Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently considered expanding Democrats’ battleground map for the upcoming Senate elections, targeting states that should normally be out of reach. Apart from Mississippi, Schumer mentioned Kansas as a possible target. Kansas, however, has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in over 100 years, and the last Democratic Presidential Candidate to win the state was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Still, Mr. Schumer’s plan is not without merit. There are a few data points, trends, and arguments that can make the case for Kansas turning blue. In this piece, I will examine Kansas’ political leanings, both Senate candidates, the state’s electoral trend, and current polling data.
CONTENTS
How Democrats Plan to flip Kansas’ Senate Seat
Democrats Have Found Their Candidate
Kansas Is Trending Left
What Do the Polls & Experts Say?
How Democrats Plan to Flip Kansas’ Senate Seat
The best way to start this analysis is by looking at the status quo. Donald Trump carried the state of Kansas by about 16 pts in 2024, which put it 14.5 pts to the right of the national environment. That simply means that the national vote would have to shift >14.5 pts towards the Democrats in order to flip Kansas blue – which would translate into a D+13 generic ballot victory. Of course, states don’t shift uniformly, and we will deal with that later.
A D+13 generic ballot is a stretch for Democrats, but it is also not far from the current 8-point victory my midterm forecast is working with. A D+8 victory – 9.5 points bluer than 2024 – would theoretically put the generic ballot vote in Kansas at R+6.5. That is not far from The Argument’s modeled generic ballot for Kansas, which currently stands at R+8.3. Coming within six or even eight points in Kansas’ Senate race would be historic for Democrats and point to a great night nationally, but it would still be a loss. Still, there is another crucial factor in Senate races that is playing a big role in the 2026 midterm cycle: candidate quality.
Candidate quality has put some states on the map for Democrats that were almost as out of reach as Kansas in 2024. Think about Democrat James Talarico leading the polls against scandal-ridden Ken Paxton in Texas or Democrat Mary Peltola being tied in the polls in Alaska. Trump won both these states by about 14 pts. There are limitations when comparing these states with Kansas, though: Texas had been significantly closer before, in 2018 and 2020, and Alaskan native Mary Peltola is a proven electoral overperformer who won the state’s congressional seat in 2022. What this does prove is that candidate quality matters. So who are the candidates in Kansas, and why are they giving Democrats hope?
Democrats Found Their Candidate
Last Tuesday, Kansas Democrats chose Adam Hamilton as their nominee for the U.S. Senate. Hamilton is widely seen as a good recruit. He is the founder and pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, a mega mainline Methodist church mostly active in the greater Kansas City area. Notably, these counties won him the Democratic nomination. He is scandal-free, has a clean political slate, and might benefit from his appeal to Christian voters. A trend that is also evident in Texas, where James Talarico is making his faith the center of his progressive campaign.
As in Texas, the better question is perhaps this one: Who is the opponent? Unfortunately for Democrats, incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall is no Ken Paxton. The first-term Senator is not particularly well-known; neither is he very popular or unpopular – his most recent net-approval rating sits at +6. That by itself poses a challenge for Democrats. In Texas, they are benefiting from an astoundingly unpopular opponent; in Kansas, they are facing a mostly generic Republican incumbent. Sen. Marshall also left his primary relatively unbruised (he won with 80%) and is going into the general election contest with a six-million cash pile.
The primaries themselves also underscored why this will be a tall task for Democrats. Democrats in Texas outvoted their Republican counterparts in the state’s primary. In Kansas, however, Republicans still dominated the primary votes, even if the margin was tighter than in previous elections. The raw numbers are still not good for Democrats: Roger Marshall received a total of 267,982 votes in the Republican Senate primary. That tally was higher than the combined total of the entire Democratic Senate primary (220,803).
So, is blue Kansas just a dream Chuck Schumer had one night? Not exactly, because we still have to look at one more aspect: Electoral trends.
Kansas has Swung left over the past decade
Kansas is known as a deep red state not only because it has only elected Republican Senators for a century, but because the margins of presidential elections in the state weren’t exactly close. (Statewide elections are another subject entirely. Democrat Laura Kelly won the Kansas governor race in 2018. She is now retiring.)
But recent elections have produced an interesting trend that Mr. Schumer and other Democrats might have noticed. When examining how states shift electorally, we need to look at how they voted relative to the national popular vote (Because it’s natural that the margins everywhere shift in a landslide scenario).
As you can see above, Kansas’ Republican lean seemed untouchable for a while. Its lean relative to the nation even moved slightly to the right from R+21.3 in the 2000 presidential election to R+25.4 in 2012. Then came the Trump era, and the state started to shift left. It started slowly, but in the most recent two elections, the state moved from a lean of R+19.1 to R+14.7, a shift of almost five points. A shift of such a magnitude reminds me of Virginia and Georgia. Of course, Kansas would need two more presidential election cycles with the same movement to make it competitive, but the state is trending towards the Democrats. In fact, from 2016 to 2024, only two other states shifted further to the left relative to the popular vote.
Where does this shift come from? The first factor is President Trump’s alienation of educated, suburban voters. If the population then starts to shift – like in Georgia, which has seen an enormous influx of educated voters –, previously uncompetitive states can become targets for Democrats.
Even as Kansas suburban areas are growing, the state still has some way to go before it becomes competitive. Until then, Democrats need to work with Donald Trump’s negative approval rating (it sits at -5 pts in Kansas) and their own candidate quality.