Jay DeDapper

which, it turned out, my census was high.

We don't have the numbers, as you said, Jay.

It's a little early.

I do know that the polls generally, I would say, had a good night because I haven't had a call yet today that says, why were the polls wrong? And sometimes that happens when we're right and other people are wrong, but they just want me to comment.

Even better.

And so I think in that sense, it was very successful.

But as you point out, Jay, there's a lot to unpack.

There's a lot of information that is in the exit poll.

And when we look at voters that generally show up in Maine, it's a much more competitive race and they are a lot closer and they split much more evenly between the incumbent senator and the challenger.

Jay, I would be very happy to refer to anybody now who asks me, well, what about that main number? You know, how come this and that? I'm just going to say, listen to our podcast.

It'll save me so much time.

And Barb, I thank you for that because there is a cottage industry out there with a bunch of people, thankfully not too many, who anytime they see anything that wrinkles of slightly different color, They then, you know, kind of like go about the business of hacking away.

You know, we certainly do after 50 years of doing this.

But, yeah, it's okay.

And I would only comment, Jay and Mary Bart, on this, that, you know, Warren Motovsky and then his disciple Joe Lenski used to say, believe your numbers because what else do you got to go with?

The other truism is we're going to know on election night.

Yes.

This time you're absolutely right, Jay.

No, look, the way the Senate's being calculated right now, the battleground states, the answer to the question, which ones matter the most is they all do.

But these are special because the Democrats in Michigan, for example, as you say, They hold the seat right now.

So the Democrats for governor seem to be doing quite well.

And we're seeing that around the country also.

And Jay, we were talking in the office, I think yesterday, and you saw or thought that this is a year that we may see the Democrats actually have a majority of the governor's mansions around the nation, which goes back quite a while until you had that kind of picture.

Yeah.

And I mean, the way we poll and who we talk to.

Yeah, you make a really good point, Jay.

And so we always like to look back.

But as we're fond of saying on this podcast, the future isn't always as we remember it.

And then I do have kind of one last question, Barb, about this notion of who's showing up and who are we not getting to and all that.

But let's hear a little bit about Iowa, because it is a state that, again, could flip from a Republican, longtime Republican Senate seat to a Democratic.

Yeah, Jay.

And again, the race is very competitive.

But, Mary, what are some of the numbers that we've seen in our poll out there?

Yeah, Jay, so what we're seeing is that the Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson, is plus four points against Collins, who receives 47 percent among registered voters in Maine.

So here, again, we see Jackson was 51 percent to 47 percent for Collins.

Among the main electorate, 57 percent do think that Collins will actually win the Senate contest against Jackson.

What I think is really interesting, what we've been seeing in all of our battleground state polling to date is that more than four in 10 registered voters stay wired.

They're saying that their vote for Congress is mainly a vote against President Donald Trump.

And that really speaks to what Jay is talking about, that Trump is not on the ballot, but he sure as heck is having an effect on the midterm elections this cycle.

Yeah, and its approval rating with Maine voters is 40%, disapproval at 59%, very much like we're seeing around the country in other places.