The New York Times and Siena released another batch of polls this morning across a swath of red states. The general picture is the same as its been for weeks. Many of these races are close. But Democrats are ahead in almost all of them. The exception in this batch is Iowa where Ashley Hinson is up by a single point over Democrat Josh Turek. That’s essentially a tie and it compares to Sherrod Brown +3, Mary Peltola +7 (first round) and James Talarico +6.
Some have posited at least the possibility that Democrats are benefiting from poll bias in the reddest states. But I think the real story here is another we’ve discussed: candidate quality. Hinson has run in and won a number of competitive races over the last decade. And she’s objectively a solid if not necessarily a terribly candidate. She’s a former newscaster and those always benefit from some level of familiarity and trust based on many voters feeling they know them. The others range from meh (John Husted in Ohio) to catastrophic (Ken Paxton). Again and again we’re seeing cases where Republicans have been able to run passable and even sub-standard candidates in red states. And there’s a good chance that will continue to be the case where it’s no a Cat-5 Hurricane year. But a big storm comes you find out the levee ain’t very strong.
