The Democrats’ preelection weekend from hell. Will it matter?

The Democrats had a bad weekend before the midterm elections, but for Republicans it could be too little, too late.Before that was a New York Times story that appeared to downplay Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico’s chances of winning despite a small but steady lead in the RealClearPolitics average for virtually the entire race against Republican Ken Paxton. Yes, “the once-obscure 37-year-old state representative and former middle-school teacher with the choirboy face has entered an elite pantheon himself.” After running through an impressive list of Talarico campaign accomplishments, however, the newspaper hedged: “Because it is Texas, such accomplishments may still not be enough for victory.”“I think James has at most a 50 percent chance of winning,” Luke Warford, the chairman of the Travis County Democratic Party, is quoted as saying. “Which, look, in Texas, that’s phenomenal. If you told me a year ago a Democrat would have a coin-flip chance of winning, I’d be doing backflips.”“People close to Mr. Talarico’s campaign privately echoed Mr. Warford’s assessment of the race,” the outlet continued, noting that some recent polls have the Texas Senate race closer, and the “candidate’s internal polls match those tighter surveys, people close to Mr. Talarico said, and may not be fully capturing the sentiments of rural conservative voters who support Mr. Trump.”Most concerning for Talarico as Hispanic turnout explodes throughout the state are accounts that Latino men aren’t sold on his candidacy.The New York Times-Siena poll of Texas that dropped on Sunday showed Talarico leading by 7, up from 6 points in September. The Democrat breaks 50% in the poll and now stands at 49% in the RealClearPolitics average, both important thresholds.There were also continued reverberations in Alaska from the newspaper’s reporting last week that Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola’s campaign was more involved than previously acknowledged in recruiting a decoy Dan Sullivan candidate to run against Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK).That’s three negative developments in three Senate races that could determine which party controls the chamber, all of them contests in which Democrats were believed to be favored.But it might not matter. In all three states, there has been significant early voting that in many cases predated any of these news stories.More than 2.3 million Michigan voters cast their ballots ahead of Election Day. Early voting in Texas and Alaska has broken records.After weeks of mostly low single-digit leads in the polls, el Sayed was beginning to build a more decisive advantage. The New York Times-Siena poll showed him with an 11-point lead. The Democrat is now up by 4.9 points in the RealClearPolitics average and just a tick below 50% of the vote. If these numbers are accurate — and the polls wildly overstated el Sayed’s margin in the Democratic primary — Stevens would need to trigger an avalanche of vote-switching in addition to late deciders overwhelmingly breaking for Rogers.All this would have to take place in a national environment where President Donald Trump’s job approval rating is below 40%, the public is still angry about the economy and cost of living, where the Democrats’ generic congressional ballot lead is nearing 9 points, and months into an unpopular war.The fact that a 53-47 Senate with so many red-state races is in play at all is itself a bad sign.Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) managed six years ago to easily win a race where she had been behind in nearly every poll. Trump memorably defied the state-level polling in the Rust Belt multiple times.2026 MIDTERM ELECTIONS LIVE UPDATES: LATEST NEWS, RESULTS, AND ANALYSISBut even with all the problems with public polling today, this doesn’t happen often. Trump and Collins are unique political figures. And many of the national pollsters with gloomy forecasts for the GOP are higher quality, better funded, and have a superior track record compared to the state polls that have so famously misfired.A lot needs to go right for an unusually large number of Republicans in competitive races on Tuesday. We’ll soon know whether the blue wave will wash them away or if Democrats threw them a last-minute lifeline.