive order said this move would put money directly into their pockets, quote, to support their vital service to our nation. And explain more what that would look like, how farmers and truckers would be using this. So imagine that I am a farmer and I normally use red-died

diesel in my tractor on my field. Well, now I can also use it to fill up my van, get on the highway, and take my vegetables to market. Now, states also tax fuel, and a handful have recently also said that drivers can use red-dive diesel on their highways. So best case scenario, without those state taxes and federal penalties, you get a total savings of about 60 cents a gallon. But for context, a gallon of regular diesel is now about $2.60. cents higher than it was a year ago. You know, and this is largely because of the wars in Iran and Ukraine. They've really affected the global fuel supply.

And by bringing red-dye diesel on the market is the idea that this will overall bring more diesel out to the public? Yeah, technically this will increase the total amount of diesel that people could use. But Jaime Bredo, the executive director of oil markets at Dow Jones Energy, he points out that this doesn't mean most people can easily access it. What was the last time that you went to a pumping station and you saw that one of the stations gave you the possibility to feed red diesel into your truck? Yeah, you can't buy this at most gas stations. You have to go to a special wholesaler like where farmers go or maybe certain gas stations in rural areas. Now, we reached out to the White House to ask how they'd respond to some of these critiques, but we haven't heard back.

Besides this attempt at bringing fuel prices down diesel prices, is there anything else the Trump administration could do to lower the price of diesel? I mean, analysts tell me there's no silver bullet here. You may have heard the phrase diesel export ban floating around. The idea here was that surely if the U.S. stops sending the diesel that we refine here to other countries, then we would have more and then our prices for diesel would go down. But bottom line, refiners pushed back on this. It would be bad business for them. President Trump said late Friday he was not seriously considering the ban. Experts told me, you know, the only real fix here is addressing the big picture problems, the wars in Ukraine and Iran. And a Until there is more oil flowing freely around the world again, it's hard to see the price of diesel getting much lower. That's NPR's Willa Rubin. Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan, Tyler Bartlam, and Jason Fuller, with audio engineering by Tiffany Vera Castro.

Our director is Jonas Adams. It was edited by Megan Pratt, Kara Plotoni, Tinbeat Armius, Sarah Handel, and Jeanette Woods. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorney. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sasha Fiverr.