Shocking Poll Spells Trouble for Republican Senator in Red State

An unlikely state is spelling trouble for Republicans up and down the ballot this election cycle.

Polling by the Independent Center conducted this week shows independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn with a five-point lead over Republican incumbent Deb Fischer, with Osborn receiving 47 percent of the vote to Fischer’s 42 percent. Ten percent of voters say they are unsure. Other polls show Fischer with a slight lead, but independent and undecided voters will be a key group for this Senate race. As of this week, Nebraska is the second-closest Senate race in the country, according to 538.

With a thin 51–49 Democratic majority in the Senate today, Osborn could be the key for making sure Republicans don’t take control of the chamber. There is no Democratic candidate running in the Nebraska Senate race, but Osborn’s policies make it likely he’ll caucus with the party.

Osborn has made headlines for his working-class messaging, union leadership, and independent candidacy. “I hadn’t been a very political person until corporate greed came knocking on my door a few years ago, when I was president of my local union, and we went out on strike, at a time where the company was making record profits,” he told Semafor in September. As the president of his local union at the Kellogg’s plant, in 2021 he led 500 workers on strike for nearly three months to end a two-tiered benefits system and stop plant closings.

Nebraska, and the most populous city of Omaha, will be integral to securing victory for Democrats in the Senate, Congress, and White House. Nebraska is one of only two states that splits its electoral votes by congressional district (the other being Maine). One of Nebraska’s five electoral votes belongs to the blue dot of Omaha. Biden won Nebraska’s 2nd district in 2020, while Trump clinched the vote in 2016. (The Democratic House candidate for the district is also leading in the polls.)

The same poll that showed Osborn winning also showed Trump leading Kamala Harris by 11 points in the state, but Harris leads Trump in the Omaha-based district by nine points. Republicans, including Trump, are well aware of the importance of this one electoral vote. That’s why MAGA sought to change the state to a winner-take-all system this election cycle. That effort was thwarted by Nebraska Republicans in September.

Republicans may be in for a surprise in Texas this November, according to voter registration data that shows the Lone Star State has seen a surge of new voters since 2018.

Nearly 2.6 million people have registered to vote in the state since then-Representative Beto O’Rourke narrowly lost the midterm election to Senator Ted Cruz, adding roughly the size of Connecticut’s entire voter roll to the books. The bulk of those new voters originate from some of Texas’s most liberal territories, including the areas surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin, reported the San Antonio Express-News.

And while that may not translate to an obvious win in a state with more than 30 million people, it has certainly caught the attention of local Republicans, who have diverted considerable attention toward maintaining their stronghold in the historically red state.

“We are in a competitive state and we are not going to win just sitting on our laurels,” Texas Republican strategist Dave Carney told the Express-News.

Rodney Ellis, a county commissioner in liberal Harris County, summed it up a little differently: “They’re terrified,” Ellis told the Express-News.

Cruz, meanwhile, has turned to begging for help in his own reelection campaign against  Democratic challenger Representative Colin Allred. In an interview with Newsmax on Tuesday, Cruz emphasized Democratic spending in his state, as well as his diminishing odds of taking the race.

“I want to encourage your viewers this morning: I need your help,” Cruz said, urging people to “contribute” to his campaign website.

“Chuck Schumer and George Soros are flooding cash into the state of Texas,” Cruz said. “There have been multiple polls in the last three weeks that show it as a four-point race, a three-point race, a two-point race, and there have been two polls that show it as a one-point race.”

But rather than appeal to the surge of new liberal voters in his state, Cruz has spent the last few months doubling down on far-right conspiracies. He helped to elevate a disturbing and baseless lie about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and has refused to say whether he would accept the outcome of the November election if it doesn’t go Donald Trump’s way. 

Cruz has also continued to idolize Trump, even after enduring possibly the ugliest verbal beating in Trump’s circle during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, which included Trump mocking the unpopular Texas senator for being so short he would need heels to reach the podium and plainly calling his wife ugly.

One gruesome detail in Jack Smith’s sweeping legal brief about Donald Trump’s involvement in January 6 has shocked legal experts.

The 165-page filing, which was unsealed Wednesday by Judge Tanya Chutkan, provides new details about the co-conspirators and specific allegations connected to the former president’s 2020 election-subversion scheme—including one about former Vice President Mike Pence.

As MAGA rioters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, chanting their demand to “Hang Mike Pence!” a Trump aide received word that his running mate had been moved to a secure location for his safety, according to the filing.

The aide “rushed into the dining room to inform [Trump] in hopes that [Trump] would take action to ensure Pence’s safety.”

Instead, after the aide delivered the news, Trump allegedly replied, “So what?”

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said Wednesday night, during an interview with MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace, that she was taken aback by multiple moments described in the filing, but Wallace plucked that one out as the most disturbing.

“I’ll read first what made Lisa Rubin gasp. Why make everybody wait?” said Wallace, before reading from page 142.

“The cavalierness with which Donald Trump received that news certainly is news to me,” Rubin said.

During an interview on CNN Wednesday, Harvard constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe told host Erin Burnett he also found that quote to be one of the most outlandish.

“There are lots of jaw-dropping things; you’ve named some of them. You know: ‘So what’ if this vice president is hung? ‘It doesn’t matter’ whether we’ve won or lost. That’s just a sampling; it’s the tip of a horribly large and scary iceberg,” Tribe explained.

In the filing, Trump allegedly made a comment to his family members that “it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election, you still have to fight like hell.”

Donald Trump is not taking the release of new evidence in his 2020 election fraud case well.

The 165-page motion from special counsel Jack Smith was released to the public on Wednesday, and it detailed not only the former president’s efforts to overturn the election but also his indifference to the violence of the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Trump took to Truth Social to complain almost immediately.

“The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” Trump wrote in one long-winded post.

“Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power,” the former president added.

Trump made several other posts into Thursday morning complaining that Democrats were interfering in the election, “Weaponizing the Justice Department against me,” and calling the Justice Department “THE DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE.”

The former president is famously thin-skinned, but he also has reason to be worried. Smith’s legal filing includes wild details about Trump blatantly presenting lies and showing indifference to rioting in his name, as well as his plans to undermine the election results before they took place. It also is tailored to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, in an effort to ensure Trump faces accountability for his attempts to overturn the election. Trump’s outbursts online might be his attempt to distract the public from the damning proof against him.

MAGA allies are trying to move on from their cataclysmic reaction to losing the 2020 presidential election—but that doesn’t mean that their leader is trying to do the same.

In an interview Wednesday night with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer brushed off concerns about the Republican reaction to the last election, claiming that no one but Collins was still focused on the election conspiracy.

“In 2020, you did sign onto that brief supporting a Texas lawsuit that would have invalidated the election results in four states,” Collins said. “But you ultimately chose to certify the election, you broke with some of your Republican colleagues, and you chose to certify.

“You said in a statement that ‘Congress does not have the authority to discard an individual slate of electors certified by a state’s legislature in accordance with their Constitution,’” Collins continued. “And you yourself said, ‘Doing so sets a precedent that I believe undermines the state-based system of elections that defines our Republic.’ Do you still feel that way tonight?”

“Again, Kaitlan, we’re talking about an election that’s going to take place in 35 days,” Emmer responded. “What are you doing talking about something that’s four years ago? We can have this debate at some other time going forward, but the people are hurting.”

But Collins had a point.

“Donald Trump is still talking about it,” the CNN anchor threw back.

Trump was posting about the election he lost as recently as Wednesday night, writing on Truth Social that he “didn’t rig the 2020 Election, they did!”

Some of Trump’s closest allies have refused to admit that the former president lost the 2020 election, dodging direct questions about whether they plan to reenact the same political violence after November’s election results roll in.

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Ohio Senator JD Vance refused to concede that the Republican presidential nominee lost the last election before doubling down during a heated exchange with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

“He is still saying he didn’t lose the election,” Walz said, turning to face Vance. “I would just ask that: Did he lose the 2020 election?”

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance responded, twisting his argument into a weird tie-in about Vice President Kamala Harris and Facebook’s content moderation policies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“That is a very damning nonanswer,” Walz said.