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Democrats are slight favorites to regain control of the Senate, according to the FiveThirtyEight Senate forecast, which launched today. But the map is wide open, with at least a dozen competitive races none of which are certain pickups for Democrats including some states where Democrats are playing defense.

In fact, while its possible that Democrats will wind up controlling 54 seats or perhaps even more, the most likely outcome is a much more closely divided chamber, including the possibility of a 50/50 split in which control of the Senate would be determined by whether the vice president is Kamala Harris or Mike Pence. (Joe Biden and Harris currently have a 76 percent chance of winning the presidential race, according to our forecast.)

Our Congressional model (our forecast for House races will be released soon) is largely the same as the version we built in 2018, which was quite accurate in predicting the number of Senate and House seats that each party would win. Weve made a handful of changes since 2018, most of which were designed to create more consistency with our presidential forecast, including assuming that uncertainty is slightly higher this year because of an increase in mail voting under COVID-19. But these adjustments dont greatly change the outlook. For a complete list of changes, see our methodology guide.

As in 2018, there are three versions of the model, which build on one another and become increasingly complex:

The Lite version of the model relies as much as possible on polling. In races that dont have much or any polling, it calculates the candidates standing from other races that have been polled.

The Classic version relies on polling but also incorporates fundamentals such as fundraising, incumbency and a states partisan lean relative to the rest of the country.

Finally, the Deluxe version takes all of the above and adds in expert ratings from The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and Sabatos Crystal Ball.

By default, were showing you the Deluxe version of the model this year. Its supposed to be the most accurate one and given everything going on were inclined to cut to the chase. But you can toggle between the versions using the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the page.

You might want to get in the habit of doing this, too, because there are some fairly large differences between the model versions this year. This reflects the fact that the polling in individual Senate races is generally quite good for Democrats, while other indicators and expert ratings are more equivocal. For instance, the poll-centric Lite version of the model currently gives Democrats a 68 percent chance of winning the Senate, as compared to a 64 percent chance in the Classic version and a 58 percent chance in the Deluxe version.

These differences stem from the fact that despite their strong polling, conditions for Democrats are inherently a little challenging in the Senate. They need to gain a net of three or four seats to win control, depending on if they also win the presidency. More likely, though, they will need to flip four or five Republican-held seats, because chances are good that one seat will flip from blue to red: Democrat Doug Jones is an underdog to keep his seat in Alabama, which he won against a very bad opponent in a special election in 2017.

Furthermore, while there are a great many Republicans up for re-election this year, only two of them (Colorados Sen. Cory Gardner and Maines Sen. Susan Collins) are in states that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Thus, Democrats will have to pick up seats in states that have traditionally been Republican-leaning, such as Georgia and North Carolina. They also have some more ambitious (but redder) targets in races in Kansas, South Carolina and Alaska.

National conditions are pretty good for Democrats they lead on the generic congressional ballot by 6.4 percentage points, and President Trump is fairly unpopular and an underdog for reelection but they are not spectacular. (Democrats won the popular vote for the House by nearly 9 points in 2018, for example, a bigger margin than their current generic-ballot lead.) Moreover, Democrats are mostly aiming to defeat Republican incumbents, and even though the incumbency advantage has diminished in recent years, its rare that you can take much for granted in races featuring incumbents.

Still, the sheer number of plausible Democratic pickup opportunities is surprising and favorable for the party given that the conventional wisdom in 2019 was that Democrats might have trouble finding enough targets to take the Senate. The table below is a list of Republican-held seats where Democrats have at least a 5 percent chance of winning in at least one version of our model. There are 16 (!) of these. In some cases, the model is being exceptionally conservative because of a lack of polling in the state, but the first dozen on the list are realistic pickup opportunities for Democrats.

Republican-held seats where Democrats have at least a 5 percent chance of winning in at least one version of FiveThirtyEights model, as of 5 p.m on Sept. 17

Democrats single best pickup opportunity is probably in Arizona, where Republican Sen. Martha McSally who lost to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the race for Arizonas other Senate seat two years ago badly trails Democrat Mark Kelly in polls. Nor is McSally, who was appointed to the seat following the death of Sen. John McCain, likely to benefit much from incumbency, as appointed incumbents typically perform much worse than elected ones.

Meanwhile, the two Republicans in Clinton-won states, Gardner and Collins, are also behind in polls. Still, it may be premature to write their political obituaries, especially for Collins. She won her last race by a large margin, she has a fairly moderate voting record, Maine only barely voted for Clinton in 2016, and experts continue to rate the race as a toss-up, all factors that help keep her afloat in our Classic and Deluxe models.

The fourth state where Democrats are currently favored for a pickup is in North Carolina, where Democrat Cal Cunningham, a former state senator, leads Republican incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis in polls and is also a slight favorite according to the fundamentals our model evaluates. And troubling for Tillis is that he has some of the hallmarks of a weak incumbent: He only barely won his seat in 2014, which was a much better political environment than the one Republicans face now, and he badly lags Cunningham in fundraising.

Indeed, many Republican incumbents, such as Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, David Perdue of Georgia and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, face some version of this problem, as many of them won by single-digit margins in 2014, a year when Republicans won the popular vote for the U.S. House by about 6 points. But this year, the national environment favors Democrats by 6 or 7 points, so thats around a 12-point swing, putting Republicans who won by narrow margins last time in the danger zone.

Other Demoratic opportunities are more idiosyncratic. In Montana, theyre hoping to benefit from the personal popularity of Steve Bullock, who is currently the governor there (although the Republican incumbent is favored in our forecast at the moment). And in South Carolina, Democrat Jaime Harrison has run a surprisingly competitive race against incumbent Sen. Linsday Graham, who once had a reputation for moderation but has now become a major defender of Trump, a shift that may mean hes now not satisfying voters in either camp. In addition to Perdues seat, there is also a second seat open in Georgia, currently held by the appointed incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler. (This special election is unusual, though, in that multiple candidates from both parties will face off on Election Day, and if no one gets a majority, two candidates will move to a runoff in January.)

In an average simulation, our forecast has Democrats picking up about six Republican-held seats in the Lite model, around five in the Classic model and about four and a half in the Deluxe model. And that would be enough for them to win control of the Senate even if they fail to capture the presidency.

However, Democrats also have some seats of their own to defend. Most notably, there is Joness seat in Alabama. Running for reelection as a Democrat in one of the reddest states in the country puts him at a disadvantage, and this time around he doesnt have the benefit of running against Roy Moore, who multiple women accused of pursuing sexual relationships with them while they were in their teens. (Instead, his opponent is the former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville.) But like Collins in Maine, whose chances shift significantly depending on which version of the model you look at, Jones might not be completely done for. The polls do make it look like Jones is a goner (hence his low chances in the Lite forecast), but the fundamentals including the fact that hes raised a lot of money and has a track record of moderation give Jones an uphill chance at victory.

Democrat-held seats where Republicans have at least a 5 percent chance of winning in at least one version of FiveThirtyEights model, as of 5 p.m. on Sept. 17

After Alabama, there is a big drop-off in the likelihood of possible Republican pickups, but their next best chance is probably in Michigan, where John James, who ran a surprisingly vigorous race against Demoratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2018, is within striking distance of Michigans other Democratic senator, Gary Peters. Minnesota, New Mexico and New Hampshire also represent long-shot opportunities for Republicans, although those seats will likely change hands only if the night is going very badly for Democrats.

So while we know youre tired of hearing this the outcome is, at this point, uncertain.

There are plausible upside scenarios for Democrats where tight polling margins against incumbents like Graham prove to be the canary in the coal mine for widespread Republican problems, and Biden and Harris get to craft an agenda with as many as 54 or 55 Democratic senators.

At the same time, though, the Senate is probably a heavier lift for Democrats than the presidency. Lets imagine, for example, that Biden flipped Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona and retained all the states Clinton won, which would imply a solid but not overwhelming margin in the presidential race. In that scenario, even if every Senate race went the same way as the presidential election, Democrats would still come up one seat short, picking up Maine, Colorado and Arizona but losing Joness seat in Alabama.

And while its certainly possible that most of the toss-up races will break in the same direction as the presidential race, Senate races can be quirky. Democrats got a mixed set of results in 2018, for example, picking up seats in Arizona and Nevada but also seeing four of their incumbents lose.

One thing Democrats dont have to worry about: If they pick up the Senate, its very likely that theyll have retained the House, too; Republicans are starting out with a big deficit there and are playing at least as much defense as offense. There are scenarios where Republicans could win the House, but they involve the national climate unexpectedly turning into a Republcian landslide, in which case Democrats wont be competitive in the Senate anyway. But well discuss that more when we release our House forecast. In the meantime, please drop us a line if you have any questions about the Senate.

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Democrats Are Slight Favorites To Take Back The Senate - FiveThirtyEight

Youve probably heard of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but you may not have heard of Derek Kilmer. Kilmer grew up in a timber region in Washington State that had seen many of its logging jobs disappear. First at Princeton, then getting a Ph.D. at Oxford, he studied how towns recover from deindustrialization. He went back home to help his community recover economically and now represents that community in Congress.

Kilmer is the chairman of the largest ideological group among House Democrats, the New Democrat Coalition. The New Democrat Coalition is a caucus for moderate and center-left House Democrats. It has 103 House members, of whom 42 are the up-and-coming freshmen who brought the Democrats their majority. Its self-declared priorities are pro-economic growth, pro-innovation and fiscal responsibility.

You may not have heard of Kilmer or even the New Democrat Coalition. The media wing of the Republican Party wants to pretend that A.O.C., the Squad, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are the Democratic Party because it wants you to think Democrats are a bunch of socialists.

Progressive Twitter is far to the left of the actual Democratic Party and it also emphasizes A.O.C., Sanders and Warren because thats what makes its heart flutter. Even the mainstream media pays far more attention to the Squad than to Kilmer or moderates like Abigail Spanberger.

This week a thoughtful scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Danielle Pletka, fell for the mirage. She wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in which she disdained President Trump but said she would have to vote for him because the Democrats have moved so far left.

Pletkas essay kicked up a storm, but usefully raised the question: Where exactly is the Democratic Party?

The professionals who actually run the party do not fall for the mirage. Nancy Pelosi understands that her job is to manage a group that includes both A.O.C. and the New Democrat Coalitions members.

House Democrats began this Congress with nine bills that were their top priorities. They were about such things as infrastructure spending, lower prescription drug prices, voting rights, gerrymandering and democracy reform, and rejoining the Paris climate accords.

The Green New Deal and so-called Medicare for all were not on the table. Pelosi was promoting ideas a majority of the House Democrats could agree on, and these ideas are not radical left.

Joe Biden has the same approach. Biden was arguably the most moderate of the nearly 30 Democrats who ran for president in the past year. The team around him, the folks who would presumably lead his administration, are Clinton/Obama veterans and not exactly a bunch of left-wing woke activists: Mike Donilon, Ron Klain, Anita Dunn, Jake Sullivan, Jeff Zients and Bruce Reed, one of the leaders of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council.

They understand they are leading an extremely broad coalition and have done an excellent, underappreciated job of incorporating both moderate ideas and ideas from the Bernie Bros.

To the extent that Bidens gone left, its mostly in areas where the moderates agree: quadrupling federal spending on low-income housing assistance, making community college free.

A Biden administration would not be further left than the Democratic voters out in the country or their representatives in Congress. Those voters are not mostly the urban gentrifiers who propel the left; they are mostly the somewhat liberal suburbanites and Black moderates who gave Biden the nomination.

In 2018, those voters massively rejected almost all of the nearly 80 Sanders-like insurgents the left put up to challenge more moderate incumbents in primaries. This year, with only three exceptions, theyve done the same. This week Senator Chris Coons of Delaware held off a Medicare-for-all, Green New Deal challenger 73 percent to 27 percent.

If you ask whether the Democrats shifted too far left, my answer is: The party has gotten more ideologically diverse, but there is a large, strong center that will keep it in the political mainstream.

But there is a prior and more important question here: Are the Democrats a political party?

You might have thought that the Democratic and Republican Parties are different versions of the same thing, but thats no longer true. As Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution has noted, the G.O.P. is no longer a standard coalition party. Its an anti-political insurgency that, even before Trump, has been elevating candidates with no political experience and who dont believe in the compromise and jostle of politics.

Right now, Republicans are a culture war identity movement that suppresses factional disagreement and demands total loyalty to Trump.

The Democrats are still a normal political party. In 2020 they rejected the base mobilization candidates who imagine you can magically create a revolutionary majority if only you go purist.

Biden is a man who doesnt do culture war, who will separate the cultural left from the political left, reduce politics back to its normal size and calm an increasingly apocalyptic and hysterical nation.

The Democratic Party is an institution that still practices coalition politics, that serves as a vehicle for the diverse interests and ideas in society to filter up into legislation, that plays by the rules of the game, that believes in rule of law. Right now, it is the only major party that does that.

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No, the Democrats Havent Gone Over the Edge - The New York Times

In July, as the coronavirus pandemic raged, Joseph R. Biden Jr. made one trip to a battleground state. In August, he again visited just one swing state. And on the second weekend in September, less than eight weeks before Election Day, Mr. Bidens only activity was going to church near his Delaware home.

Mr. Bidens restraint has spilled over into his campaign operation, which was late to appoint top leaders in key states and embraced a far more cautious approach to in-person engagement than President Trump, and even some other Democratic candidates. While the Trump campaign claims it is knocking on a million doors a week, the Biden team is relying heavily on TV ads and contacting voters largely through phone calls, text messaging programs and other digital outreach.

That guarded strategy reflects the bet Mr. Bidens campaign has made for months: that American voters will reward a sober, responsible approach that mirrors the ways the pandemic has upended their own lives, and follows scientific guidance that Mr. Trump almost gleefully flouts.

Yet as Mr. Trump barrels ahead with crowded, risky rallies, some Democrats in battleground states are growing increasingly anxious about the trade-offs Mr. Biden has made. With some polls tightening since the beginning of the summer, they are warning him that virtual events may not be enough to excite voters, and urging him to intensify in-person outreach.

Mr. Biden has begun to accelerate the pace of his travel, and this week is one of the busiest he has had in months, with two speeches in Delaware, a trip to Florida and an appearance at a CNN town hall on Thursday near his hometown, Scranton, Pa. On Friday he will campaign in Minnesota.

Yet the concern among these Democrats is whether, in closely fought states that may be won on the margins, the Biden campaign is engaging every possible voter with an affirmative case for his candidacy, when the other side simply has more traditional tactics they are willing to use.

It feels like asymmetric warfare, said Matt Munsey, the Democratic chair in Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania, one of the counties Mr. Trump narrowly flipped in 2016, referring to Mr. Bidens approach versus Mr. Trumps.

Livestreamed events were not necessarily reaching people, Mr. Munsey cautioned. And though he praised Mr. Biden for getting out there more, he expressed frustration that his in-person events were kept so small: The campaign has been so wary about exceeding crowd limits, he said, that local leaders have complained of not being invited.

Compounding the challenge is an on-the-ground operation that was weak during the primary season and was slow to scale up in the general election. Strapped for cash after the primaries and uncertain about how to campaign amid a national lockdown, the Biden team initially refrained from greatly expanding its staff. It entered the summer without state directors in critical battlegrounds like Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania, and efforts to establish local operations stretched deep into the summer.

Now Democrats from Florida to Nevada have worried that the team is behind where it should be in engaging some core constituencies, a problem that may also have implications for new voter registrations.

In Erie County, Pa., for instance, local party leaders have been imploring the Biden campaign to have more of a presence on the ground. They became so impatient to begin interacting directly with voters that they took it upon themselves to go from house to house to distribute campaign signs, drop literature and speak with people at a pandemic-acceptable distance.

Only recently has the campaign begun to rev up its field program in the Erie area and across the state, local officials said.

If you complain as much as I do and you beat on the doors of the national campaign, theyre eventually going to respond to you, said Ryan Bizzarro, a state representative from the county, a onetime Democratic stronghold that Mr. Trump flipped in 2016.

Beyond the risk of leaving voters feeling overlooked, Mr. Bidens limited travel schedule provided ammunition to Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly mocked him for rarely straying from his Delaware home. You need a lot of energy to do this job properly, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event in Phoenix on Monday, adding that you cant be sitting in your basement for four days.

Democrats have no interest in replicating Mr. Trumps rallies, which pose health risks and also turn off voters who are alarmed by the dangers of Covid-19. Mr. Biden has been eager to make the race a referendum on Mr. Trump and his stewardship of the pandemic, a game plan that polls generally suggest is working, including with traditionally Republican-leaning constituencies like seniors.

Now flush with cash, the Biden team is active on the airwaves, and on Wednesday announced it would spend more than $65 million on paid advertising in battleground states this week.

Asked if Mr. Biden has been visible enough in Hillsborough County home to Tampa, Fla., where he traveled on Tuesday Ione Townsend, the Democratic chair there, replied, No.

But I also dont want him to have the kind of events that Trump is having, because I think those are superspreader events, she said ahead of his trip. In these last few weeks he needs to do more of that kind of stuff that hes now doing.

In early May, Mr. Biden also held an event focused on a Tampa audience a virtual rally riddled with technical glitches. The campaign soon moved away from such efforts in favor of a series of policy rollout speeches as well as online activities, and Mr. Biden devoted considerable time to receiving briefings on the virus and the economy.

Joe Biden is working to earn every vote with a groundbreaking campaign that meets this moment, said Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman. And hes doing it in the way he would govern: by putting the well-being of the American families hed fight for every day in office first.

In a briefing with reporters earlier this month, Mr. Bidens campaign manager, Jennifer OMalley Dillon, said the team had more than 2,500 staff members who were supporting the organizing across our battleground states, and had made a $100 million investment in on-the-ground organizing.

Still, Mr. Biden has visited Wisconsin only once in 2020, for a one-day trip to Kenosha two weeks ago after the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Until last week, he had made no trips to Michigan since the primary election there in March. He has yet to travel this year to Arizona.

In New Hampshire, where Mr. Bidens wife, Jill Biden, campaigned on Wednesday, some Democrats have raised alarms as polls show a tightening race in a state Hillary Clinton barely won.

Ive been telling them they need to get their signs out, said State Senator Lou DAllesandro, a veteran New Hampshire Democrat and early Biden supporter. We need to be doing more in direct engagement. We are beginning to see that.

In Ohio, Danny OConnor, the county recorder in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, urged Mr. Bidens campaign to start hitting doors in order to make sure were getting as much turnout as we can, because the other sides out knocking.

A Zoom connect or whatever just doesnt replace standing on someones door and asking them to commit to vote and looking them in the eye and telling them why youre supporting someone for the most important position in the world, added Mr. OConnor, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2018.

Rogette Harris, the Democratic chair in Dauphin County, Pa., said the campaign had deployed six staff members about three weeks ago to the central part of the state and planned to open distribution centers in Harrisburg within the next week, where supporters could pick up campaign materials and yard signs.

But Ms. Harris said it was imperative that Mr. Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, campaign across Pennsylvania, and not just in the big cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

I do think the polls have tightened because of the lack of presence, she said.

Many party officials say they are confident that Mr. Bidens strategy is both sensible and effective. Local officials in Wisconsin say they are seeing great enthusiasm for Mr. Biden and expressed confidence that he would win the state in November.

Mary Arnold, the Democratic chair in rural Columbia County, said she heard many pleas for Mr. Biden to come to Wisconsin a few months ago. But recently, she said, people have been more accepting of Mr. Bidens strategy, including keeping his events small.

Im getting this much stronger sense that people respect him for that decision because he doesnt want to kill people, she said.

Many of Mr. Bidens allies said they were content to have Mr. Biden mostly remain at his house in the summer, not wanting to interrupt what they viewed as Mr. Trumps self-sabotage. Still, in late August, as Mr. Trump intensified his law and order message and painted Mr. Biden as a Trojan horse of the liberal left, demands among Democrats to see Mr. Biden traveling more and speaking to voters directly reached a fever pitch. Aides in early September previewed a fall strategy that included an escalated travel schedule, a promise the candidate has made good on the last two weeks.

Representative Andy Levin of Michigan had been especially vehement that Mr. Biden should visit Macomb County, a blue-collar region in southeast Michigan that twice voted for Barack Obama before turning to Mr. Trump in 2016 and last week, Mr. Biden did. Mr. Levin said in an interview this week that he wanted the former vice president to keep doing just what hes doing.

Every time he appears in public, he demonstrates that he will be the public health president that he takes the pandemic seriously, Mr. Levin said. People can get anxious, I guess, that Trump is holding all these big events and Biden isnt, and I say, keep on going. Keep on demonstrating that you will not advance your self-interest at the expense of the American people because that is the nub of who Donald Trump is.

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Does Biden Need a Higher Gear? Some Democrats Think So - The New York Times

The shift comes after a national legal campaign has successfully resulted in expanded access to mail-in voting in nearly every state -- prompting an unprecedented shift in the way millions of Americans will be able to vote due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But as voting is set to begin in more states in the coming weeks, Democrats have settled on a strategy of emphasizing that all voting options, including in-person early and Election Day voting, are safe amid the pandemic.

"We've got to vote early, in person if we can," Obama said, as she urged Democrats to cast their ballots ahead of an election in which she said democracy itself was at stake.

The former first lady also did not miss an opportunity to urge voters to request their mail-in ballots as soon as possible. But her message to "grab our comfortable shoes, put on our masks" and head to the polls was a notable change of emphasis compared to her party's laser-like focus on mail-in voting since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Just Monday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, cast their ballots in-person a day before Delaware's primary. Biden and his allies have routinely encouraged mail-in voting, and Delaware allows all registered voters to cast their ballots by mail.

Increasing anxiety

"Maybe 98% of the Black people I'm talking to are not trusting mail-in voting," said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. "I think there is a major consideration around voting in-person."

"We also share some of the concerns around mail-in voting, but we want to keep that an option. The sweet spot for us is to vote early," Brown said.

Brown said her organization and partner groups are securing thousands of cloth masks in anticipation of supporting in-person voting. She also expects that get-out-the-vote efforts, which have been modified due to Covid-19, will start treating the beginning of early voting in most states like the beginning of a series of Election Days in order to avoid a "disaster" on November 3.

Some Democrats have long expressed concerns that some of their own constituents could be most hurt by rejected ballots or other problems like late-arriving ballots that are more likely to occur during mail-in voting.

A shift in message and strategy

Democratic operatives in Senate campaigns in battleground states across the country say the messaging around voting has become more nuanced; they're avoiding the implication that in-person voting is not safe.

"The last thing we want to suggest to our voters is voting in person is necessarily a trade off with your health," said one senior Democrat on a Senate campaign. "The overarching message is however you want to vote, it is safe and secure."

"(President Trump) has succeeded in making people scared and distrustful of the post office," that operative told CNN. "There were large swaths of voters who already weren't sure about the post office, so people need to understand they have other options."

Recently, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who served as an adviser in the Obama administration, analyzed the relative risk of contracting coronavirus while voting and came to a simple conclusion.

"There's a lot of conversation about voting, but we looked at the data. It seems most like shopping at the grocery store. And that has some risk but it's pretty low risk," Emanuel said in an interview.

Emanuel said that conclusion is based on a better understanding of how the virus spreads, the widespread availability and use of facemasks and other precautions, as well as evidence suggesting that voting, like grocery shopping, has not led to any widespread outbreaks since the beginning of the pandemic.

"There are ways and reasons to vote in person," Emanuel said. "People should not fear for their lives by going out and voting. It's a hell of a lot safer than going to a restaurant."

In April and May, as the pandemic ravaged parts of the Midwest, the East and the West Coasts, Democrats had a clear message: Americans should not be forced to risk their lives to cast their ballots.

One by one, states postponed their presidential primaries and other elections scheduled for early summer, concerned that indoor polling places, sometimes located in poorly ventilated school gymnasiums, would be hotbeds for viral spread.

But as the November election approaches, states have shifted their strategies, opting for larger "voting centers" like sports arenas that allow for better air flow and require fewer poll workers. Some states have also expanded early voting in addition to expanded absentee voting.

That effort is being boosted by a multi-million dollar effort led by athletes, including basketball star LeBron James, to recruit poll workers for in-person voting sites in Black districts ahead of the November election.

The National Basketball Association and the NBA Players Association agreed to offer up arenas to serve as large polling locations that can more safely accommodate in-person voters.

All of this has led some public health experts like Emanuel to say that the risk inherent in in-person voting is not as significant as other activities.

"If the consequence of us not talking about it is that turnout is low, that's a bad thing," Emanuel said.

A partisan divide

Much of the resistance to voting by mail is due to Trump's repeated, false attacks on the practice. He has deemed it the "ballot hoax" and accused states that have moved to mostly mail-in voting of rigging the election.

Trump and White House aides have suggested that the results of the election must be known on election night, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany left open the possibility that Trump's acceptance of the election results would depend on the results.

"The President has always said he'll see what happens and make a determination in the aftermath," McEnany said in a press briefing when asked about Trump's claim that the only way he would lose the election is if there were massive fraud.

That partisan divide has fueled new worries that the in-person vote on Election Day could differ dramatically from the mail-in vote.

Early in the pandemic, Pildes was among the experts pushing for expanded vote-by-mail options. He acknowledged that making the pivot to emphasizing in-person voting might be a challenge for Democrats now.

"I don't think it was wrong to want to open up options for people to vote by mail," Pildes said. "But I think it makes it difficult to pivot now and get the message out that while you should use that option if you feel like you are at particularly significant risk health-wise, it would actually be better for the election overall if more people voted in person."

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Democrats scramble to soothe voter fears about in-person voting ahead of November election - CNN

A new poll shows Democrats leading Republicans in Maine in elections for president, U.S. Senate and U.S. Representative from the 2nd Congressional District.

The poll, released Friday by the New York Times and Siena College Research Institute, has Democrat Sara Gideon leading Republican Sen. Susan Collins by a margin of 49 percent to 44 percent.

Numerous polls have shown Gideon with a slight lead over Collins. This week, a Quinnipiac University survey gave Gideon, who serves as Maines speaker of the House in the Legislature, a 12-point advantage, although the poll failed to account for ranked-choice voting or the races two independent candidates.

The Times/Siena College poll released Friday did include the two independents in the Senate race, Lisa Savage and Max Linn, and accounted for ranked-choice voting, which gives voters the option of ranking candidates on the ballot in their order of preference.

Collins was polling at 40 percent, Gideon at 44 percent, Savage at 4.5 percent and Linn at 2 percent prior to the application of ranked choice.

After ranked-choice voting eliminated the two independents, the poll had Gideon with a 5-point lead on Collins. The ranked-choice process would only come into play if no candidate gets 50 percent or more of the vote when ballots are first tabulated.

In the presidential race, the poll shows Democrat Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by 55 percent to 38 percent in Maine, with 6 percent undecided and 1 percent indicating they would not be voting for president.

The poll also asked voters about the race for U.S. Representative in Maines 2nd District, where Democrat Rep. Jared Golden is facing Republican Dale Crafts. The findings showed Golden up 56 percent to 37 percent, with 6 percent undecided.

The poll surveyed 663 likely Maine voters between Sept. 11 and 16 and had a margin of error of 5.1 percentage points.

In addition to Maine, the Times and Siena College surveyed voters in Arizona and North Carolina over roughly the same time period and released those results Friday as well. All three states are seen as having key Senate races this election cycle, and in each state the poll showed Democratic candidates leading by five points or more.

The poll also asked voters about how they think Trump has performed as president and whether Trump or Biden would do a better job of addressing the coronavirus pandemic.

In Maine, 29 percent of voters strongly approved of Trumps handling his job as president, 10 percent somewhat approved, 7 percent somewhat disapproved and 53 strongly disapproved. One percent refused to answer or didnt know.

On the handling of the virus, Biden led Trump 60 percent to 35 percent with five percent refusing to answer or saying they didnt know.

Maine voters also said they disapproved of Collins vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, by a margin of 55 percent to 38 percent, and disapproved of her vote against impeaching Trump by a margin of 55 percent to 43 percent. On Collins 2017 vote against the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Maine voters approved by a margin of 50 percent to 39 percent.

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Poll shows Democrats including Gideon and Biden ahead in Maine - Press Herald