A major upset is in play.
The Trafalgar Group has Democrat Adam Hamilton slightly ahead of Republican incumbent Roger Marshall.
Trafalgar is a Republican-sponsored pollster. Nate silver has panned Trafalgar Group in the past, but their track record over the years has been pretty good.
Unfortunately we do not have cross-tabs to analyze the undecides. And they will determine the result.
Kansas Senate Polls
In every poll since September 13, Hamilton has been ahead or even.
The cross-tabs are interesting.
New York Times Siena College Kansas Cross-Tabs
First, a 5 percent vote for David Graham might be a deciding factor. Of course, the loser will blame the Libertarian for costing him the election.
My guess is the undecided in blue squares will be swing towards Hamilton and those in red squares towards Marshall.
So, if these polls were all we had to go on, this race would be a tossup if not a slight tilt to Hamilton.
But the betting markets see things differently as does Nate Silver.
Betting Markets and Nate Silver
- Kalshi: Marhsall 66 percent
- Polymarket: Marshall 68 percent
- Nate Silver Deluxe: Hamilton 42.1 percent
- Nate Silver Classic: Hamilton 43.2 percent
- Nate Silver Lite (polls only): Hamilton: 54.8 percent
Silver Lite appears to be analyzing the polls similar to how I just did.
Kansas Enters the Chat
Politico reports Kansas Enters the Chat as Senate Map Tilts Further Into Red Territory
The Senate GOP’s top PAC is diving into Kansas, a sign that the deep-red state is in play amid a worsening political environment for Republicans.
Senate Republicans are suddenly rushing to save a Senate seat in Kansas.
On Friday, the Senate Leadership Fund, Senate Republicans’ top super PAC, reserved over $8 million in ads starting this weekend to prop up GOP Sen. Roger Marshall, according to tracking firm AdImpact.
The spending in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in 94 years comes amid a deteriorating national political environment for the GOP. The impact of spiking diesel and fertilizer prices driven by the war with Iran, coupled with President Donald Trump’s trade wars, have been acutely felt in the heartland.
Private polling from both parties shows a deadlocked race between Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton in a state Trump carried by 16 points in 2024.
“It’s a perfect storm,” said one senior Senate GOP aide, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the race. “The president isn’t making it any better.”
A handful of recent public polls have shown a close race in recent weeks. Hamilton’s internal polling and a recent poll for the Democratic Attorneys General Association shared with POLITICO found him tied or up a few points against Marshall. Republicans’ numbers are no better: One Republican involved in the race said a recent private GOP poll had Marshall down within the margin of error and said Trump’s approval rating has been underwater since summer in the state; another person said a different GOP poll of Kansas found a tied Senate race.
Hamilton Is a Unique Candidate.
Adam Hamilton is the senior pastor of the Resurrection, a United Methodist Church, the largest United Methodist congregation in the United States, with multiple locations in the Greater Kansas City area.
The New York Times has an interesting take on the race.
Mr. Hamilton is a strong fund-raiser from a well-populated part of the state — near Kansas City — who has led a politically diverse, thousands-strong congregation.
He is running on a centrist platform focused on getting the United States out of the Iran war, unwinding the president’s tariffs and regulating data centers.
Mr. Hamilton has deep roots in Kansas. His great-great-grandparents settled in Dickinson County, in the middle of the state, in the 19th century.
Among his backers are two Republican former Kansas governors: Bill Graves and Mike Hayden.
Arch Naramore, who won a fifth of the vote in a Republican Senate primary challenge to Mr. Marshall in August, has endorsed Mr. Hamilton, too.
The Republican incumbent has struggled.
Mr. Marshall has had a series of headaches.
Last month, The Times reported that he had filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist and routinely charged patients an 18 percent annual interest rate. That has become a campaign issue.
Then there is the issue of his alignment with Mr. Trump, who has grown deeply unpopular in Kansas as economic conditions have worsened. Fifty-five percent of Kansas voters say they disapprove of the president, compared with 40 percent who approve, according to the Times/Siena poll.
Mr. Marshall is campaigning on an argument that he gets results for Kansas. His opponents say he has not stood up enough for Kansas against Mr. Trump.
Mish’s Four-Point Take
- Hamilton is a popular minister and a moderate.
- Democrats could not possibly have picked a stronger candidate.
- Trump’s policies are extremely unpopular in farm states.
- Marshall is viewed as too supportive of Trump.
I am calling this a tossup, for now.
Unlike others who call 40.1 to 59.9 percent a tossup, I mean a range of 48-52. Forced further, I will take Hamilton as the 52.
The Libertarian pull, the remaining undecideds, and non-MAGA republican turnout will decide this election. Those favor Hamilton, as does momentum, assuming one believes the polls.
If Democrats take Kansas, we are likely looking at a Democrat pickup of seven Senate seats.
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project 2025 (you know the one trump never heard of in the debate but started implementing on day one) is not liked but is being implemented and the next 2 years will be an attempt to implement the worst parts of it. the damage to the usa will be impossible to repair. The country will fail in a few years and who ever is in power at the time will get blamed because there is always a delay between cause and effect. But at the root will be Trump and Miller. I hope beyond hope that enough republicans will realize just how bad this guy is and turn on him. Impeach and remove and hopefully clawback some of the money he and his family have stole
They won’t have enough votes to override a veto or to convict an impeached Trump. Since Marshall was elected, 6 rural hospitals in Kansas have closed, but 28 are immediate risk of closure, and, in all, 94 rural hospitals are in serious financial trouble. The man has overseen serious injury to rural Kansas healthcare. Supposedly, he’s a doctor.
maybe a few of the repubs will grow balls when they realize the people who they are screwing over have pichforks and torches
They won’t have the votes to fund an out of control military operation in Iran either, or the private ice goon army.
I think many rational Republicans will stay away from the polls and the Democrats will win most races by default. Another ‘lesser of two evils’ election.
It appears the markets now believe the higher bond rates go the closer we get to the nirvana of yield curve control. As Trumps admin is now making insinuations of ‘inflating away the debt’ , the markets are getting more and more excited at the prospect of the Fed stepping in to stop runaway bond yields.
Will Trump act crazier and crazier to push away prospective buyers of US debt? He knows the way back to 1% short term rates is a catastrophe of one kind or another.
Inflation = higher stock prices = prosperity
I wouldn’t be shocked. Every Republican ad I see here has no gas, pardon the pun. All they can do is make mealy mouthed comments about evil socialism and evil trans boogeyman. That is it. No mention of the economy, no mention of Iran, no mention of any issue Americans care about. The entire GOP platform is hate, but ironically I think everyone is currently united in hating them more than anyone else. This will be a historic election.
I think people get tired of the negativity after a while, and it kills the ones that dont.
The whole message is cruelty, revenge, fear, and lies. Nobody wants that for their kids.
The old people stuck in that demented hate loop are dying off. Hopefully the next bunch doesn’t get dragged right into it. There’s a lot of money being spent on media to get them, though.
Creating boogeymen to blame people’s failures in life on is a time honored tradition. Whether they’re the Catholics, the Jews, the blacks, the Mexicans, the gays, the trans, whatever, people need someone to place their failures on rather than themselves. Some politician will figure out who Gen Z should hate in order that they can come to their rescue.
This kind of hate usually burns itself out, historically speaking at least, for a generation or more at a time. It shouldn’t have been allowed to get to this point to begin with, but that is on Democrats for being soft on corruption and letting a literal felon poison the well.
Younger generations are burned out from hate. They were born into the post 9/11 hatred of Arabs. They grew up watching racist murderers walk scotch free. Now they’re watching as a dime store dictator tries to destroy what’s left of their future while loudly whinging about ‘the kids’ and how we need to keep them safe from transness, all while every child molesting billionare brags about their last trip to the island.
There’s a new scapegoat brewing alright: the billionaires and probably Israel as well. The people currently flaunting their newly earned richest man in the world status to a nation with declining standards of living. Supposedly the richest nation on earth. Like it or not, I don’t see how the DSA doesn’t continue to grow in the petri dish that’s been made with ideal conditions for them. I mean for Christ’s sakes, the rich are literally kidnapping and molesting kids and getting away with it. Between them and the nation bragging about how it sends men, women, and children to death camps, it’s gonna be hard to find a better pair of boogeymen, real or imagined.
As social media discovered, hate drives engagement.
Oh no, Toto, Kansas too? The Diesel proxy B4NI.DE (up today) ends a 3/8/8/5 day :: x/2.5x/2.5x/1.6x consolidation (lower valuation) tomorrow.
Kansas’s state motto ” ad astra per aspera doesn’t include 6-8 dollar diesel as one of those difficulties .. can’t harvest the crops, much less go to the stars … BIOT (Blame It On Trump)
Translation?
There will be hand-wringing over which Liar will be the first to break their Campaign promises. Let’s remember that Politics is ALL about turn-coating for the Loot (called LOBBY MONEY or BRIBERY INCOME).
The first law we need to make is elected officials that get caught lying get fired.
We also don’t have a way to analyze how disappointed voters will be with democan’ts once they get elected and proceed to do nothing productive. Just sound bites, platitudes and hemming & hawing.
The only thing we can be sure of right now is…
Do worry, Trump, Walrus, GOP, and democrats will find a way to make things even worse.™
We can depend on depends.
As Trump does!
The charter for the donorCRAT Party from their donors is simply this – to prevent the emergence of an actual, real, left-wing alternative at any level.
So, they make a few leftist-type noises when they are not in power, but once in power, they show their true colors that they are indeed the same right wing stuff in a blue can.
And their fans will explain it all away with their usual “bad apples” excuse – Manchin and Sinema in the recent past, Fetterman in the present, and some other combo derived from Kelly, Peltola, Talarico, Jackson and the like in the near future.
“Abortion” and “2A” were growing stale as wedge issues. So they created transgender issues, like the totally gratuitous “men winning medals in women’s sports” that drove people (including me) crazy. I am convinced this was pushed as a wedge issue, to give us something new to argue over unrelated to class.
It comes up in the Epstein emails a few times as exactly that. Jeff was a good friend of a lot of the freaky far right figures pushing it (like Petey Thiel). He wanted to make it easier to enslave trans people too, because why not?
Anything and everything to distract from the rich and their pleasure island.
And they all get rich as hell cheating at the game we are forced to play to have any hope of retirement.
Joe Biden fit right in with Manchin and Senima in his pre-dementia days.
Right, all 3 were opposed to the war in Iraq and would never have supported this crap in Iran either.
Huh?! Are you pretending to be stupid?!
https://jacobin.com/2019/07/joe-biden-iraq-war-hawk-presidential-candidate
Yup. Team R got elected, because the voters were sick of the Team D corporate imperialist muppets.
Then the voters got fed up with the corporate imperialist muppets of Team R, but the only choice on offer is Team D.
Or, you can go European, which if you look at France right now, means total paralysis while their ship is sinking. Or Weimar Germany. Too many teams on the field has its own problems. I’m not saying ours doesn’t.
Right now we have Dems bending the Constitution in unfortunate ways, next to Repubs headed by a guy openly willing to break it.
Yes, because there are only two alternatives and you must choose. Weimar paralysis or the present system.
Expect a series of tit-for-tat moves from Team R and Team D, all of which are entirely rational in a game theory perspective.
Team R got elected because conservative businessmen control the vast majority of US media. Talk Radio blares hatred and falsehoods 24 and 7 across the entirety of the USA. Every nursing home and hospital and most restaurants have their TVs tuned to FOX News.
Even if the donorCRAT wins, he will be yet another “rotating villain” – in addition to Fetterman, and potentially Talarico, Jackson, Peltola et al. And they will make sure that the status quo will continue – other than making a few noises about Trump’s dealings with this or that or the other.
They can’t find a (another) fetterman.
Could make one, with percussive traumatic brain injury.
“He fell.”
Thank goodness!!
Been stuck on Texas flipping since 2016, smart Texan friends said it was turning blue that year, but at this point I’ll believe Texas when I see Talarico win, though once again I am prepared to believe it will happen this time. Kansas would be a statement with about eighteen exclamation points.
A boy can dream. But Kansans doing the right thing, well, that may be a dream too big. But I’m okay with Exxon taking away part of their incomes with high diesel prices, Caterpillar taking a chunk through no right to repair, the banks a chunk through higher interest rates, and their pastors the rest to support their mega-churches and private jets. Maybe Jesus will come back and take them all to heaven, then they can show us they were right the whole time! Or maybe not.
“Maybe Jesus will come back and take them all to heaven”
The idea of Jesus returning to gather believers is known in Christian theology as the Second Coming or the Rapture.!
Some traditions view this as a sudden disappearance before a period of Tribulation.!
US Troops Told ‘Iran’ War Is ‘Armageddon’ – Return of Jesus – Post-Apocalyptic Event.! (Samson Option).
Tucker: Trump Said The Iran War Doesn’t Matter — “We
All Die Anyway”
Round 2 – Circle Complete.!
Iraq WMD – 2001 To Iran WMD – 2026
The 25 Year ‘War Of Terror’ For ‘Greater Israel’ Land Grab
(Control Middle East Oil Supply).! (‘Finishing Off – Iran’)
Gen W. Clark 2001
The ‘Church’ Is Complicit.!
The irony being that the “rapture” concept being completely unknown before the 1820s or so.
So, when the rapture happens, what goes on with clothes, For me there is the PG, R & X rated versions: PG clothes go with the body: R pants go with the body: X there is a pile of clothes where the body was.
This will be a future campaign issue.
I’m up north, so if it’s X, there’s gonna be some shrinkage on the ascent. Amusement for The Damned.
Obviously the bodies will remain, sans the soul.
If they’re really, really lucky, a pimp will Epstein their prettiest daughter away to an island paradise, where fat old men will rape her, and she’ll never be heard from again.
If polls were correct, Hillary would have won 2016 in a landslide.
My imaginary Hillary would have said: “I did not have Sex with THAT MAN!”
Mish is creaming his jeans in anticipation of the Democrats taking power.
There’ are these things, “complexity” and “nuance” — never mind.
The last strategy of a failing campaign–proclaim your sides on-coming losses to reduce voter turn-out
Trump and the ghost of Mitch McConnell are still stalking the halls of the Senate. This is a nice matching legacy for his gilded, laser and sniper nested triumphal arch.
Trump is putting a generation of young judges on the bench — for life
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/04/trump-judges-courts-young-01105697
“Of course, the loser will blame the Libertarian for costing him the election.”
I am certainly not a fan of either party, but I’d say that Republican losing candidates generally don’t tend to blame any other candidate for their loss.
Contrast that with the Democrat candidates! They are still blaming Ralph Nader for their 2000 loss (which was more due to Al Gore failing to win his own home state of TN from where he was previously a US Senator) – even as they hug and kiss George W. Bush as a great statesman!
I’d like to meet some of those Democrat straw persons hugging and kissing George W. Bush (when not actively blaming Nader for 2000). Apparently they are typical?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/picture/2016/sep/26/hug-it-out-michelle-obama-embraces-george-w-bush#img-1
And the Obamas wouldn’t even be caught dead next to Ralph Nader.
If you need to go back 26 years in time to find a relevant example of how democrats are worse in that respect than Republicans, then it may not be such a strong difference. But I agree in a way: Republicans tend to simply deny the results when they lose, and claim “fraud”, instead of shifting blame.
LOL. The donorCRATs have continued that “tradition”. Once they started hugging and kissing GW Bush, they had to find a new boogeyman after losing in 2016. And they did – Russiagate. They’ll continue to use it for the foreseeable future.
Pretty ironic that Team D wholeheartedly embraced a wackadoodle conspiracy theory that in 1962 would have gotten you laughed out of The John Birch Society.
D friends blamed my Stein vote for Hillary’s loss. Think that was a meme back then too, not something they solely originated.
I’ll take the blame. I didn’t vote. Figured she had it in the bag and didn’t want to be part of it. That was before I grasped the full grandeur of The Stupid.
I blame Democrats for voting for her in the first place.
Hillary was consistently, absurdly wrong about foreign policy, starting with W/Iraq war backing. So we could have been in a hot war with Russia by now, while China stole a march on all.
And I don’t doubt we would be problematically embroiled in the Middle East, perhaps with marginally different alignments.
Absolutely. We would be in all the wars that we are in right now. Maybe they’d be started in a different order and would be at different intensities but it’d all be fucked up in substantially the same way.
Team D regularly blames Jill Stein for 2016. 2024 was enough of a convincing loss that scapegoats are hard to find.
You may also recall the lawsuits in Pennsylvania and elsewhere seeking to overturn election results.
Their excuse for 2024 is that Harris didn’t have enough time! 🤣
How the fuckwits don’t get that if she had more time she would have screwed it up even more, God only knows!
Nope… GOP protocol is to go full on shrieking tree monkey, and carry on about how it was all rigged until people quit paying attention.
The attention interval grows shorter every time.
Looks like a lot of butthurt DONORcrat bastards around. I’m I got the lowlifes ruled up! LOL.
Geez. Make that – I’m glad I got the lowlifes riled up.
If the Republicans are losing states that they have held for generations this is not just a “republican thing”. I think the Republicans have become the worst version of themselves.
The only people who are going to follow them now are the radical Christian Nationalists who believe that they can dispense with the Constitution and centuries of political dialogue for a poorly constructed theocracy.
There won’t be much patience for the olde guard democrats either. They are all guilty of sitting on their hands and watching the world go by. Does this bring in the radicals? Absolutely! It already has with the Republicans starting around 2015.
Interesting post Mish, thanks. I like how you analyze the undecideds, which I hadn’t seen before but makes a lot of sense and adds a new level of insight.
To me, it’s a lot of work. What I am not into is BELIEVING in any politician but Mish’s work stands on its own. I prefer his take on other than Erection Days.