They’re calling it “the red undertow” election.

As candidates enter their final weeks of campaigning this midterm cycle, Democrats are seeing massive gains in some of the reddest areas of the country. Senate races in Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska and even Mississippi are polling much closer than expected, given that President Donald Trump won those states in 2024 by 13, 16, 21 and 23 points respectively.

But at the same time, Democrats aren’t seeing the same wave of support in blue and purple states. Kamala Harris won New Hampshire by three points, Maine by seven, and lost Michigan by about half a percentage point. And yet, the Senate races in those states show the candidates polling within just a few points of each other.

Veteran election handicapper Charlie Cook dubbed the phenomenon as “the red undertow,” where we might not see a “blue wave” election — where all Democratic boats rise — but a scenario where voters broadly reject Trump and his party.

“I haven’t seen any data whatsoever suggesting people are happy with the Democratic Party,” Cook recently told Washington Monthly. “None, zero. This is 100% about Trump.”

The situation is creating a political sea that’s difficult to navigate for both parties.

“I just think every state is different,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told reporters this week. “This is an enormous country, and there’s not one story that plays out in equal measure across different states.”

“There’s gonna be different dynamics from state to state,” he said.

When MS NOW asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., about the “red undertow” this week, he said there were “two things taking place.”

“One, you’ve had Republicans fail to actually deliver on the promises that they’ve made to the American people,” Jeffries said, mentioning that costs have gone up, Medicaid has been cut, and Trump got America into another war in the Middle East. 

“You have a graveyard of broken Republican promises actively hurting the American people,” he said.

And then, at the same time, Jeffries theorized that traditional Republican voters were concluding that “Democrats actually have their best interests at heart.”

“That we are actually committed to lowering the high cost of living and making sure that we have an economy that works for everyday Americans,” he said.

Democrats are celebrating their gains in red states while fighting for every voter in the more traditional battlegrounds. But the relative competitiveness of so many races has created a much larger range of outcomes for both the House and Senate.

Republicans, for their part, are breathing a sigh of relief that at least some of those outcomes could translate into GOP majorities in either chamber, though most Republicans see better chances of holding onto the Senate rather than the House.

The close races across the country, however, mean that Republicans need to throw resources at a lot of campaigns — even ones that, on paper, would normally seem safe.

On Monday, Trump is scheduled to rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, as Republican incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts fends off a challenge from Independent Dan Osborn. Recent polls have suggested the race is essentially tied.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance traveled to Kansas last month to rally for GOP incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall. Marshall is facing a surprisingly competitive challenge as he seeks a second term, even though a Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. Senate race in Kansas since 1932.

And last month, Trump said he plans to travel to Alaska to “fight for” Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s locked in a close race with former Rep. Mary Peltola. Trump’s super PAC has already dumped $11.3 million into the race, according to The New York Times.

The dynamic would be more damaging for Republicans if they didn’t have so much more money to spend than Democrats. 

The House GOP’s campaign arm has a record cash advantage over its Democratic counterpart. And Republicans have over $100 million more than Democrats across all of their national committees — and that’s before super PACs, where Republicans may have as much as a two-to-one cash advantage, get involved in these races.

As the head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm suggested this week, the money lead for Republicans could be decisive this November.

“Cash is king,” Sen. Tim Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Wednesday.

While the money advantage could blunt some of the effects of the red undertow, other Republicans brushed off the Democratic gains in Trump country as part of the normal volatility of a political race.

“That’s what happens in elections,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said. “Some days you’re up, some days you’re down.”

But the “red undertow” theory is coming to shore at a difficult time for Trump, whose approval rating is deep underwater. It hit its lowest point this term — 38.7% — this week, according to Real Clear Politics.

At least one Republican senator said Trump’s policies are contributing to the GOP’s struggles in some red states. Asked about tight races in Nebraska, Kansas and Texas, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told MS NOW it goes back to the cost of living.

“A lot of it’s affordability, and then livestock, and this, and then tariffs,” Rounds said. “They’re all tough in midwest states.”

Rounds, who has been a senator since 2015 and served as governor of South Dakota before, cited Trump’s tariff policies, as well his temporary tariff suspension on beef imports, to argue that a lot of the Democratic gains are coming from farm states.

“The bottom line is tariffs impact our ability to market our products,” Rounds said, pointing specifically to soybeans, corn and livestock. 

“It seems as though the administration really hurt the livestock producers,” Rounds said, adding that ranchers “feel hurt” because they sense “a real kinship to the president.”

“And they just feel like he wasn’t cognizant of just how it impacted them on a daily basis when he suggested that they were gonna have an additional import of foreign beef,” he said of cattle ranchers. “That impacted a lot of people immediately with prices per animal that they were getting in the markets.”

Of course, the dynamic comes with its own challenges for Democrats. They still have to win in these battleground states — which means pouring resources into them — while also sensing that they could make major inroads in the red states, if they just had the money to invest there.

In the absence of durable polling leads in all but Georgia and North Carolina, Democrats are forced to play defense before they play offense.

That means they’re pouring resources into Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is in a tight race with former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, and New Hampshire, where Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas is trying to keep the seat blue against former GOP Sen. John Sununu.

Democrats also feel like they should be able to win in Maine, where voters chose Kamala Harris in 2024 by 7 points. But Democrat Troy Jackson is running a truncated and complicated race against Sen. Susan Collins, who has defied political gravity before.

The result is a paradox for Democrats. Their candidates are performing much better than expected in the states where they expected to lose, and in the competitive states, the races remain just that: competitive.

If everything breaks their way, Democrats could be looking at a big night. But if just a few close races go for Republicans — and the Democrats narrowly lose in the red states like Alaska, Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska and Mississippi — the result could be a disappointment for their party.

Still, Democrats are optimistic.

“A year ago, I would have said Democrats would have a one-in-three chance of taking the Senate majority, but the arc was going in a positive direction,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said.

“Today,” he told reporters this week, “I think most would say it’s a 50-50 chance — not a one-in-three chance — and the arc is still going in the positive direction.”

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