Senate races in five states Donald Trump carried in 2024 are suddenly toss-ups, and the reason isn't Democratic charisma — it's working Americans getting crushed by an economy their own party promised to fix.
A New York Times/Siena poll conducted September 21 through October 1 shows Democratic Senate candidates leading in Alaska (50-43), Ohio (49-46), and Texas (51-45), with Kansas tied at 45 and Iowa's Republican holding a single-point edge, 48-47. All five states went for Trump. All five should be safe. They aren't.
The poll numbers track something PBS found on the ground in Dayton, Ohio: nearly 1,400 workers laid off at a truck factory just three days before Trump staged a rally at a nearby high school. Those layoffs effectively wiped out an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton area. A former three-time Trump voter and United Auto Workers member named Bos told PBS he's done canvassing for Republicans and now works votes for Democrats. "Something has to change politically in this country," he said. "Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse."
International Business Times framed the poll story around Trump's sinking approval ratings. The data backs that framing: between 48 percent and 51 percent of voters across all five states strongly disapprove of Trump's handling of the presidency. His strong approval tops out at 29 percent in Alaska and bottoms out at 21 percent in Ohio. More voters in all five states identify as Republican than Democrat — meaning the bleed is coming from inside the house.
PBS buried the deeper structural story: Dayton has lost roughly half of its 90,000 factory jobs since 1990, after NAFTA shifted work to Mexico and China's WTO entry accelerated the exodus. Republican state representative Phil Plummer, who is also Montgomery County's GOP chairman, told PBS his jail was "40% drug addicts, 50% mental health patients, 10% criminals" when he entered politics after the 2008 crisis. That's the landscape both parties have presided over for three decades.
Trump's response to the cost-of-living anger has been to insist the economy is better than people think and to promise $5,000 checks if Republicans win the House and Senate. Bos called it "a bribe, a slap in the face, and, like, that we're all ignorant." Only 17 percent of Americans approve of Trump's handling of affordability, according to PBS.
The Ohio Senate race could determine chamber control. Republican Senator Jon Husted faces a comeback bid from former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who is harnessing working-class disenchantment two years after losing his seat. The Texas race, per IBT, features Democrat James Talarico against Republican Ken Paxton — a contest that, if Talarico wins, would be the first Texas Democratic Senate victory since 1988.
House races in these states show a more mixed picture: Republicans lead by three in Iowa and five in Kansas, but Democrats edge ahead 48-47 in both Texas and Ohio.
The question neither outlet answers: if both parties built the system that hollowed out Dayton, why should working voters trust either one to fix it?
