The NPR Politics Podcast - How to watch the midterms like we do

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Ever wondered how we pick some of the key races we watch during elections? Here's your chance. In this special edition of The NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded before a live virtual audience, our reporters break down some of the elections and issues they'll be paying especially close attention to this November, and why they stand out.This episode: senior political correspondent Tamara Keith, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.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

The midterm elections are less than 50 days away, 47 to be precise. Control of Congress and so much more is on the line. And it will all very likely be decided by fewer than 40 competitive House races and at most a dozen Senate contests. So let's get to it. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. This is a special episode of the podcast because we're recording it with a virtual audience.

We've got hundreds of people joining us over Zoom right now. People we've invited behind the curtain to say thank you for supporting NPR. Here's what we're seeing as the fundamental politics this election season. This environment is absolutely brutal for Republicans. President Trump is historically unpopular. He's started trade wars with allies and an action. war with Iran. Gas prices are soaring. The big concern for voters this election, affordability. They strongly disapprove of how Republicans are handling the economy, especially

since Trump ran on, as he put it, fixing the economy. That's the notable part to me, I feel like, is it's when the president's issues that were his strongest, the economy and immigration. And you look at polling right now and people are unhappy with him on those two issues, which I think is a sign of just how, what a weak place, I guess, the Republican Party is feeling heading into this midterms. Especially because he has put himself front and center and said this election is about me, even though a lot of Republicans would like the election to not be about him. Because he's a historically unpopular incumbent. And in fact, a Republican member of Congress today is out with a new ad criticizing the president in her campaign for reelection. So you combine all of these factors that we talked about with the fact that the president,

President's party historically loses seats in a midterm and it could be a perfect storm. But Democrats, yeah, big butts, that's not the way I wanted that to come out. But Democrats have problems too. Even though polls show that they lead on generic ballots, Republicans have way more money to spend on the midterms. Partisan redistricting that President Trump pushed for gave Republicans an advantage in House races that could have been competitive. And not everybody in the party is sold on the rise of Democratic socialists and independence outside of the Democratic Party aren't either. Democrats don't have that many options to retake control of the Senate and it goes through red states. The road to Democratic control of the Senate goes through states that

have been very Republican like five minutes ago. And you know, one way to look at these midterms is that there are two opposing forces working against each other. One is all the organic things that we look for. Party enthusiasm. That's Democrats. Turnout. That favors Democrats. Unpopular incumbent. Voters sour on the economy. All those things are organic. They're all for Democrats. But the other force is structural. The Republicans have all the structural advantages. They have gerrymandering. They have more money. They have perhaps the ability to stop people from sending in mail-in voting because there's so much confusion about it, not necessarily because any court told them not to. So the Republicans have structural advantages. The money advantage they have is something we have

never seen before this large an advantage in cash. So we're going to see which force is more powerful. And with all of that said, let's talk about the races that we're watching. And Mara, I will let you go first on this. Well, I'm watching a lot of races, but the first ones I'm watching are in Michigan. And the Democratic Party is basically conducting an experiment in Michigan to see if a very progressive Senate candidate, Abdul al-Sayed, can win in a swing state. This is not a blue state. And also, if another progressive, Will Lawrence can beat the Republican incumbent in the 7th District of Michigan. He was a founder of the sunrise movement, this environmental movement. So that's what I'm watching in Michigan to see. Can progressives because the Republican

party incumbents are so unpopular and because Trump is so unpopular, can they win? And that Michigan 7, the district where Will Lawrence is the Democratic candidate, that is truly a swing district. It has gone back and forth and very narrowly each time. Right. And very different from perhaps a Democratic Socialist of America member running in New York City, where the districts are so blue it doesn't matter. But these are real swing districts. And we're going to see, this is an experiment to see if progressive Democrats can win in those districts. I do think of Michigan as one of the sort of ground zeros for economic dissatisfaction. Obviously, over the last hundred years, really. And so I think this brand of progressivism that we're talking about here, how that plays in that place

specifically with those voters will be really interesting because previously I think we have seen that when people feel economic anxiety, they are more open to increases to the social safety net, right? Yeah. So I guess I'll go next and we can just sort of bounce around. One race that I'm watching, actually all of the races that I will mention today are East coast races where we can expect the votes to be in relatively early so we can get an early indication of what type of election it is going to be whether this is a wave or this is not a wave

what this is. So I'm going to go first with Pennsylvania 10. This is a true swing district. Scott Perry is the Republican Congressman. His leads in that district have gotten smaller over time. and this race is a rematch. So it's a rematch between Republican Scott Perry and a local news anchor, former local news anchor, Janelle Steltson. She also ran in 2024. That race was incredibly close. What's so nice about a rematch is that you can see how the messaging has changed in just two years. You know, it's a little bit of a test tube, I guess, for how these elections are being run. The messaging and then also the political environment, right? Because you could almost say they could run the exact same campaign from 2024 and

26 and it would probably be received by voters completely differently. Well, one fascinating thing I went back and looked at some of the ads from 2024. Scott Perry was running ads saying things are too expensive. We need to bring down prices. Joe Biden made inflation bad. And now what is Janelle Stelson talking about? You could just change the name and the ad would be the same. Right.

They're still blaming Biden, Republicans. And we'll see if that message sticks or not. Yes. And Miles, what is your first one? I'm going to take, I like kind of like going off the same theme of the rematch. Not exactly a rematch, but it does make me think of one of mine, which is the Alaska Senate race, where we have Mary Peltowa, a candidate who we've seen on the ballot in 2022. And then again in 2024 is on the ballot attempting to take this Senate seat for Democrats in here in 20206.

This is a candidate who overperformed Kamala Harris in Alaska by 10 percentage points in 2024. She's still lost the race for the House seat there, but now is attempting to unseat an incumbent, a Republican, in a very Republican state. And so I'm watching this state for a number of political reasons. Mary Peltola is endlessly fascinating to me. She has an A grade from the NRA as a Democrat, which is fascinating to me. She owns a lot of guns. A lot of guns. Over a hundred cars. And you know what her slogan is? It's Fish Family Freedom, just for the record. She's kind of run this sort of Alaska first campaign, trying to distance herself from national Democrats. But the last thing I'll say on it, which is why it's also endlessly interesting to me as a voting reporter,

is everyone talks about California taking a long time to come up with results. Alaska, when Mary Paul Tola lost in 2024, that election was held on November 5th. Any guesses on when that election was called? Sometime in December? November 20th. Okay. So it was weeks. And so I think when you think about how the Senate seat potentially could play into control of the Senate,

we could be waiting a very long time to know who has won, considering that race right now is polling very close as well. So I just want to put that in the back of people's minds. A lot of talk about how long California takes to count ballots. Alaska has a lot of mail-in voting for a lot of reasons as well. And so it takes a while to count there, too. They also have ranked choice voting. They do, which could attend, that's a whole other, there's two Dan Sullivan's. There's a whole other can of fish.

No, you got it wrong. It's Dan's Sullivan. The plural of Dan Sullivan times two. It's Dan's Sullivan. Got it. Got it, got it. Okay, Mara. I'm trying to make that stick.

Okay. All right, Mara, what's your next race? Upstate New York districts held by Republicans. They're also on the East Coast, so we should hear about them pretty early. And what we are going to test is whether districts that went heavily for Trump and Republicans won them in 2024 can flip to Democrats. And Elise Stefaniq, who's retiring, her district is the 21st. and that district went to Trump by 21 points.

If Democrats can flip that, that suggests they're going to have a really good night. Okay. I love the Bellwether counties where I feel like it's really that first hour of vote counting where everyone's going to have their TV on. And I feel like every election night, there are those few places. Actually, my home district where I'm from in Florida, Florida 14 is similar. It's not to the same degree, but it's, I want to say like a Trump plus 10 district, but with an incumbent Democrat running there too, so I'll be watching that as well.

Well, and I'll just go next because the next race on my list is Florida 25. This is coastal, East Coast, Florida. And it is a district that had been held by Democrats that Republicans in the state then gerrymandered to be a Republican seat. President Trump won those lines, that district, by nine points in 2024. and yet it is setting up to be the most hotly contested and most expensive house race of this cycle, at least at the moment. Moderate Democrat Jared Moskowitz, he currently represents half of the district. He is now running against Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer. It's an open seat.

So I have numbers here and I'm going to have to read them so I apologize. But from Labor Day through Election Day, there are more than 30. million dollars worth of TV ad reservations. In that district alone, that's according to the tracking firm, ad impact. A super PAC aligned with President Trump is set up to spend $7 million so far in this one district. How many people are even in? Like, how many dollars per person that has, I'm going to try to Google it right now, but I feel like that has got to be a lot of dollars per person. Yeah. And this is a, the reason this is interesting, this is a district that Trump won by nine points. It should not be competitive, but the Cook Political Report rates this race as a toss-up.

And if Moskowitz is somehow able to win, then this would be an example of what we said could potentially happen with this Republican rush to redistricting, which is that a gerrymander can become a dummymander if you're not careful and if the economic climate is in a bad way. And if the parties choose quality candidates, because you also have to remember Moskowitz was up against a candidate who was kind of out of step, potentially, with a lot of that district's electorate, especially on the issue of Israel. It's a district that is heavily Jewish. And so I think there, Moskowitz kind of capitalized on that. He won easily in the primary, but I think it would be a very different race if he hadn't. Yeah. You know, the other one I'm looking at is a district

34 in Texas. It's held by a Democrat, Vicente Gonzalez. This is a district that Republicans have gerrymandered to become more Republican friendly, but Donald Trump has also lost a lot of support among Hispanics. He had a lot of games among Hispanics in 2024, but those have been reversed. So I'm watching to see how much that changes the outcome in that district. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll have more on a moment. And we're back. Miles, what else is on your list? Going to stick with Texas. We're going Texas Senate for me. Again, also in the voting, Lane, this is the place I hear when I talk to election officials and I just say, what place do you have

circled that in a presidential election year, it's the Georgia's, the Michigans of the world, the Nevada's get a little bit of it, Arizona, the places where all the election lies seem to sort of center. And everyone in the entire elections community is watching Texas this year because there's a lot of different, if you think about election denial stew is the way I've been putting it. Texas has every ingredient that you could throw in there. It has a candidate who has spread election lies. Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate there. So he's on the ballot and is also the current Attorney General who has continued to spout misinformation about the 2020 election elections more

broadly. The other part of the sort of election denial stew that's really important for it to work is that people need to be sort of confused by the result, frankly. And Texas is a place that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1988. I was not alive the last time that Texas... You don't have to rub it in. I'm just saying, I'm just like, I'm just saying it's been a while. And so if Texas were to turn blue, there would be a lot of people there in Texas who would be confused in seeking, looking for answers as to why or how this could have happened, which is when election misinformation really spreads. There are so many other reasons to watch Texas Senate. And I just want to go into a few of them, Mara, feel free to jump in. But Texas dashes Democrats' dreams regularly. Let's put it that way. Yes.

And this time, they got yet another talented charismatic candidate. James Tala Rico, and Democrats have been very excited that he might, might, might be able to flip this extremely red state. I would call it purple. He won't flip it to blue. He recently did something that I think will test the environment for him. He was asked, who's your favorite drag queen? And he answered the question. Does he watch RuPaul's drag race? Yeah, yeah. All I can say is the campaign that Republicans are running against him is precisely about drag queens and other cultural issues, trying to paint him as culturally too extreme. He once said that God is non-binary and there are five different genders that's figured very largely in Republicans' attacks on him. But he did walk back those comments. And he's also walked back, or at least modified his position on trans participatory. in youth athletics. He's trying to run a completely different kind of race, of course,

but the Republicans recently have been pouring a tremendous amount of money into Texas. And when Republicans have to pour tens of millions of dollars, possibly up to $100 million, Karl Rove Republican political operative, thinks it will take $100 million to save the Texas Senate race for Republicans. So that's what I'm watching. Okay, they're basically already there, Mara. Yeah. I have a story airing tomorrow morning on Morning Edition. I hope I get my numbers right because they're all up in my head right now. They're not written down on this paper. But according to ad impact, from September 1st through Election Day, Republicans, outside groups, super PACs, dark money groups, all of it have something like $94 million in ad time reserved in Texas. That is a lot of. of money for months, like literally months.

Kin Paxton was getting beaten up on the air. First by John Cornyn in the primary. Then James Tala Rico was outspending him. Tala Rico has raised a ton of money. As of the last report, he had more than $20 million cash on hand. Paxton had like $2 million. So Tala RICO has a ton of money by candidate standards, but not by Super PAC standards and outside dark money group standards because they can raise unlimited.

limited sums. And the Supreme Court said that they could buy ad time on television cheaper than they used to. And to me, Mike, what I'm looking for is how many of these new Republican ads will mention what I consider to be Tala Rico's self-inflicted wound of the day and show him naming his favorite drag queen? I believe there are already ads to that effect. There are also ads on the trans issue. No doubt they're going to accuse him of not liking meat because President and Trump certainly has in his speech at the midterm convention, among other things. Yeah, at this point, Democrats are being outspent by something like $75 million in Texas, whereas for months it looked like Tala Rico had this like big cash advantage.

And then it just got erased with one giant money bomb in the last two weeks. Wow. Tam, what about you? Okay, I'm also watching the North Carolina Senate race. it's a race that's not getting as much attention as some of the other Senate races, in part because former governor Roy Cooper, the Democrat, looks to have a decent lead in the polls. Cooper has been careful to put out the word that he doesn't think that it is as good as it looks for Democrats. He thinks that, you know, North Carolina often moves late and the polling doesn't necessarily reflect reality. but President Trump was in North Carolina last night for a rally campaigning for Michael Watley,

the Republican Senate candidate. He's the former chair of the Republican National Committee. He is someone who President Trump chose him to be the nominee. He's been kind of a lackluster candidate. Trump is definitely having to like put him on his shoulder and carry him over the finish line if he can. However, as a reminder, North Carolina is a state that also dashes Democratic dreams again and again and again. Democrats haven't won a U.S. Senate seat or the presidential contest in North Carolina since 2008

when President Obama was first on the ballot. This seat has been held by retiring Republican Tom Tillis. You know, Republicans are playing defense here. Which they shouldn't be in a state like North Carolina. Yes. But it's always close, right? Like Trump only won North Carolina by about three points. And the Democrats got exactly who they wanted. Popular former governor. I would say this was kind of the recruiting gold medal of this cycle. Yes. And, you know, the other thing that I'm looking at in general is rural districts. Democrats are at the point that they cannot ever hope to become a majority party again unless they can learn how to win in red rural places. And sure, they could eke out a tiny win.

in the House without doing that. But going forward, if they're going to have any hope to be a majority party, they have to figure out how to appeal to voters in rural districts, non-college voters. So places like Iowa where there is a real Senate race. Or Alaska, as Miles talked about. Or Alaska. Or Kansas? Maybe. Yeah. I mean, that'll, if those places get truly competitive, we are in a wave environment. Up until now, I've thought that the environment tilted to the Democrats, but I wouldn't call it a giant wave. So let's leave it there for now for today's show. We had engineering and technical support today from David Greenberg, Bruce Grant, Alan Walden, Anna Siriani, and Amy Willis.

We will be back tomorrow with a regular episode. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you.