Ipsos National Poll: Biden 52% and Trump 40%

Any Trump bump due to the Republican National Convention is long gone, assuming one existed at all. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has Joe Biden leading Donald Trump nationally by double digits, 52% to 40%. At the start of July, the Real Clear Politics average had Biden ahead by 9 points. The difference between a 9-point lead and a 12-point lead could just be statistical noise, but it certainly makes it hard to make a case that the convention helped Trump at all.

The poll showed that just 3% will vote for another candidate, such as Jo Jorgensen (LP) or Howie Hawkins (GP). Five percent are still undecided. What they are waiting for is beyond us. If the Democrat were Hawkins and the Republican were Jorgensen, we could believe that some people were still on the fence, but Trump and Biden are a tad better known than those two.

The poll showed that the top two issues are dealing with the pandemic (28%) and restoring trust in government (23%). The economy came in third (19%). Only 14% were interested in someone who is tough on crime, which is probably why Trump's attempts to scare June Cleaver's followers with stories of marauding (Black) mobs are not going to be a winner.

While Trump is still favored by noncollege whites, he doesn't have the level of support he had in 2016, when some of them were voting against Hillary Clinton, not for Trump. That's not going to happen this time, since few people despise Biden the way many people despised Clinton.

Trump doesn't have a lot of time to turn things around. North Carolina started sending out absentee ballots last week and in-person voting starts in a number of states in early October. By October 15, millions of people will have already voted, so any October surprise after that will have a limited impact. (V)

Trump Is Gaining among Latinos in South Florida

One bright spot for Donald Trump is Florida, without which he is doomed. Roughly speaking, Florida elections work like this: Democrats roll up big wins in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties in South Florida; Republicans sweep the Panhandle and northern part of the state; and whoever wins along the I-4 corridor, which runs from Tampa to Daytona Beach, smack through Orlando, wins the state.

However, this year, Republicans are making a huge effort to reduce the Democrats' advantage in the South by outspending them in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale media market by $4 million so far, much of it on Spanish-language TV and social media ads. The reason for the focus on Spanish-language ads is that more than half the population of Miami-Dade was not born in the mainland U.S. Many are from Latin America, although there is also a contingent from Puerto Rico.

The ads are working, it appears, as Joe Biden is underperforming Hillary Clinton in South Florida. State Sen. Annette Taddeo (D) has been warning the Biden campaign about this, but the response was to kill the messenger: "You just bitch about everything." The message may finally have gotten through, though. Biden dispatched running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) to speak in Florida today and is starting to hire more Latino staff there.

A recent poll by Bendixen & Amandi, which polls in both English and Spanish, showed that Biden was ahead of Trump 55% to 38% among likely Miami-Dade voters. This is far less than the 30-point margin Hillary Clinton won the county with and probably not enough to offset expected huge losses in the Panhandle. Among Latinos, Trump is slightly ahead in Miami-Dade, 47% to 46%, largely on the strength of the Cuban Americans, many of whom detest socialism in every way, shape, and form, and have been bludgeoned with ads calling Biden a socialist. Now that Biden is starting to see he has a problem, his ads are fighting fire with fire, and accuse Trump of being a caudillo (dictator), which is likely to get a negative reaction from those people who fled one.

Trump's approach is to get the Cuban Americans all riled up. Over 70% of Miami-Dade's registered Republicans are Cuban Americans. However, they are not a monolithic group; younger, American-born Cuban Americans are less conservative than their parents and grandparents. That said, one person who is popular with them is Alexander Otaola, an Instagram influencer who emigrated to Miami in 2003 and also has a popular YouTube show. At first he supported Barack Obama, but now he is entirely in for Donald Trump. Otaola told reporters that he is popular because he is successful and success attracts even more followers and viewers. Carlos Odio, who runs the Democratic Research firm Equis Labs, said that Otaola alone is probably a net win of 90,000 votes for Trump.

But Cuban Americans aren't the only Latinos in Florida. There are over 1 million Puerto Ricans as well. Many of them live around Orlando, in central Florida. All of them are U.S. citizens and became entitled to vote as soon as they established residence in Florida. Biden is fighting Otaola by using popular Puerto Rican rap singer Bad Bunny, who could energize young Puerto Ricans and possibly offset some of the losses among Cuban Americans. So the presidency could end up depending on whether a Cuban-American influencer or a Puerto Rican rap singer has the most followers on Instagram. (V)

HHS Tried to Muzzle Fauci

Politico has obtained e-mails that show Paul Alexander, a senior adviser to Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Caputo at HHS, giving instructions to Anthony Fauci about what he should say during media interviews. The positions they wanted him to take are contradicted by mainstream science. Instead, they just promote political positions Donald Trump has taken. For example, Fauci was instructed to say that schoolchildren should not wear masks in school. Most scientists think that they should.

Fauci has been walking a fine line for months. He certainly doesn't want to lie but he also realizes that if he is not careful, Donald Trump will demote him and replace him with some toady who will lie about everything, potentially causing COVID-19 to spread even more rapidly. (V)

Trump Releases a List of Possible New Supreme Court Justices

Sigmund Freud notwithstanding, most people don't want to die. One person who really, really, really doesn't want to die—at least not before Jan. 20, 2021—is Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg. She understands better than just about anyone what her death this year would mean for the entire country for decades to come. Republicans understand this, too. In fact, for many Republicans, one of the chief motivations when voting for president is Supreme Court appointments, and in particular their desire to reverse Roe. v. Wade. For Democrats, there are so many other issues (e.g., racial justice, the environment, and inequality) that the Supreme Court doesn't stand out as a top issue.

For these reasons, yesterday Donald Trump unveiled a list of 20 people he might nominate as Supreme Court justices if Ginsberg dies or Stephen Breyer retires, or both. It is a naked attempt to woo people who oppose abortion to vote for him, despite their disapproval for how he has handled his job in so many ways. It could shore up a bit of support, although probably not a lot of "abortion-is-my-only-issue" voters who were thinking of voting for Biden. Still, with the Jerry & Becki Falwell burlesque show only recently closed, Trump may feel he has to do something to keep evangelicals inside the tent.

One name on the list, Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump placed on the Seventh Circuit, has an excellent chance of getting the nod if Trump gets another chance. She's a woman, but a very conservative one. Amul Thapar of the Sixth Circuit is a favorite of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Also on the list are two Latinos, a Black AG from Kentucky, and a judge who was born in Taiwan. These are to show how "open-minded" Trump is. They have zero chance against solid conservatives like Barrett and Thapar.

Just for the fun of it, Trump also threw in a couple of politicians: Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Josh Hawley (R-MO). Cruz has a degree from the Harvard Law School but is probably too much of a loose cannon for Trump. Cotton is running for the 2024 Republican nomination. Hawley has already said he doesn't want to be on the Court. In the end, the smart money is betting on Barrett if Ginsberg doesn't make it until Jan. 20.

Of course, if the Democrats take control of the Senate, then Jan. 6 is the real deadline because a Democratic Senate might decide it doesn't want to be a rubber stamp, even if Trump wins another term. Just imagine what would happen if the Senate decided to take the first part of "advise and consent" seriously. It could present the president with a list of five possible nominees—along with the announcement that it was going to vote on and reject anyone not on the list. That would really change the balance of power in the government, and there is nothing the president could do about it except suffer rejection after rejection. (V)

Senate Races Are Almost All Filled in Now

On Tuesday, there was an upset in the Republican senatorial primary in New Hampshire. Corky Messner, a multimillionaire Trump-loving recent transplant from Colorado beat Gen. Don Bolduc (ret.) for the right to lose to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). It sort of got lost in all the other news. Shaheen was born in Missouri but she has lived in the Granite State for 47 years, so she can probably get away with calling Messner a carpetbagger. On the other hand, since Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) isn't running for anything right now (except maybe for secretary of the treasury), the slur "Pocahontas" is available for Messner to use. But Shaheen will wear it proudly if he does: She is a 12th-generation descendant of the actual Pocahontas.

Only one more partisan primary is left. Next Tuesday, Delaware Republicans will decide who they would like to be crushed by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE). They can pick activist Lauren Witzke, who wants to ban all immigration to the U.S. for 10 years, or the slightly less loony James DeMartino, a lawyer the Republican establishment backs—not because he has a prayer of winning—but because he is less likely to embarrass the Party (see: Greene, Marjorie Taylor).

There are also two races that won't be between just two major candidates; the jungle primaries in Louisiana and in the Georgia special election. Louisiana is a done deal: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) will be reelected. As to the special election, the biggest question is whether there will even be a Democrat in the Jan. 6 runoff. It is possible that Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) will face each other, with no Democrat in a race that could determine control of the Senate. This shows what's wrong with these jungle primaries. It is possible that the three Democrats combined get 40+ percent of the primary vote and yet the runoff could be between two Republicans. In California, the reverse is sometimes true: No Republican is on the ballot for some races in November. Jungle primaries are a terrible idea because they sometimes deprive Democrats or Republicans of any candidate at all in the final election. Ranked-choice voting would solve the problem without the need for a runoff.

In any event, our Senate page is now complete (except for Delaware), so please take a look. There is a link to it every day in the blue bar near the top of the page. (V)

Why Predicting The Election Is So Difficult This Year

Making predictions is hard—especially about the future. Political predictions are notoriously difficult, as we saw in 2016. This year may be even worse for a number of reasons, as pointed out by the Washington Post's David Byler. Here is a summary.

• The pandemic: It's been 100 years since we had an election in the middle of a pandemic, and the last one (1918) wasn't in a presidential election year so it is not much of a guide. Will people go out and risk their lives to vote? Will they try to vote by absentee ballot, possibly for the first time? Will they figure out how to do that correctly?
  
  
• The economy: When the economy is in shambles, it is normally bad for incumbents. We now have 8.4% unemployment with 12 million fewer jobs than in February, 30 million people suffering food shortages, 30 million people at risk for eviction, 25 million people who have lost their job-based health insurance, and more, but the stock market is doing great. How will this play out with voters?
  
  
• Racial protests: There have been months of protests, ever since George Floyd was killed. The protests have spread every time another Black man is killed by the police. It's like the 1960s all over again. Normally, most people don't like protests, although this year's started out relatively popular. However, there have been riots (and looting) associated with some of the protests, and riots are universally unpopular. Donald Trump is trying to scare people by saying that if he were president, there wouldn't be any riots. (Actually, he is president, but he leaves that part of it out.) The implicit message seems to be: "Once I don't have to worry about being reelected, I will be free to order the Army to occupy cities and shoot protesters on sight." How will the protests, riots, and violence affect voters and turnout?
  
  
• No one trusts anything: It used to be that many people had confidence in Congress, the police, the military, the Justice Dept., the courts, newspapers, TV news, organized religion, and other institutions. All of them are down from their historic highs, some of them hugely:
  
  Former heroes, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin are now viewed by some as horrible people because they owned slaves, and we're not even going to start on Christopher Columbus. Every thing and every person, with scant exceptions, is viewed as despicable. Heroes are few and far between. This can't put voters in a good mood.
  
  
• The direction of the country: A huge majority of the country thinks it is moving in the wrong direction, but there is absolutely no consensus as to why or what to do about it. In fact, there is a huge partisan divide about whether we are better off now than in the 1950s. Trump supporters clearly believe things were better then, but Black people, Latinos, women, gays, transgender individuals, and many other groups vigorously disagree. When 70% of the country thinks something is seriously wrong, normally that leads to a "throw the bums out" movement—except when the incumbent is running like an outsider and takes no responsibility for his own government.
  
  
• Absentee voting: All states except Indiana and four deep red states in the South allow some form of absentee voting. All the swing states allow it, although most of them have little experience with it. Arizona and Florida are the only swing states where absentee voting has been common. Are people going to use it? Will they screw up? Will the elections offices screw up? Will the Postal Service screw up? If the primaries are any guide, the election might not go smoothly.
  
  
• Trump is underperforming recent incumbents: Trump is underperforming most recent presidents who sought reelection, and is way under Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, all of whom won second terms easily. His disapproval rating is in the high 50s. People who disapprove of how you are doing your job generally don't vote for you. Can he turn that around, and fast? How?
  

A point Byler didn't raise, but has to be part of any rational discussion, is how Trump will cheat and whether he will get away with it. Voter suppression in its many forms (photo ID, ex-felons in Florida, etc.) is a given. Goons patrolling polling places trying to scare off voters is a certainty. The USPS delaying ballots is going to happen, even with the bad PR. AG William Barr releasing a report by U.S. Attorney John Durham that might say Mueller was wrong and Obama illegally spied on Trump's campaign is likely. What about collusion with Russia? No doubt many plans are being hatched as you read this. It is these unknown unknowns that make it especially hard to predict anything.

And one other thing. Most of the voters supporting Biden don't really like him that much (or at all). They just want to get rid of Trump. If Biden is leading by 10 points in the national polls in October and also ahead in the swing states, some of Bernie Sanders' supporters are going to think: "He's going to win anyway, so I am going to vote for the Green Party to send him a message." Welcome to 2016. (V)

Eight Questions That Could Decide the Election

Byler's colleague at the Post, James Hohmann, also took a stab at this subject, but framed it differently. He said that these eight questions will determine the election results:

• Can Biden run out the clock? Joe Biden has a double-digit lead in the national polls (see above) and leads in all the swing states. All he has to do is avoid any disruptive event. It's like a football team that is 5 points ahead with 3 minutes to play. If it can just sit on the ball for 3 minutes and do nothing, it wins. Every day that nothing much happens and Donald Trump doesn't expand his base is a win for Biden. Unless he has a really big October surprise in store, Trump's last chance to reset the race is the first debate (and maybe the others, but that is less likely). He can try to provoke Biden, but that won't be easy since Biden's pitch is that he is calm and steady and he won't take any bait offered. He can hope for a Biden gaffe, but hope isn't a strategy. But the President needs something to shake the race up.
  
  
• Will there be a vaccine? If Trump can announce a COVID-19 vaccine in October, that might help. But nine drug companies have pledged not to release a vaccine until it has proven safe and effective. What will happen if Trump tries to exert enormous pressure on the FDA and the drug companies to approve something, anything, fast? What will happen if Trump announces a vaccine and Anthony Fauci says that he doesn't trust it and won't get it? Very few people are good at telling the president: "No."
  
  
• Will Congress pass another relief bill? Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are as far apart as ever on a COVID-19 relief bill. Trump's strategy here is to do nothing and wait for Pelosi to cave. How will this play out? What happens if the Senate and House pass completely different bills and the conference committee is unable to bridge the gap? Who gets the blame? While Mitch McConnell would probably be content to have no bill become law, he has half a dozen vulnerable members who want something to be enacted, so he is torn, with unpredictable results.
  
  
• Will rioting continue? Rioting in the streets probably helps Trump's "law-and-order" pitch. If it subsides, will Roger Stone go out and hire some people to riot? If many cities are in flames in October, some soft Biden supporters may decide they have had enough of it and vote for Trump on the assumption that in a second term he will put down the riots using military force, even if that results in hundreds or thousands of deaths. On the other hand, some people may feel that Biden would be better equipped to handle riots by talking to the protesters and letting them know that he has heard their message.
  
  
• How bad is Trump's cash crunch? Trump's campaign has burned through $800 million without a lot to show for it and is beginning to run low on funds. If Biden has a couple more months like August, where he pulled in $365 million, he could win the fall air war in a walk. Trump said he might spend $100 million of his own money, but he is a well-known tightwad and probably bluffing. Besides, that might not be enough. If Biden can outspend Trump in September and October, that could have an impact.
  
  
• Who "wins" the debates? Trump keeps calling Biden "Sleepy Joe." That sets the debate bar pretty low for him. If he stays awake for 90 minutes and is able to give coherent answers to the questions, some people will say that Biden won. It is also possible that one or both of them do or say something unexpected that overshadows everything else. The debates are Trump's last real chance to reset the campaign, so he might go for a Hail Mary. But it might not work.
  
  
• Will the mail be delivered? Almost 200 million Americans are eligible to cast ballots by mail. No doubt many will do so. Will any of the ballots be delivered? On time? During the primaries, over half a million ballots were rejected, many of them for coming in after the deadline. And that was before the Postal Service was weaponized to delay ballots with the intention of helping Trump. But these things don't always go as planned. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is afraid that slow delivery could hurt the Republicans more than it hurts the Democrats because many seniors will be afraid to vote in person on account of COVID-19. If the Democrats mount a massive campaign to tell people to use a dropbox rather than a mailbox, and if many are placed in libraries, the USPS could become a nonissue. But for the moment, it is a question mark.
  
  
• How bad will foreign interference be? Russia is already gearing up to interfere in the election, but now that the Democrats are aware of this, it could be less successful than last time. In what form will it come? Will Russia penetrate voter registration databases and remove likely Democratic voters? Will it flood Facebook and YouTube with lies and propaganda? Will China or Iran get involved? What might they do? Suppose Iran captured a bunch of Americans and dared Trump to free them and he couldn't because they were well hidden? What about North Korea? What if it fired a missile (with no payload) that landed just off the coast of Hawaii? Or landed in the Arizona desert?
  

In short, even the known unknowns could have a huge effect, let alone the unknown unknowns. (V)

Anonymous Sources Are Essential to Modern Political Reporting

There has been a lot of criticism of the sources for the story in The Atlantic about how Donald Trump has dissed soldiers and veterans. Why are they anonymous? Can you trust anonymous sources? The reality of modern politics is that a lot of sources are willing to talk to the media, but fear reprisals if it gets out that they talked. Hence their willingness to talk but only when credited as "senior administration official" or something like that. The National Journal has a piece by long-time reporter Tom DeFrank which discusses a time in 1987 when George W. Bush gave him a scoop about his father's upcoming election campaign on background. Bush gave him permission to publish it and even encouraged him to do so. But Bush also said that after it was published, he would denounce DeFrank and call the article "total bullsh*t." DeFrank said he understood that and agreed to it. Then it happened as described.

In this week's piece, DeFrank said that agreeing to conditions like that is a prerequisite for getting information from many players these days. They will tell you the truth, let you publish it with an anonymous source, then attack you in public as soon as it comes out. That's how the game is played.

Next week we will get another dose of anonymous sourcing when Bob Woodward's book comes out. Woodward quotes Trump as telling his trade adviser Peter Navarro: "My f*cking generals are a bunch of pu**ies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals." Elsewhere in the book he calls the military "suckers" and the generals "weak." Needless to say, if the generals cared more about trade deals than about military alliances, they should be immediately fired, since their job is about protecting the country, not selling soybeans. Woodward spoke extensively to Jared Kushner while he was writing the book and some of the anonymously sourced information may have come from him. Needless to say, if Trump thinks Kushner is the rat, it will get, shall we say, dicey, in the White House and put Ivanka Trump in a rather awkward position.

Woodward's book also says that Trump was told that the coronavirus was going to cause a health emergency on a par with the 1918 flu epidemic, which killed 50 million people worldwide. Nevertheless, in public he pooh-poohed it and said it was no worse than an ordinary flu, even though he knew better. It's going to be particularly hard for the President to deny this portion of Woodward's reporting since the source was Trump himself, and Woodward has him on tape. The book will no doubt make a big splash when it comes out next week. (V)

Democrats Are Looking Down

Downballot that is. Whereas Republicans have always understood how important races for state legislatures are, Democrats have always focused on the presidential race and, to a lesser extent, Congress. But it is the state legislatures that do the gerrymandering, so control of them in the upcoming redistricting year is extremely important. This cycle, Democrats have apparently gotten the message and are planning to spend $15 million to win key races for the state legislatures in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona.

The super PAC Forward Majority was launched in 2017 with the goal of taking back state legislatures in advance of redistricting. It is really getting going now. One of the targets, Texas, would be the biggest win but it is also the steepest climb. To break the Republicans' trifecta, the Democrats would have to flip 9 seats in the Texas House. The last time the Democrats had a majority in the Texas House was 2000. Forward Majority is going to spend $6 million on 18 state House races in hopes of picking up nine of them.

Arizona is an easier target. To break the Republicans' trifecta there, the Democrats need to flip four seats in the state Senate or two in the state House. They are going to spend $2.8 million on six Senate and five House races there. There is also a real hope that if Joe Biden and Mark Kelly both win, their coattails might be enough to flip enough seats in either the state Senate or state House or both. Note, however, that the state legislature doesn't control map-drawing in the Grand Canyon State.

In Florida, the group will spend $2.5 million on 19 state House races to try to break the Republican trifecta there. They are not going after the state Senate though.

In North Carolina, the group is not working directly on flipping seats, but will give $250,000 to another group, Put NC First, which is trying to flip the state legislature. While North Carolina has a Democratic governor (Roy Cooper) who is likely to be reelected, he does not have the power to veto gerrymandered maps.

In all the states, the emphasis is on suburban House and Senate districts due to (1) their rejection of Donald Trump and (2) demographic changes in the districts. As a consequence, many state districts are represented by right-wing Republicans who are now a bad fit for their district. (V)

Ginsberg Comes Clean

That's Benjamin, not Ruth Bader (who spells her name with a 'u,' anyhow). For some 40 years, Republicans have been claiming there is massive voter fraud, especially when they lose close elections. In fact, in 2016, Donald Trump claimed massive voter fraud even though he won (although he lost the popular vote). Not only have Republicans claimed that there is fraud, but they have filed lawsuits over and over asserting it. One of their top lawyers, Benjamin Ginsberg, led many of the lawsuits. Ginsberg retired from practicing law last month and has apparently decided he can finally tell the truth: There is no voter fraud. It is an amazing admission from someone who has devoted nearly his entire professional life to filing lawsuits that he knew were false. His op-ed in the Washington Post detailing that he lived a lie all his life has to rank right up there with Lee Atwater's deathbed apology for how he ran George H.W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign and made openly racist ads smearing Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis that he knew perfectly well were false.

Ginsberg noted that last week Trump urged his voters to commit a crime by voting twice. That's the only voting fraud that there is. He also said that the 40 lawsuits the Republicans have filed about voting fraud are basically all bogus. There is no voting fraud. They were all filed to encourage the creation of rules making it harder for Democrats to vote. He further said: "These are painful conclusions for me to reach," which is not surprising since he filed many of the lawsuits knowing they had no basis.

Ginsberg also addressed Trump's claim that there is tremendous fraud and illegality going on, and says: "the lack of evidence renders these claims unsustainable. The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there's no proof of widespread fraud." He also pointed out that a study of three states where all votes are by mail turned up a fraud percentage of 0.0025%. It's a bit late coming clean after 38 years of trying to suppress Democratic votes for partisan advantage, but better late than never.

One possible consequence of his op-ed could be that in the ongoing cases, some of which he filed, the judge is going to be given the op-ed and come to the conclusion that the case has no merit and should be dismissed immediately. We'll see. (V)

Today's Presidential Polls

Biden continues to have a small lead in Florida, but that state always goes right down to the wire. If SurveyUSA is right, then Republican hopes to pick off Minnesota are a pipe dream. Biden is clearly ahead in Pennylvania and Wisconsin, but his margins seem to go up and down, depending on who is polling. (V)

State	Biden	Trump	Start	End	Pollster
Florida	50%	47%	Sep 07	Sep 08	St. Pete polls
Minnesota	49%	40%	Sep 04	Sep 07	SurveyUSA
Oklahoma	35%	60%	Sep 02	Sep 08	Sooner Poll
Pennsylvania	53%	44%	Aug 31	Sep 07	Marist Coll.
Wisconsin	48%	44%	Aug 30	Sep 03	Marquette Law School

Today's Senate Polls

At this point, it is not news any longer that the Senate career of Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) will be over in 4 months. It was nice while it lasted. However, if Cal Cunningham is really leading Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) by 10 points, that is definitely news. Other polls show Cunningham ahead, but by much less. Still, if Cunningham is very popular, his coattails could help Biden in North Carolina. (V)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Arizona	Mark Kelly	53%	Martha McSally*	38%	Aug 30	Sep 04	Redfield and Wilton Strategies
Michigan	Gary Peters*	50%	John James	38%	Aug 30	Sep 03	Redfield and Wilton Strategies
Minnesota	Tina Smith*	47%	Jason Lewis	36%	Sep 04	Sep 07	SurveyUSA
North Carolina	Cal Cunningham	47%	Thom Tillis*	37%	Aug 30	Sep 03	Redfield and Wilton Strategies
Oklahoma	Abby Broyles	33%	Jim Inhofe*	57%	Sep 02	Sep 08	Sooner Poll

* Denotes incumbent

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