“The polls are lying: Why the Republicans are about to sweep the midterm elections”, 3 October 2026 (Photo via Washington Examiner — the original report)
As it ran on the front
My cousin Dennis does upholstery out of a shop behind the hardware store, and I stopped in Thursday because the driver's seat in my car has gone soft on one side. The car has bigger problems than the seat — it's been wanting a fan belt since August — but I was there anyway, so I asked him.
He didn't look at my seat. He had a sofa up on the horses and he waved me around to the underside of it. He said the thing nobody believes is that you never find a broken frame by looking at the frame. You find it by looking at where somebody added padding. Nobody pads what's holding. They pad what's giving. Four inches of new foam in one corner and the original half-inch everywhere else, and he knows what's cracked before he turns the piece over.…
…(cont) I wrote that down sitting in the car. Padding goes where it's giving.
I had the notebook out anyway, because I'd been carrying something around since the morning paper. Hold on, it's under the registration. Here. October third, an op-ed: "Clip and save this op-ed, because I may be the only person in the free world predicting that in the midterm elections next month, the Republicans are going to win and win big." Hold the House, hold the Senate, increase the margins in both chambers.
Now. The same paper on September twenty-first ran that Democrats held a five-point lead among registered voters. On the twenty-second, one of its own columnists wrote that Republicans were staring down a midterm reckoning. On the twenty-third the Cook Political Report moved Kansas and South Carolina toward the Democrats, and a Senate Republican group moved its advertising money into Kansas and North Carolina. Kansas. And this morning, in that same paper, a Times/Siena poll of five states the president carried comfortably in 2024 — Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas — with the Democratic Senate candidates tied or ahead.
So I took Dennis's rule home with me without meaning to. If a thing is holding, where does the foam go?
Look at the week the sweep had. Friday the president rallied in Mobile, Alabama, and the story says it was to thank loyal voters and boost Republican turnout, amid low approval ratings. That was day three. Oklahoma before that. Texas before that. Saturday evening he closes in Vandalia, Ohio, in a congressional district where a Republican already holds a decisive lead in the House reelection bid. Three days of thanking the states that were never in question, and then Ohio.
And in Ohio a mother of three in a Montgomery County suburb of Dayton told a reporter she grew up in a Republican family and voted for him in 2016 and 2020, and that she may have to sell one of the family's vehicles over the price of gas. Her grocery bill is up about a hundred dollars a week. She lays it at the administration's door. Vandalia is in Montgomery County. Is she the turnout, or is she the corner the foam went into?
Down in Miami a Republican congresswoman ran an ad criticizing the Trump administration over deportations, and the reporting says it may have jolted other Republicans and drawn attention to her Democratic opponent. The op-ed says win big in both chambers. Does the Miami seat have that ad in it?
Then Iowa. Monday the twenty-eighth, the Oval Office: a fifteen-billion-dollar steel plant, built by Mesabi Metallics, called the largest in U.S. history, the first mega steel plant since the 1960s. Standing there with him were a sitting Iowa Republican congresswoman and the party's Senate nominee from Iowa, both bracing for a tough November. This week Iowa approved it. CBS called it a pricy foreign-owned project in a swing district, and it touched off a week of debate. Iowa is one of the five states in the poll.
Oh — you've got your coat on, I'm sorry, one thing and I'll get out of your way. The plant is expected to be up and running by 2030. The election the two of them are bracing for is next month. How many Novembers is that?
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“They print "the polls are lying" in the same paper that printed the poll, and then the man spends three days thanking Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama for being Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama. You don't haul the president to safe states and wheel a fifteen-billion-dollar steel plant into the Oval Office if the floor's solid under you. Meanwhile a woman outside Dayton who voted for him twice is selling a car to buy gas and paying a hundred bucks more a week for groceries — that's the number they're papering over, and no ribbon-cutting in 2030 feeds her kids next month.”
“The polls were wrong in 2016, so I don't know why anyone's quoting a poll at me — did I say that? That doesn't sound like me, I love polls. The president goes to Alabama because the president enjoys Alabama, that's enthusiasm, not defense, and Kansas money is just, you know, prudent allocation. And Salazar's ad, look, that's a big tent, we welcome — I mean she's welcome to, it's Miami, people there have opinions about things, that's not a crack, that's a feature.”
Clip and save this op-ed, because I may be the only person in the free world predicting that in the midterm elections next month, the Republicans are going to win and win big. They’re going to hold both the House and the Senate, and they’ll even increase their margins in both chambers. Here’s why.
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President Trump is taking his red state campaign blitz to Ohio Saturday evening after making stops in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama over the past few days. Trump is slated to speak at 7 p.m. in Vandalia, a city within a congressional district where a Republican is holding a decisive lead in his House reelection bid....
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Representative María Elvira Salazar, a Republican, ran an ad criticizing the Trump administration. It may have jolted other Republicans — and drawn attention to her Democratic opponent.
Recent polling shows Democrats making gains in several states President Donald Trump carried comfortably in 2024, tightening the party’s path to potentially reclaiming the Senate as the midterm elections approach. A New York Times/Siena College poll of five states — Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, and Kansas — found Democratic Senate…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
