Democrats Show Strength in Final Days of Race for the Senate, New Polls Find

Democrats are up in Michigan, Texas, Kansas, Maine and Ohio, have an edge in Alaska and are effectively tied with Republicans in Iowa, new New York Times/Siena polls found.

Democrats are ahead of Republicans in almost all of the seven battleground states that will determine which party controls the Senate, according to the final set of polls from The New York Times and Siena University before the midterm elections.

The surveys found that Democrats hold sizable leads in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and Kansas, which has not elected one since 1932.

To win a Senate majority, Democrats need to defend all the seats they currently hold and flip at least four seats that are currently held by Republicans. It has been seen as an uphill battle because many of the seats they need to win are in Republican strongholds.

But the new polls found Democratic candidates ahead in five states that now have Republican senators and effectively tied in a sixth. They hold leads in Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas and a narrow edge in Alaska. They are effectively tied in Iowa.

In Michigan, the lone top Senate battleground already held by Democrats, the poll found the Democratic candidate leading by double digits. (It was conducted before a Democratic feud erupted in Michigan this weekend.) The surveys did not include North Carolina, where polls have long found the Democrat leading and Republicans have pared back their campaign spending.

Dissatisfaction with President Trump and frustration over his management of the economy are dragging down Republicans, according to the polls. Just 38 percent of likely voters approved of the president's job performance in the seven states in the poll, a strikingly low figure given that Mr. Trump had won five of the states by double digits just two years ago.