October 10, 2026

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— Heidi Glenn, NPR Politics newsletter editor

The Big Picture: Don’t Get Trampled By The Horse Race

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This is about the time of year when the country engages in The Great American Biennial Polling Freakout.

A few weeks before an election, lots of people start to really engage. They read headlines showing this candidate or that candidate leading a race. People wonder who’s going to win and whether the polls are right or wrong. And it all often leads to a blend of anticipation mixed with confusion and anxiety.

Stop and breathe. All that needs to be known from the polls at this point is that over the last several months, the compass needle has moved more in Democrats’ direction. That’s it. They are the favorites to win the House and are within striking distance of winning the Senate, something that was seen as a longshot when this election cycle began.

That’s based not just on the polls, but on conversations with campaigns and on-the-ground reporting. But here are some tips and things to remember, as the deluge of polls comes your way:

1. Polls are not meant to be predictive. They are snapshots in time of when those surveys were conducted.

2. They’re also not as precise and specific as people want them to be. They’re more like fuzzy targets. Remember, they have margins of error. So when someone has a 2-point lead, that’s not a lead at all. If it has a 3% margin of error, that means that candidate could have a 5-point lead or be losing by a point.

3. Look for transparency. There has been a proliferation of not-so-great polls this cycle, some driven by AI, others without long track records and even a pollster exposed to be fake. Good pollsters show their work with detailed methodology pages. If you can’t find a methodology, that’s a red flag.

4. The quality of state-level polling is not very good. With the decline of local journalism, there has been a decline in well-conducted, rigorous and frequent state polls. There is less money for those local outlets to pay for polling, which can be very expensive. So take those state poll averages with a grain of salt.

5. Go beyond the toplines. Horse-race polling isn’t the best use of polls. Polls are best when measuring attitudes over time to help inform how Americans are feeling and thinking about key issues. There is so much more underneath those topline numbers, from job approval ratings and who is most motivated to vote, to which party is more trusted to handle the issues people care about most, and so much more.

The fact is many of these races are expected to be close. Millions of votes are not yet cast, and anyone professing to know exactly what’s going to happen is lying.

When you’re looking at who’s up and who’s down, just remember that horse-race polling is like sprinkles on top of a bowl of ice cream. Lots of people like sprinkles, but if all you eat is the sprinkles, you just wind up with a mouth full of wax without ever getting to the good stuff.

— Domenico Montanaro, NPR’s senior political editor/correspondent

Check out the 2026 Election tab in the NPR App — NPR’s hub for everything you need to know, nationally and locally, for this year’s Midterms. Download the app today.

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ICYMI: Top Stories

Jeff Dean/Getty Images

Do you want the House tour? With just under a month to go until election day, political reporter Stephen Fowler unpacks the toss-up races that could decide control of the House, the redistricting arms race that is scrambling the map and where the parties are focusing their money in the home stretch.

Blockbuster climate case opens SCOTUS term: The U.S. Supreme Court began its new term on Monday with a case that asks: can local governments sue energy companies to help pay for the impacts of climate change? That’s what Boulder, Colo., is trying to do in a suit that argues the companies deceived the public about the harms of fossil fuels and contributed to disasters that cost Boulder a lot of time and money. The dispute could have ramifications far beyond climate-related harms, and kicks off a court term that will also see big test cases on religion, semi-automatic weapon bans, immigration and election law.

This congressional race shouldn’t be competitive: But political headwinds against Republicans, combined with allegations of carpetbagging and exaggerating military service, are making Nevada’s Second District an unusually tough race for the GOP candidate. Senior political correspondent Tamara Keith visited Reno to see why.

And this race could be one of the closest in the country: In a district of commuter towns and suburbs outside New York City, two-term Republican Rep. Mike Lawler is trying to outrun a potential blue wave. To do that, he’s tried to position himself as a Republican who is unafraid to cross his own party while not distancing himself from President Trump. As our Elena Moore reports, whether he can walk that political tightrope could be a deciding factor in determining whether Republicans can keep their narrow majority.

FBI leadership is focused on immigration: That means counterintelligence is falling behind, sources familiar with the matter tell justice correspondent Ryan Lucas.

Democrats are trying to reel in more men: These Maine fishermen say the party needs better bait.

— Lexie Schapitl, NPR Politics producer

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Going Deeper: VoteGPT?

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On a September evening, Adam Johnson, 40, settled on his porch chair in Morgantown, West Virginia, to go over his ballot for the upcoming midterm election.

Ticking through all the races and the different candidates, he worked to figure out who best represented his values. But rather than discussing it with a friend or family member, he held an hours-long discussion with ChatGPT — a chatbot powered by a large language model (LLM) owned by OpenAI, an AI research company.

Johnson is one of a growing number of voters using chatbots to research their ballots for the first midterm election since AI has taken the country by storm. Several spoke to NPR’s Maham Javaid about how they’re using them and why.

— Lexie Schapitl, NPR Politics producer

The Shot: A DIY Solution To Fertilizer Shortages

Andy Higgins for NPR

2026 has been a challenging year for many farmers around the globe, as the Iran war choked off the Strait of Hormuz and drove up fertilizer prices, which had already climbed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But some farmers in Zambia have a solution: a homemade, fermented compost known as bokashi. With roots in ancient Korean farming traditions and popularized in Japan, bokashi is relatively easy to make, organic and a cheaper option for small-scale farmers.

— Lexie Schapitl, NPR Politics producer

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