Midterm results may stay undecided for days as Elving watches interference
No certain reason has emerged for the weekend rallies in Iowa and Kansas that President Trump scrapped and then restored to his schedule, NPR’s Ron Elving told host Scott Simon. Trump said Friday night that his phone “blew up” after the Iowa and Kansas cancellations, that people were very disappointed, and that he did not want to let them down. Elving said much of the scheduling is driven by data analysis, but one theory holds that the cancellations generated a buzz Trump did not like — suggestions that he was “throwing in the towel” in races in those states.
Elving’s endgame accounting also weighed the money on both sides — multiple sources say Elon Musk has spent over $350 million on the 2026 cycle overall — and flagged the printed Alaska Senate ballot, which clearly differentiates the two candidates named Dan Sullivan, and the possibility that undecided races stay that way for days, with interference among his watch items.
The stakes are concrete: both are Senate seats now in Republican hands that Elving said the party badly needs to hold — especially Kansas, where no Democrat has been elected to the Senate since 1932.
The schedule news landed alongside a court order aimed at protecting the vote count. Simon reported that a federal judge in California has issued an order that the Justice Department “may not threaten, intimidate or coerce any state or local elections officials or workers over counting ballots.”
Elving said Trump’s message has changed “only here and there at the margins” since campaigning began in early September at the first-ever Republican National Midterm Convention. The core, he said, is securing the southern border and a set of economic claims at odds with what most voters say they are seeing — on tariffs, inflation and surging gas prices, which Trump says will “just go away right after the election.” Trump spent the past month going from one battleground state to another, Simon noted.
Lately, Elving said, Trump has been stressing his case that Democrats are cheating, including accusations of noncitizens voting with what Elving said is no evidence beyond a handful of cases.
One example, Elving said, is Trump’s seizing on a New York Times report that Alaska Democrats had looked for people named Dan Sullivan to run against incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. The printed ballot, Elving noted, clearly differentiates between the two Sullivans and makes clear that one is the incumbent senator; the Alaska Supreme Court has already taken a look at the case; and the state’s ranked-choice system simply allows more than one candidate from a single party.
The money on the two sides is lopsided, Elving said. Democrats have been outspent, battling what he described as almost limitless resources from Republican donors such as Elon Musk. Multiple sources say Musk has spent over $350 million on this cycle overall.
Democrats’ hope, Elving said, is that voters will still get information about candidates who could have run for Congress on their lives outside politics — and many did — nominees he described as defying the stereotype of Democrats as coastal elites. Simon observed that he and Elving have both learned to be cautious about polls, but that candidate quality still seems to matter. In Kansas, where Trump arrives this weekend, the Democrats’ Senate nominee, Adam Hamilton, is an ordained Methodist minister. In Texas, the Democratic Senate candidate, James Talarico, has been studying for a divinity degree at a Presbyterian seminary and is the grandson of a Baptist minister.
Elving said he will watch the usual markers Tuesday night — turnout, early leads, which races get called early and which look likely to be undecided — and cautioned that the undecided races may stay that way for days. This year, with all of Trump’s threats, he will also watch for interference “in various forms,” both on Election Day and night and in the days to come, adding that it is not likely to be over on election night or even the next day.