Senate Race Report: September 13, 2026

Question: Seven weeks out, with the war with Iran escalating into the heaviest shipping attacks of the cycle, Kalshi’s Senate-control market touching a Democratic price for the first time in its history, and Kansas finally putting its two candidates on one stage Saturday, is the majority closer than it was a week ago?

Answer: The models and the markets both call it a coin flip, and for a moment this week they tilted together. Decision Desk HQ gave the Democrats 51 percent around midweek before the Republicans were back at 51 within a day, and Kalshi’s Senate-control market priced a Democratic Senate for the first time in that market’s history on September 7 before settling back to even.¹ The ratings tables were quiet, so the movement was in money and polls instead: the GOP’s strongest super PAC made its first and biggest battleground buy of the cycle in Texas, where the president spent two days boosting a nominee he also mocked; the battleground surveys leaned Democratic across the board; and Kansas, the margin seat, got its debate at the State Fair. Democrats still need a net gain of four, and a 50-50 Senate belongs to Vance. The path still runs through North Carolina, two coin flips in Ohio and Texas, and a bench from Maine to Alaska, with Kansas as the margin seat.

What Changed This Week

The week’s frame was set in the Gulf. On September 9 and 10 the United States and Iran traded the heaviest blows of the year in a shipping war that has been running for months: US strikes destroyed five Iranian oil tankers, Iran answered against ten ships and an American base in Jordan, and oil moved above $100 a barrel.² The markets read the escalation as bad news for the party in power. Kalshi’s Senate-control market priced the Democrats at 51 percent on September 7, the first time in its history Democrats were favored, before drifting back; one analysis cautioned that as much as five to seven points of the swing was a “war premium” that would fade, with the true Democratic probability closer to 44 to 46 percent.³ Decision Desk HQ moved with the markets, declaring the Senate a “pure toss-up” on September 7, touching 51 percent for the Democrats around midweek, and settling back to the Republicans at 51.⁴

The escalation reaches voters through gas prices, and nowhere more than Ohio. Gas runs about $4 a gallon, cost of living is the top issue in the race, and Brown made Husted’s thirteen votes against war powers resolutions the week’s line of attack; 51 percent of Ohio voters in a recent Fox News poll said they worried Husted is too close to the president.⁵ An InsiderAdvantage poll released September 10 shows Brown ahead 47 to 42.⁶

The week’s biggest single development was the money arriving in Texas. Senate Leadership Fund, which sat out the state all summer after opposing Paxton in the primary, reserved $51.3 million in Texas television through a new affiliated group, reported September 11 as its first general-election spending of the cycle. Combined with MAGA Inc.’s $10 million and Elon Musk’s America PAC, the Republican super PACs took the Texas money race from a seven-to-one Democratic advantage over the summer to roughly five-to-one the other way going forward.⁷ The president headlined the party’s midterm convention in Dallas on September 9 and 10, vowing to campaign for Paxton “two or three times,” even as he mocked Paxton’s speech and appearance, and the other Texans on stage, Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Senator Cruz, did not mention him at all.⁸ The polls moved too: Talarico led Paxton 48 to 43 in the Univision/YouGov survey released September 9, and 48 to 44 in the AARP poll released September 10.⁹

Kansas got its debate, and the incumbent had a bad night. At the State Fair in Hutchinson on Saturday, Marshall and Hamilton met for the first time, three days after a New York Times report that Marshall’s family medical practice filed more than 700 lawsuits against patients over bills as low as $101, with 81 patients arrested for missed court appearances.¹⁰ The crowd booed Marshall and chanted “shame on you,” he appeared to walk back his earlier embrace of the president’s $5,000 dividend proposal, and Hamilton called the administration’s beef import decisions “a slap in the face” to Kansas cattle producers.¹¹ A co/efficient poll taken September 8-10 still shows Marshall ahead, 49 to 44, and Vice President Vance is scheduled to campaign for him in Olathe on Monday, a sign of how the party is treating a race it had written off.¹²

New Hampshire picked its nominees and got serious. On September 8, Chris Pappas won the Democratic primary with roughly two-thirds of the vote, and John E. Sununu, carrying the president’s endorsement, won the Republican side over Scott Brown with about 70 percent.¹³ The general election between them is the race to replace Jeanne Shaheen; the NRSC’s own August survey called it a dead heat, while a Rasmussen poll this week gave Pappas an eleven-point lead.¹⁴ If Pappas wins, he would be the first openly gay man to serve in the Senate.¹⁵

The battleground polls rolled in across the board. In North Carolina, Elon University’s survey released September 10 gave Cooper an eleven-point lead over Whatley, and East Carolina’s gave him seven, with Cooper holding more than six times the cash on hand.¹⁶ In Maine, the CNN poll released September 9 showed Jackson ahead of Collins 48 to 45, and the first of their four debates is set for October 6, one day after early voting begins, a schedule the Collins campaign attacked.¹⁷ In Michigan, the CNN poll put El-Sayed up 47 to 44, MSU had him up around three points and five among likely voters, and a WDIV/Detroit News survey had Rogers up by a point and a half; Decision Desk HQ still gives El-Sayed 69 percent.¹⁸

Iowa’s polls contradicted each other: Rasmussen’s survey released this week put Turek ahead 45 to 40, while Emerson’s late-August reading had Hinson up five.¹⁹ Minnesota’s new Quantus poll has Flanagan ahead 48.2 to 44.4, and a TIPP survey had her up two.²⁰ In Nebraska, a leaked recording from Osborn’s 2024 campaign, in which he called the border wall “a symbol of racism,” handed Ricketts an opening he used all week, and the incumbent’s campaign dismissed Osborn’s internal poll showing a tie with “Desperate campaigns leak polls. Winning campaigns don’t have to.”²¹

The long tail had its own week. Hyde-Smith’s campaign launched a fake website made to look like Colom’s, and a recording released Sunday, September 13, captured her suggesting that Colom’s supporters may have been involved in a 2023 shooting near her home; the Mississippi NAACP said the comments carried racial undertones.²² Graham agreed on September 11 to a single October 11 debate with Andrews, with an InsiderAdvantage poll giving her a 45 to 43 lead.²³ Georgia stayed close: Quantus had Ossoff and Collins tied at 38, while Ossoff’s campaign announced that Vice President Harris will rally with him in Fulton County on the final day of early voting.²⁴ Moody leads Nixon 50 to 43 in the Quantus Florida poll released September 11.²⁵ Montana’s Democratic vote is fracturing: 53 percent of Democrats say they would back the independent Seth Bodnar over their own party’s nominee, and an MTFP-Rutgers poll released September 11 shows Alme’s lead at eight points.²⁶ In Louisiana, Letlow’s 64-parish tour continues against Jamie Davis, the first Black candidate to reach a Louisiana Senate general election since Reconstruction, though the forecasters have not moved.²⁷

The environment kept working for the Democrats. Quinnipiac’s national survey, released September 10, gives the party an eleven-point generic ballot lead and puts the president at 33 percent approval, including 29 percent on the war with Iran and 32 percent on the economy; a Financial Times/Focaldata reading of 33 percent is that pollster’s lowest of his presidency.²⁸ The Silver Bulletin generic ballot sits at Democrats plus 6.6.²⁹

The Defense

Michigan is still the most competitive Democratic seat in the country, and the one a loss would wreck every path. The polls moved Democratic this week thanks to CNN and MSU, though one survey still has Rogers narrowly ahead, and the campaign is still consolidating after a primary that ended within a point.³⁰ The sobering undercurrent is that 37 percent of likely voters say El-Sayed’s Muslim faith makes them less likely to support him, while 55 percent say the president’s endorsement makes them less likely to support Rogers; the president’s weight is pulling his own party down.¹⁸

Georgia is the second. The week’s only new poll, Quantus, shows a 38-38 tie, and the RCP average has Ossoff up just over two points, a thin cushion for a state that has to be considered safe for the math to work. Ossoff holds a large money edge and has the vice president coming in October.²⁴

Minnesota is the most solid of the four. Flanagan leads by four points in the new Quantus survey and two in the TIPP survey, and the models keep her around nine in ten, but the margin has gone from a double-digit walk to a single-digit hold, worth watching because the alternative is ugly.²⁰

New Hampshire is the new worry, and the primary settled the question of who Pappas faces: Sununu, the better-known of the two former senators at 70, is the nominee, and Inside Elections already has the general at a toss-up.¹³ The NRSC’s internal poll is a dead heat; Rasmussen hands Pappas a double-digit lead. The truthful reading is that New Hampshire is a five-point race either way, in a state with a Republican governor at the top of the ticket and a Senate seat that has not flipped since Shaheen took it from Sununu in 2008. It is no longer close to safe.¹⁴

The other nine Democratic seats, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Virginia, are not in play.³¹

The Offense, Tiered

North Carolina remains the anchor of every path. Cooper leads in every poll, eleven and seven in this week’s pair, outspends Whatley by more than six to one, and the forecasters give him 90 percent or better; the only Republican argument left is the one the Senate Leadership Fund aired with grieving fathers in ads that fact-checkers found false.¹⁶

Ohio and Texas are the two coin flips, and both turned slightly this week. Ohio’s Brown led the week’s only public poll 47 to 42, the issue mix of costs and war and gas prices runs his way, and Husted’s war powers votes give him a target, but the state went for the president by eleven points in 2024.⁵ Texas is the money race now: Talarico leads the two new public polls by four and five, but the super PACs have arrived, and a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988 is being treated by both parties as the most likely tipping point on the board.⁷

Maine, Alaska, Iowa, and Nebraska are the bench, and each has a live development. Jackson leads the CNN poll 48 to 45 and the new Rasmussen 46 to 45, but the first debate does not happen until after early voting opens, and Collins has survived blue-wave polls before, in 2008 and 2020.¹⁷ Alaska is a tie in the best polling of the race, under ranked-choice rules, with Peltola up by a point in the Alaska Survey Research gauge and a same-named third candidate on the ballot; the president has pledged to visit in the final month, claiming the other Sullivan “hasn’t voted for years,” a claim the voting record contradicts.³² Iowa’s two most recent polls disagree by ten points, so the honest line is that it is a coin flip leaning Hinson, with Hinson herself publicly at odds with the president over beef imports.¹⁹ Nebraska is the wildcard: Osborn runs even with Ricketts in his own polling, has the state party’s endorsement as an independent, and spent the week absorbing the border wall audio, with the incumbent’s campaign mocking the poll that tied them.²¹

Kansas is the margin seat, and this was its week. Marshall was booed at the State Fair over the medical debt lawsuits, appeared to back off the president’s dividend, and answers to a crowd that was, by the accounts of the night, tilted toward Hamilton; the new co/efficient poll still has Marshall up five, the markets give him about eight in ten, and the vice president comes Monday.¹² The honest caution stands and is worth repeating: Kansas polls have shown Democrats competitive in September before, in 2014 and 2020, and the Republicans won both times by double digits. The difference this year is that the forecasters moved the race in August and the party has sent the vice president.

Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and South Carolina are Republican-favored. Moody leads Nixon 50 to 43 and has out-raised her eleven to one; Letlow runs her 64-parish tour with the president’s endorsement and a ninety-percent model while Davis makes history as the first Black candidate in a Louisiana Senate general since Reconstruction; Hyde-Smith leads Colom in Mississippi, where the challenger runs a “Where’s Cindy” tour and the incumbent spent the week on a fake website and a shooting remark; Alme leads the Montana field at eight points in the new poll, running against a Democratic vote split three ways; and Graham leads Andrews 45 to 43 in South Carolina after agreeing to a single November debate, the appointed incumbent in the first all-women major-party Senate matchup in state history.³³

The nine safe Republican seats, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming, are not in play.³¹

The Math

The forecasts and the markets agree the Senate is a coin flip; this week they even agreed on the direction for a day. The consensus forecast is a 50-50 Senate with a pile of toss-ups, and Decision Desk HQ’s five toss-ups all tilt slightly Democratic in its simulation: Maine, Texas, Ohio, Alaska, and Iowa. Michigan, New Hampshire, and North Carolina sit beyond the toss-up line in the models, though Inside Elections still calls New Hampshire and Michigan competitive.⁴ The prediction markets are split the same way the forecasters are: Kalshi prices a Republican Senate at about 52 to 53 percent, Polymarket prices a Democratic Senate at about 50 to 53, and the September 7 Democratic price on Kalshi was the market’s first ever.³

The market path is North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas, plus one of Maine, Alaska, Iowa, or Nebraska. That is four flips, and it is what the markets are pricing.

The consensus path is North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, and Alaska, or Iowa. It requires winning the top four, which is harder but not out of reach.

The nightmare is any loss on the defense, most likely Michigan or New Hampshire, which would require five flips and a sweep of everything competitive. Michigan sits at 69 percent in the model and New Hampshire at 78, but those are not safe numbers, and this week’s polls in both states are single digits either way.¹⁸

The Kansas connection is worth stating plainly again. If the Democrats sweep the top three, Kansas is not needed. But if any of those three slips, Kansas, or Nebraska through Osborn, becomes the margin seat, and a 51-49 Senate is decided by exactly the kind of long shot Hamilton is running. The debate Saturday was the first of the cycle in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, and the vice president’s visit Monday is a measure of how seriously the party in power now takes a seat it spent five years ignoring.

The Close

The report lands the weekend after the 25th anniversary of September 11, in a week when the country’s attention was split between memory and a widening war that has put oil above $100 a barrel and gas near $4 in Ohio, a state that will help decide the Senate.²⁸ That is the environment: a president at 33 percent approval in two of the week’s soundings, a generic ballot running six to eleven points for the Democrats, and a war that keeps the economy argument alive.²⁹

Seven weeks is still a long time, and the honest caution from a week ago still holds: the forecasters’ ratings for the top races barely moved this week, because the movement ran through the models, the markets, and the money. The money is the new fact. The Republican super PACs have now engaged in Texas in the largest single battleground reservation of the cycle, the president has promised three trips, and the vice president is going to Olathe on Monday. When the party in power starts acting like it might lose a state it once dismissed, the race is real.

I have written before about why Kansas matters, and I will not repeat the whole case. The point this week is that Kansas is now visible: two candidates on one stage, a crowd that heckled the incumbent, a medical debt story that will not leave him, and a Republican vice president on the way. The honest caution remains that Kansas has been here in September before, and the Republicans have won both times. But the race is real in a way it has not been in a generation, and it is the margin seat.

Election Day is November 3. Between now and then, early voting begins in Maine and Texas next month, the October debates will happen in Maine, South Carolina, and Kansas, and the markets will move again. The math is narrow but unchanged: hold the defense, flip North Carolina, win two of the coin flips, and find a fourth seat somewhere in the long tail. That is what 51 looks like, and this week it went through a state fair in Hutchinson, Kansas.

PRH | huffmanwrites.org | © Philip Huffman

Notes

A note on the numbers: prediction market prices are point-in-time snapshots from the weekend of September 13, 2026, and they move continuously; Kalshi’s September 7 price of a Democratic Senate was the first in that market’s history. The Senate Leadership Fund reservation in Texas was first reported at $32 million and updated to $51.3 million; this report uses the updated figure. The co/efficient and Quantus polls lean Republican in their methods, the Impact Research and Fabrizio surveys are campaign- or party-commissioned, and CNN/SSRS, MSU/YouGov, AARP, N+ Univision/YouGov, and Quinnipiac are established public pollsters. Kansas has a history of September polls showing Democrats competitive, followed by double-digit Republican wins in November, in 2014 and 2020. Inside Elections’ four Senate moves this month (Alaska, Kansas, Ohio, and New Hampshire) were announced September 3 and written up by Roll Call on September 10; this report treats them as last week’s changes rather than this week’s, since no major forecaster altered a Senate rating between September 6 and September 13. The claim that Pappas would be the first openly gay man to serve in the Senate comes from NBC News’s primary-night reporting and has not been independently re-verified here.