Campaign Report — Midterms coming down to the wire

Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, tracking all things related to the 2022 midterm elections. You can expect this newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday leading up to November’s election.   

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The crucial last days before the midterms 

With just five days to go until Election Day, the campaign season has finally reached a fever pitch.

Republicans, confident that they’ll recapture the House and believing that they’re now favored to take the Senate, are making eleventh-hour investments in key races. Meanwhile, former President Trump is setting out on a campaign blitz that will see him hold four rallies in five days across Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Democrats are calling in the big guns, as well. Former President Obama has gone on the stump for several top Democratic candidates in recent days in a swing that has taken him through states like Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. President Biden is also making some high-profile campaign appearances. On Wednesday night, he delivered a prime-time speech in which he railed against Republicans for encouraging political violence and seeking to undermine core tenets of American democracy.

“As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America – for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state – who won’t commit, they will not commit to accepting the results of the elections that they’re running in,” Biden said.

Unsteady ground: The flurry of campaign activity marks the culmination of a volatile election season that has seen public sentiment swing wildly as voters move from outrage over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights case, to angst and resentment over stubbornly high inflation and economic uncertainty.

A spate of new polling this week hasn’t done much to calm the nerves of either party. A new survey from The Hill and Emerson College released on Thursday shows Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) leading his Republican rival Herschel Walker by just 2 percentage points, a statistical dead heat given the poll’s 3-point credibility interval.

Likewise, another Emerson College/The Hill pollout of Pennsylvania finds Republican Senate hopeful Mehmet Oz leading Democratic Lt. Gov John Fetterman for the first time, albeit by only a 2-point margin. Similarly, a Marquette University Law School poll out this week showed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) ahead of his Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, by just 2 points.

Reading the tea leaves: Taken together, the polling suggests that the nation’s top Senate races could swing either way on Election Day, leaving control of the upper chamber as the biggest unknown in the final days of the campaigns.

When it comes to the House, however, the biggest question isn’t necessarily whether Republicans will win back the majority, but by how much. The GOP is already set to gain a handful of seats thanks to the decennial redistricting process alone, and given that Democrats have unified control of Washington, Republicans are heading into Election Day with the political winds at their backs.

In a particularly ominous sign for Democrats, Republicans have taken the lead on the generic congressional ballot – a poll question that asks voters which party they plan to support in the midterms – marking a reversal from even just a month ago.

Candidate’s exit may sway the Arizona Senate race 

Democrats have felt confident for months that Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) would be able to win reelection, seeing his Republican opponent Blake Masters as an untested, controversial nominee who couldn’t hold a candle to Kelly’s campaign trail acumen.

But the political winds appear to be shifting.

Masters has begun narrowing his once-yawning polling gap with Kelly, and he received a boost this week when Libertarian candidate Mark Victor dropped out of the Arizona Senate race and endorsed Masters for the seat. And while Victor never had a shot at winning the race, recent polling showed him receiving 2.7 percent and 6 percent of the vote. If some of that support goes to Masters, it could make the difference in an increasingly tight contest. 

“I think it could be a difference maker. There are a lot of ballots out there, and if the Libertarian pulls a couple percent, it can have an impact,” Daniel Scarpinato, who served as a top aide to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), told The Hill’s Al Weaver this week.

Where it stands: Gaming out how Victor’s exit from the race will impact the result is difficult. While he’s no longer campaigning for the Senate seat, his name will still appear on the ballot. There’s also the fact that more than 1 million people have already returned their ballots since early voting began on Oct. 12, and it’s safe to assume that at least some of those votes went to Victor.

Of course, Kelly is still considered one of the Democratic Party’s strongest candidates, and even some Republicans concede that many voters who planned to support Victor were simply doing so because they did not want to vote for either Masters or Kelly. Still, Victor’s exit from the race marked one final twist in one of the country’s closest-watched Senate contests. 

THE (EARLY) TURNOUT GAME

Election Day is closing in, but the number of Americans who have already cast their ballots has surpassed the 30 million mark.

According to an early voting database maintained by Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, more than 32.4 million people have already voted as of Thursday morning.

Of the states with party registration data, 7.2 million Democrats have voted compared to nearly 5.5 million Republicans (of course, this doesn’t include states like Georgia, where voters don’t register with political parties).

Unsurprisingly, the states with the most ballots cast so far are the three largest: California, Texas and Florida. But there’s also been some big early turnout in Georgia. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office announced on Thursday that nearly 2.2 million Georgians had voted – a major spike from the same point in 2018, when about 1.5 million voters had cast their ballots early. 

POLL WATCH

Pennsylvania: A new poll from The Hill and Emerson College shows just how much the dynamics of the Senate race in Pennsylvania have changed in recent weeks. For the first time, Oz has taken the lead over Fetterman.

Here’s more from The Hill’s Julia Manchester: “The poll, released Thursday, finds Oz leading Fetterman 48 percent to 46 percent among very likely voters, well within the survey’s 3-point margin of error. Four percent said they were undecided. The poll marks a steady improvement for Oz, whose support has increased by 5 points since September. Fetterman’s support has only ticked up by 1 point.”

North Carolina: Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) is breaking 50 percent in his bid to succeed retiring Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), according to a new Emerson College/The Hill poll out Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, his Democratic rival, former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley is pulling 45 percent in the Senate race.