NYT/Siena Poll: Late-Deciding Voters Break for Republicans by 9 Points in Senate Battlegrounds

A New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday night, hours before Election Day, found that voters who made up their minds in the final month before the vote are breaking toward Republicans by nine points in seven battleground Senate races — a late swing that stands in contrast to the survey's own topline numbers.

The poll, conducted Oct. 23 to Nov. 1 among 5,708 voters across Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas, still showed Democrats leading in six of the seven races: up 11 points in Michigan, 7 in Texas, 6 in Maine, and 5 apiece in Ohio and Kansas. Iowa was effectively tied, and Democrat Mary Peltola held a 2-point edge over Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska. Margins of error ranged from plus or minus 3.3 points in Texas to plus or minus 4.8 points in Alaska.

But the late-decider number is the one Republicans are pointing to on the eve of the election. The Times' own writeup noted that “voters who decided only in the last month favored Republicans by a nine-point margin” — a pattern that, if it holds through Tuesday, would echo the late movement toward Trump that polls underestimated in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

The Times flagged its own vulnerability on that front, cautioning that “blue-collar white workers have proved particularly hard to reach in polls, and polling error has previously been among the highest in that demographic” — the same group whose late movement has repeatedly wrong-footed pollsters in prior Trump-era elections. The paper also noted every Democratic candidate except Peltola improved against their Republican opponent compared with the prior Times/Siena poll, and that independents viewed all seven Democratic candidates more favorably than their GOP opponents — a sign Democrats are not without their own strengths heading into Tuesday.

The Times said its Alaska sample was largely collected before allegations surfaced involving a candidate with a name similar to Sullivan's opponent, meaning any fallout from that story may not be reflected in the Peltola-Sullivan numbers.

A competing forecast from Harvard's ElectIt model, by contrast, has late deciders breaking toward Democrats, driven by inflation and dissatisfaction with the federal government — though even its worst-case polling-error scenario still has Republicans holding the Senate.

Even the outlet that spent the cycle reporting topline numbers favorable to Democrats is, in its own data, flagging a late break the other way — and warning readers that its methodology has a specific, well-documented history of missing it.