Late deciders favor Republicans in key Senate races by nine-point margin despite strong Democratic lead: Poll

Likely voters who decided which candidate to support only recently in seven key Senate races favor Republicans despite an overall Democratic advantage, according to a new poll released Sunday night.“There are still some undecided voters, and voters who decided only in the last month favored Republicans by a nine-point margin,” according to the New York Times’s reporting of its last poll conducted alongside Siena University that will be released before Tuesday’s midterm elections. Recommended Stories The survey finds that the Democratic candidates running in Michigan, Texas, Maine, Ohio, and Kansas are ahead of their Republican counterparts by 11, 7, 6, 5, and 5 percentage points, respectively. The Democratic nominee in Alaska, Mary PeItola, is ahead by two percentage points, while the race in Iowa is effectively tied, according to the survey’s respondents. The poll was conducted from Oct. 23 through Nov. 1 among a total of 5,708 voters. Over the course of the last month, Democratic candidates have continued to knock President Donald Trump’s handling of the conflict in Iran and the economy, while Republicans have framed Democrats as being out of touch on social issues and supportive writ large of socialism. The new data were released two days before the midterm elections and after a week marked by many developments in crucial races across the country. Despite the recent trend favoring Republicans among previously undecided voters in the survey, all seven Democratic candidates are still viewed more favorably by independents.In the Alaska Senate race, a New York Times report released on Wednesday outlined allegations that operatives for Peltola’s campaign recruited a candidate whose name resembles that of Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) in an attempt to peel votes away from the Republican nominee, which set off a legal fight with the Trump administration. The Peltolta campaign has denied such involvement. The survey was “mostly completed” before the story was released.The Michigan Senate race then took a turn on Sunday morning when Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who lost to Democratic nominee Abdul el Sayed in the primary election, suddenly endorsed Republican Mike Rogers. The last-minute flip was broadly denounced by Democratic figures nationwide and promised to shake up a race many believe is crucial to Democrats’ chances of retaking control of the upper chamber.VOTERS PREFER DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED CONGRESS DAYS BEFORE ELECTION, POLL SHOWSThe margin of error in the survey ranges from 4.8 percentage points in Alaska to 3.3 in Texas. The report also noted, “blue-collar white workers have proved particularly hard to reach in polls, and polling error has previously been among the highest in that demographic.”Every Democrat, except Peltola, improved their standing against their Republican counterpart since the last Times/Siena poll.