Republican attorney general Josh Hawley is leading incumbent Democratic senator Claire McCaskill by eight points in the Missouri Senate race (52-44 percent), according a new poll from Missouri Rising Action. Several recent polls had put the race at a tie.

Meanwhile, a Fox News poll of the North Dakota Senate race gives GOP challenger Kevin Cramer a twelve-point lead over incumbent Democrat Heidi Heitkamp. The poll, which surveyed registered voters from September 29 to October 2, found Cramer ahead of Heitkamp 53-41 percent. That’s an improvement even from the previous poll of the race, an NBC Valley News survey that showed Cramer with a ten-point lead.


In Florida, recent polls indicate the Senate race is tightening. Democratic senator Bill Nelson seemed to have the upper hand throughout September, even though his challenger, Republican governor Rick Scott, had led the polls over the summer. But recent surveys by NBC News/Marist and Strategic Research Associates show Scott surging again as Election Day approaches. The latest poll had Nelson leading Scott among likely voters by just one percentage point (45-44 percent), with 11 percent undecided.

A Fox News poll out this week also showed a close Senate race in Tennessee, where GOP congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is battling former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen to take over retiring Republican senator Bob Corker’s seat. Fox News shows Blackburn ahead by five percentage points, 48-43 percent. The previous poll, from mid September, gave Bredesen a five-point lead.

A report from Axios this morning gives some useful context in understanding these poll results less than five weeks out from Election Day. Josh Holmes, a former aide to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, tells Axios that “the Kavanaugh debate has dropped a political grenade into the middle of an electorate that had been largely locked in Democrats’ favor for the past six months.”



“Private polling shows the enthusiasm shift is . . . unmistakable in the red states that will determine control of the Senate,” Holmes added. Another operative told Axios that the change in mood among voters could be called a “tidal shift.”

As always, the caveat with elections coverage is that polling can’t be taken as a definitive predictor, and more than a month is still more than enough time for momentum to shift again (and again, and again). But as of now, indications seem to be that the brutal, partisan fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court may be redounding to help Republicans in the midterms.