Senator Ted Cruz used the Friday episode of his podcast, Verdict, to lay out his party’s downside in public. Eight to ten Senate races are basically tied, he said; on a good night Republicans could grow their majority to 53 seats, and on a bad day they could wake up with 45. He warned Republicans could lose every statewide race in Texas, including the Senate contest between Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Representative James Talarico, and said Democrats are massively out-turning Republicans in early voting. A CNN/SSRS poll of October 20 to 27 put Talarico ahead of Paxton 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters; other Texas polling has the race closer, and Cruz himself called it a dead heat.
The rest of the final map points the same way. Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted two Senate races toward Democrats this week, in Minnesota and Louisiana. In Nebraska, a New York Times poll found Senator Pete Ricketts leading independent Dan Osborn, a rematch of the state’s unusually close 2024 independent challenge. The Republican National Committee chair, by contrast, predicted Republican Senate wins in Alaska, Texas and three other battlegrounds, the parties’ public expectations now a full outcome apart.
Cruz’s intervention is a turnout instrument as much as an assessment: a senator telling his own voters the majority is at risk, in the last weekend, in states where he is campaigning. But its specifics, tied races counted at eight to ten, Texas named as sweepable, early voting named as the problem, are checkable claims, and they align with the rating changes and polling released the same week rather than contradicting them.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats to control the Senate. Tuesday’s count, and the certification fights already being prepared around it, will settle which party’s stated expectation was the honest one.