A polling expert says claims of a Democratic Senate blue wave do not match voting patterns, with Texas and Ohio still strongly positioned to stay Republican.
Newsmax host Ed Henry heard a blunt assessment Wednesday from Patrick Allocco, founder and CEO of the Zoose Political Index: the blue-wave story line in the Senate is not showing up in the data his firm tracks.
Republicans are defending their Senate majority in the Nov. 3 elections. Democrats hope to gain ground by leaning on President Donald Trump’s softer numbers in several national polls. Allocco said the voting record does not back a wave narrative.
He put it plainly on “Ed Henry: The Big Take.”
"We've never seen evidence in the Senate of a blue wave. We've never seen that form. And we've been saying it for quite some time,"
Allocco told viewers. His firm built a probability index by comparing presidential voting behavior from 2016 through 2024 with the 2018 and 2022 midterms, then applying that lens to this year’s Senate map.
The numbers Allocco cited leave little room for the flip scenarios some Democrats are selling. He said the so-called easy targets are not easy at all.
"You know, these red states are staying red. And you've got states like Texas that have an 85% probability of staying Republican and Ohio 82%,"
he said. Those figures undercut the idea that a national mood swing alone can pry open deep-red Senate seats. That reading tracks with other recent signals that Republicans lead or tie key Senate contests rather than face a broad collapse.
Allocco went further on the quality of the public polling fueling flip talk.
"So these states that they're saying are easy to flip. They're not. And I don't believe they're using the proper recall data to formulate these polls."
In plain terms, he is arguing that some survey shops are relying on weak memory of past votes instead of harder patterns of who actually shows up. That is a methodological fight, not a vibes fight. And it matters for anyone treating every soft poll as proof of a coming wave.
Cygnal founder and CEO Brent Buchanan has warned that Republicans are having trouble holding infrequent and newer voters, while Democrats keep nearly all of their coalition. Allocco did not dismiss retention issues out of hand. He said the damage looks more limited than that framing suggests.
“Maybe in Texas, they're not holding on. But in other states, they are,” he said. That distinction matters for a party defending a Senate majority state by state instead of chasing a single national weather report. Senate GOP leaders have struck a similar note, with John Thune predicting Republicans can beat the polls and hold the chamber when the votes are counted.
The broader “wave” story has struggled outside the Senate conversation as well. In an off-year snapshot, National Review columnist Henry Olsen noted that Democratic nominees “should be easily dominating” the New Jersey and Virginia governor races, “but polls suggest that’s not the case,” and that Republicans could treat even narrow losses relative to Trump’s 2024 margins as a sign of Democratic underperformance.
Texas remains the loudest stress test. Democrat James Talarico is in a heated race against Republican nominee Ken Paxton. Allocco pointed to divisions among Texas Republicans, including camps tied to Sen. John Cornyn and strategist Karl Rove, and still did not see the defection math working for Democrats.
His threshold was specific.
"Talarico would need 12% of those voters, Republican voters, just to have a shot at winning this state. We're not seeing it,"
Allocco said. A double-digit share of Republican ballots is a steep ask in a state his model still rates as heavily Republican. Internal party fights make noise. They do not automatically hand the seat to the other party. That is a useful reminder as Republican candidates sort out their own lanes in pivotal Senate and governor races without assuming every split becomes a Democratic opening.
Democrats have also pointed to early and mail ballots as proof the ground is shifting. Allocco urged caution, using Iowa as the example. Reports there described a substantial Democratic edge among mail-in ballots. He said the raw count tells a quieter story.
"When you look under the hood, 77% represents 4,300 ballots out of 170,000 ballots,"
he said, adding, “So it's a small bit.” A large percentage of a thin early slice is not the same thing as a locked-in statewide lead. Treating the first trickle as the final map is how wave talk gets ahead of the electorate.
That same gap between narrative and numbers has shown up in other competitive states, including places where general-election polling has still favored the Republican even after Democratic primary momentum. Democrats can win seats. A sweeping Senate blue wave is a different claim, and Allocco says the voting record still does not show it.
Wave talk thrives on soft polls, early snapshots, and national mood pieces. Majorities are won in states, by voters who keep showing up the same way until the data says otherwise.
