Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and to Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Tuesday, asking both Defense Department officials to confirm that the Pentagon will not send troops to polling places during the upcoming midterms.
In my last post I mentioned this data analysis GOP pollster and consultant Pat Ruffini has put together looking at Senate polling going back through the last four cycles, so 2018 through 2024. Ruffini is a very partisan Republican in all the meanings of that word. But I think of him as broadly reliable when it comes to compiling and analyzing hard data. His analysis, probably not surprisingly, shows that polling in aggregate over-estimated Democrats in each cycle. Needless to say, there’s a lot of “cope” in this analysis, reassuring fretful Republicans that it’s not as bad as it looks. But I was curious because this at least broadly matches with my observations. Not always but more often than not.
You can read the analysis here. You have to subscribe to his Substack to read the whole thing. But you can get the gist before you get to the paywall. I’ve reached out to several polling analysts whose judgment I trust to get their sense of the analysis. So perhaps I’ll have more to say based on any responses.
In any case, here are the main takeaways.
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