Top election forecaster moves 11 House races toward Democrats

[0:00] Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Kristen Welker with 18 days to go. [0:04] President Trump right now is set to make his 12th campaign stop in the last 16 days, [0:09] amid even more signs of midterm momentum for Democrats. [0:13] More than 7 million Americans have already cast their ballots nationwide, [0:17] including 2 million in our 10 closely watched Senate battlegrounds. [0:22] That's according to NBC News data via voter file company TargetSmart. [0:26] Meanwhile, Democrats are reporting massive fundraising hauls last quarter, [0:31] significantly more than their Republican opponents in those key battleground states. [0:35] That's according to FEC filings. [0:38] At this hour, the president is on one of those battlegrounds, Georgia, [0:42] where incumbent Democrat John Ossoff is facing a challenge from Republican Congressman Mike Collins. [0:47] As he left the White House earlier, the president touted the impact he says he's having on the trail. [0:52] I'm going to put you right now. I don't know if you know it. [1:01] These rallies are turning everything around. These rallies are legendary. [1:05] These are like the rallies I've had. [1:07] And I didn't think I'd have to do it, but I want to make sure Republicans do as well as they can do. [1:13] Georgia is just the latest stop on the president's midterm blitz. [1:16] So far, he's hit 10 states, some of them multiple times. [1:20] And he'll be back in Georgia later this month. [1:22] One of at least eight campaign stops currently on the schedule before Election Day. [1:26] Notably absent from that list, battleground Maine. [1:29] And in an interview last night, the president's suggesting it will stay that way. [1:33] Take a look. [1:35] There's no real reason for me to go to Maine, I don't think. [1:38] Although they have a couple of interesting races going on, but I think we're going to win those races. [1:43] But probably not. [1:46] I'd like to go to Maine. I love Maine. [1:47] But I'm so solid with Maine, too. [1:50] It's, you know, can't get much more solid. [1:55] It comes as incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins and Democrat Troy Jackson faced off in their fourth and final debate last night, [2:01] where Collins once again sought to distance herself from President Trump. [2:07] In addition, I would point out a major difference between Troy and me. [2:13] I vote very independently. [2:18] Of all the hundred senators, the studies show that I am the most bipartisan member of the Senate. [2:27] We need more people in the Senate. [2:30] We don't need more people who are going to vote a straight party line. [2:36] Well, Senator Collins likes to have it both ways. [2:39] I mean, the reality is that 100 percent of the time when Donald Trump needs her, Susan Collins is going to be there. [2:45] That has happened time and time again. [2:48] The votes that she throws away are managed votes that she already knows the outcome. [2:53] And today we got yet another sign of the tough midterm environment for Republicans. [2:59] Our friends at the Cook Political Report shifting 11 races in Democrats' direction, [3:03] including five likely Republican districts now in the competitive lean Republican category. [3:10] All of them are districts President Trump won in 2024, some by more than double digits. [3:15] Joining me now from Georgia following the president is NBC News White House correspondent Monica Alba, [3:21] Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haake is at the White House, [3:23] and Aaron Covey, House of Representatives editor for the Cook Political Report. [3:29] Thanks to all of you for being here, Monica. [3:31] Let me start with this breaking news we have to talk about, [3:34] the fact that the newly installed White House press secretary is out after only a few days on the job. [3:39] What is President Trump saying? [3:41] What are your sources telling you? [3:44] This was a significant development, Kristen. [3:46] Of course, her very short tenure was marked by controversy from that very first briefing that [3:52] she offered on Tuesday that only lasted under 15 minutes. [3:56] But it was really her resume and her background, questions about her credentials. [4:00] Since she had identified herself repeatedly as a lawyer, but she did not pass a bar exam after graduating law school, [4:08] that it seems to have added to the president's decision making here that she could no longer serve in the role of press secretary. [4:15] Here's a little bit more of what the president had to say when he left the White House earlier this afternoon. [4:21] Well, Katie's been treated very badly by the media, very, very badly, very unfairly, I think. [4:28] And I just spoke to her about it. [4:30] I said, Katie, is this for you? [4:32] And I said to Katie just two minutes ago, I said, Katie, you know, you don't have to do this if you don't want. [4:38] She said, this is a lot tougher. [4:41] I said, welcome to the world of Trump. [4:43] It was just moments after the president said that, Kristen, that we were able to confirm that she was out of her post. [4:52] What we don't know yet is whether she will have some other kind of role in the administration. [4:57] Officials are indicating that they may try to find something for her to transition to. [5:02] But interestingly, tonight, she's set to have dinner with Vice President Vance and his family at the Naval Observatory. [5:09] Kristen. [5:09] Well, just a stunning turn of events, Monica. [5:13] You have been all over it in your reporting. [5:15] Let me ask you, because President Trump's about to speak there in Georgia, that competitive Senate seat, the gubernatorial race. [5:22] What is the president's strategy going to be? [5:27] Yeah, and it's been notable where the president has gone, where he hasn't. [5:31] And he has spent most of the last couple of weeks in those reliably red states. [5:35] Whereas here in Georgia, in a little bit more of a battleground, he won in 2016. [5:39] He narrowly lost it in 2020 and then flipped it back to red in 2024. [5:44] But this is a case where he is trying to boost a Republican challenger, of course, in Representative Mike Collins to the incumbent Democratic Senator John Ossoff. [5:54] And if you just look at the cash advantage that Democrats have here, it's remarkable. [5:59] After those third quarter numbers came in, John Ossoff has about 33 million that he raked in versus Mike Collins, about 2 million. [6:08] And so the president is here to talk to voters who we know are loyal to him. [6:12] But he's going to continue to make this case about asking them to pretend he's on the ballot. [6:16] And in the conversations I've had here for voters, they say they feel that message is working. [6:21] They're telling me that their Republican friends who maybe wouldn't have shown up to vote are heeding the president's call, have gone even to vote early. [6:29] And there are record-breaking early voting numbers here in the state of Georgia on pace, Kristen, to break the last midterm record of four years ago, if this keeps up. [6:40] Well, we are going to continue to track those early voting numbers, that's for sure. [6:44] Monica, I know you've been reporting on the president's travel schedule, his strategy there, 13 stops in 16 days so far. [6:53] Where is he headed next, and what does that tell you? [6:57] Yeah, so tomorrow he will be heading to Kentucky, and then he's going to follow that up early next week with trips to Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida. [7:08] And then he's also going to be coming back to Georgia. [7:11] And then two stops on the calendar that I think will be pretty critical a little later in the month and early November, and that's, of course, Michigan and Iowa. [7:20] There had been a lot of questions about when the president was going to head to either of those places. [7:24] Now we know it will be toward that home stretch, but that one place that we haven't mentioned, Kristen, as you nodded to in the introduction, Maine. [7:31] Whenever we've talked to our sources and RNC officials about whether he really will go there, it is highly unlikely. [7:37] And we know that Maine Senator Susan Collins has implied that she is not expecting him there and doesn't necessarily want him to be campaigning there. [7:45] So that's the one we're still watching for because it was the president who indicated he might go there. [7:50] Yeah, Susan Collins among the Republicans trying to find some distance between herself and President Trump right now. [7:57] Monica Alba, great reporting as always. [7:59] Thanks for starting us off from the campaign trail in Georgia. [8:03] Garrett, let me head to you at the White House. [8:05] So we've been talking about the fact that there were two big Senate debates last night, including in Alaska, where the president campaigned earlier this week. [8:13] What were some of your key takeaways? [8:15] I know you were tracking all of it. [8:16] Yeah, I mean, as we've seen in so many of these races, the part of the debate last night was focused on Dan Sullivan essentially trying to create a little bit of distance between himself and President Trump. [8:27] He went after Mary Peltola in a New York Times story that suggested that she had been harsh with staff. [8:32] When she pushed back asking when he had criticized President Trump for the kind of language or derogatory remarks he had made, Sullivan pointed to two examples. [8:40] He pointed to the president's comments about John McCain and the president's comments about Megyn Kelly, both of which were from before he became president. [8:48] And while Sullivan didn't say this, and I don't think Peltola fully capitalized on it, that's in keeping with the Dan Sullivan I covered in the Senate, who's not necessarily willing to criticize President Trump. [8:58] Those criticisms were only about candidate Trump before he had any power whatsoever. [9:02] And so that was a theme. [9:03] So, too, was discussion about energy production, as you can always imagine, is an issue in Alaska. [9:08] Sullivan pushing back on high gas prices, saying that, you know, Alaska just needs to produce more energy. [9:12] Alaska is already one of the top energy producing states in this country. [9:15] So I'm not sure how far that argument will go. [9:18] But I think it was very telling about sort of the state of this race so far. [9:21] So, Garrett, I want to ask you, because I know that earlier this week you actually spoke to Josh Turek, of course, who's running in another red state in Iowa for your podcast. [9:32] Here's the Scoop Election Edition. [9:34] What did he tell you? [9:36] Yeah, look, I've been fascinated with Iowa because here's a state that actually does have a history of behaving like a more purple state, even though it's been red for the last couple of cycles. [9:44] Turek is in position to capitalize on that. [9:46] We talked a lot about how angry he thinks people are there about the economy, about the tariffs, about the war with Iran. [9:52] And he told me on election night he'll be looking at one key group of voters to see if he's got a chance to win. [9:58] Young voters. [9:59] Listen. [10:01] On election night, when everyone's nervously watching the results come in, what are you going to be looking for to have a sense of if you're going to be going to the U.S. Senate or not? [10:11] I think we're going to win this off of young people being engaged. [10:15] I think they uniquely are realizing that they may be the first generation of Americans that are seeing their quality of life not being quite as high. [10:23] They're looking at a situation where the average age of a first-time homebuyer is 40 years old. [10:28] And so I think inspiring them, I think also we're going to win this by trimming the margins in rural communities and amongst farmers. [10:38] Kristen, I think that idea about keeping the margins down in rural communities is big, not just in Iowa, but it's also something I heard when we talked about the Texas Senate and gubernatorial races [10:46] in a lot of these other Midwestern states or states with large rural populations. [10:51] Democrats don't need to win with those folks. [10:53] They need to not get blown out. [10:54] And if that's the case, you could see a very blue-hued map on election night. [10:59] All right. [10:59] Well, it looks like a great interview. [11:00] We look forward to listening and to hearing the entire interview, of course. [11:06] Here's the scoop. [11:07] Election edition with Garrett Haake. [11:09] Garrett, great get. [11:10] Thanks so much. [11:11] Really appreciate it. [11:12] Erin, let me turn to you now. [11:13] Let's talk about the Cook Political Report moving 11 districts in Democrats' favor. [11:20] Talk about the implication in this broader environment. [11:23] It looks increasingly like the center of the House battleground is in these districts that Trump won by even double digits in 2024. [11:31] And that includes districts in Ohio, in Iowa, but also in upstate New York and southern Minnesota, places that Republicans have done quite well over the past decade or so. [11:42] But these are parts of the country that used to vote for Democrats by wider margins. [11:46] And it looks like Democrats have a chance of making some gains here for the first time in a while. [11:52] Really significant. [11:52] When you look at where the president is campaigning and then you compare that against the map that you all are drawing, what do you make of the strategy that we're seeing unfold? [12:04] He's obviously been targeting largely ruby red states and districts. [12:09] I think that makes sense. [12:10] I mean, that is where, again, the bulk of these competitive races are, particularly for the House. [12:14] If you have a really competitive statewide race, like in the Ohio Senate race and the gubernatorial race, that has trickle down effects on all of these districts. [12:22] And so if you're sitting in a district that Sherrod Brown is winning by several points, it's tough as a Republican to defend yourself. [12:28] So but just to be and to drill down on the specifics a little bit more, you moved a lot of seats, 30, I believe, over the past two weeks towards Democrats. [12:39] But that doesn't mean that they're likely Democrats. [12:41] In fact, most of these races are still in the lean Republican category. [12:46] So what do Democrats actually have to do in order to flip one of these seats? [12:50] Because they still in some of these are facing an uphill battle. [12:53] They are. I mean, they're going to need to win over a certain number of disaffected Trump voters. [12:57] They're going to need to do very well with independents. [13:00] But that is quite possible. [13:01] Our current range for what we're expecting for control of the House is that Democrats pick up between 10 and 20 seats. [13:07] And so they'll have a majority regardless on either end of that range. [13:11] But that we've known from the beginning that would require them to play in red territory. [13:16] OK, well, so much to watch between now and Election Day. [13:19] And we'll be watching what the Cook Political Report does and says very closely. [13:23] Erin, thanks so much for being here.