WASHINGTON – Democrats have opened leads in battleground Senate races in Michigan, Texas, Maine and Kansas ahead of next week's midterm election, according to new polls from CNN, putting the party in a strong position to take control of the Senate.
In Michigan and Texas, Democrats' leads are outside the polls' margins of error, while the races in Maine and Michigan are closer and within the margins of error. Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats in the Nov. 3 election to take over the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 seat advantage.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has opened a 7-point lead over Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan (49% to 42%), according to a poll of likely voters, in a race long seen as Republicans' greatest opportunity
to flip a Democratic-held seat.
In Texas, Democrat James Talarico leads Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee, by 6 percentage points (49% to 43%). Texas last elected a Democratic U.S. senator in 1988, and President Donald Trump carried the state by nearly 14 points in the 2024 presidential election.
Democrat Troy Jackson leads Republican Sen. Susan Collins by four points (49% to 45%) in Maine, putting the Republican incumbent in jeopardy of losing a seat she has held for five Senate terms.
And in Kansas, where a Democrat hasn't won a Senate race since 1932, Democrat Adam Hamilton holds a four-point lead over Sen. Roger Marshall (49% to 45%), a CNN poll found. Trump carried Kansas in the 2024 election by 16 points.
Each of the polls, conducted by the nonpartisan research firm SSRS, was conducted over the past week starting on Oct. 20. The polls, conducted online and by phone, have margins of error ranging from plus or minus 4.2 to 4.7 percentage points.
In other Senate battlegrounds not polled by CNN, Democrats have opened wide leads in North Carolina (+11%) and Georgia (+8), according to a Real Clear Politics average of recent polls. In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown leads Republican Sen. Jon Husted by nearly three points, according to polling averages.
In the homestretch of the midterm campaign, Trump has crisscrossed the country ‒ including visits to historically deep red states like Mississippi and South Carolina ‒ as Republicans look to stave off a blue tsunami that would give Democrats control of the House and Senate.
Yet Trump's popularity is underwater in many of the states he's visiting, according to the CNN polls of the four battlegrounds, suggesting that the president's barnstorm of rallies intended to fire up the MAGA base could backfire.
In Michigan, 66% of likely voters disapprove of Trump's job performance as president; in Texas, 59% disapprove; in Maine, 67% disapprove; and in Kansas, 57% disapprove.
The backlash comes as polls have consistently found Americans are concerned about the state of the economy and inflation, and place foremost blame on the president's policies for their cost-of-living challenges.
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Democrats open leads in four key Senate battlegrounds, CNN polls find
