Senate Polls Look 'Rosy,' Pod Save America Host Tells Brian Tyler Cohen

Tommy Vietor, a Pod Save America host and former Obama spokesman, told Brian Tyler Cohen that polls showing Democrats ahead across the Senate map "feel a little rosy." He also said Democratic candidates are being outspent in "like every single Senate race period" four weeks before Election Day.

The doubt came from inside the party. Vietor was on Cohen's No Lie podcast. Cohen had put up a set of polls showing Democrats leading in enough states to retake the Senate, and Vietor singled out Iowa, where Democrat Josh Turek is running against Republican Representative Ashley Hinson.

"I have a really hard time believing that Josh Turek is up five in Iowa," Vietor said. "When I talk to his people, they think it's like, at best tied."

That is Vietor's secondhand account of what Turek's campaign thinks.

Iowa Senate Polls Show a Closer Race

The public numbers are tighter than the five-point lead Cohen showed. PolitiKool's polling average has Turek ahead of Hinson 47.1 percent to 45.4 percent, a 1.7-point margin. A Fox News poll conducted September 24-28 found Turek ahead 49 percent to 47 percent among likely voters, which is inside the margin of error.

Iowa and Kansas are among the closest Democratic leads on the map, at 1.7 points each in PolitiKool's polling average. Democrats lead by more elsewhere: Jon Ossoff is up 9.9 points in Georgia, Roy Cooper is up 9.8 in North Carolina, Chris Pappas is up 7.1 in New Hampshire, Sherrod Brown is up 4.2 in Ohio and James Talarico is up 3.6 in Texas. In Florida, Republican Sen. Ashley Moody leads by 6.3 points.

Vietor gave Ossoff and Cooper credit for "running a better campaign." He was less sure about New Hampshire, where he said Democrats had worried a couple of weeks earlier that the race "was tightening."

Cohen did not argue with him. "This means that this is possible, but still run like you're 15 points behind," he said.

Later in the episode, Cohen told Sherrod Brown that "we've seen polling that's good for Democrats in the past, like in 2024 in certain states."

Republicans Outspend Democrats in Senate Battlegrounds

Vietor's bigger worry was money. "Our candidates are getting outspent in like every single Senate race period," he said.

AdImpact's ad-tracking data mostly backs him up. Through September 30, Republicans outspent Democrats by $188 million on aired ads in nine Senate battlegrounds. That came to 60 percent of all spending, and Republicans led in eight of the nine races. Their biggest advantages were in Texas, Ohio and Maine.

The same AdImpact analysis found that Republican dollars are buying fewer ads per dollar than Democratic dollars. Republicans led Democrats by 26 percent in broadcast spending but aired only 7 percent more broadcast ads. Candidates qualify for lower ad rates in the final 60 days of a campaign, and that stretches Democrats' dollars further.

In Texas, Vietor said the latest figure from Republican super PACs backing Ken Paxton was "like two hundred million dollars." AdImpact's $61 million figure for Texas measures something different: the Republican advantage over Democrats in aired ads through September 30, not total Republican spending. Vietor argued that the sheer volume has limits, saying "there is a diminishing marginal return to those ads and to that spending," especially after a brutal Republican primary and with Talarico already a national figure.

In Ohio, Vietor said Brown had "30 million dumped on his head by the goddamn crypto people who defeated him last time." The crypto super PAC Fairshake committed $30 million against Brown on September 21, after spending about $40 million to help defeat him in 2024. Brown, who appeared later in the same episode, used the same figure.

What Happens Next

Vietor said a lead in the polls creates its own problem. "If we're really winning by nine in Georgia, do you then reroute some of that money to Florida or, you know, Kansas," he asked.

He also argued that ads matter most in a race like Iowa, where Turek is "relatively unknown." He estimated that 10 to 15 percent of voters there will decide in the last week or two, and "maybe the only information they get about politics is from paid media."

The national mood favors his party. PolitiKool's polling average gives Democrats an 8.1-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, and President Donald Trump's approval is 37.6 percent. Vietor said he is "knocking on wood" that those national forces will be enough.