WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — By all accounts, Tuesday’s Election Day is shaping up to be a bad night for Republicans.
Poll after poll shows GOP candidates in trouble across the country, trailing Democrats in must-win races and struggling to stay ahead in districts that were firmly red in 2024. And while polls can be wrong — and have been before — this week’s elections could end up as a broad-based repudiation of the Republican Party.
But GOP leaders, rather than acknowledging their dire straits, have adopted a new messaging strategy: telling voters to ignore the polls entirely.
“I will tell you, you can dismiss the polls,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said during a rally Sunday night in Dubuque, Iowa. “The polls are wrong, all around the country.”
A Republican rebuke of polling isn’t a new concept. Trump himself sued Iowa pollster Ann Selzer in 2024 over her final poll, which showed then-Vice President Kamala Harris leading him in the Hawkeye State by 3 percentage points; Trump ultimately won the state by double digits. (An Iowa state court dismissed the lawsuit in September; Selzer left political polling in November 2024.)
But in the 2026 cycle, the GOP’s distrust in polls is even more apparent. Johnson, in particular, has emerged as a chief critic of polling data, arguing pollsters engage in “faulty analysis” that leaves out Republican voices.
There are real difficulties pollsters face in getting enough GOP-leaning respondents for their polls, which has led many pollsters to begin weighting their polls to past election results. The Washington Post reported last week that its pollsters had a hard time engaging Republicans for a recent survey of Kansas voters. Another recent analysis from Politico found that just 1 in 4 Americans think pollsters will get the midterm results right this time around.
And in Trump’s backyard of West Palm Beach, Florida, decidedly safer territory for Republicans, both candidates and voters said they weren’t putting much stock in polls warning of big GOP losses on Election Day.
“We’re treating it as if we’re within 2 or 3 points, and going from there,” Bill Izbicki, a lifelong Republican, told HuffPost Sunday on the sidelines of a campaign event for Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.
Izbicki, a West Palm Beach resident who said he’d been campaigning on behalf of GOP candidates in the Sunshine State, contended that Florida voters he’d spoken with didn’t trust polls and that people were reluctant to pick up the phone and speak with a pollster who they believed could be biased.
“You don’t know who’s asking the questions,” he said.
Compared with other races across the country, Florida Republicans are in better shape. Uthmeier, for example, leads his Democratic opponent, José Rodríguez, by about 5 points in recent polls. Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) continues to lead challenger Angie Nixon, and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) is ahead of former Congressman David Jolly in the race for Florida’s governor.
The polling in other Sunshine State races remains inconclusive. In Florida’s redrawn 25th District, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and former Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer remain in a dead heat in public surveys, though internal polling conducted by both campaigns has shown each candidate slightly ahead.
Asked about his polling odds during a campaign event in Miami Beach last week, Singer was quick to point to his own rosier internal numbers. “Our poll had us up,” he told HuffPost. “There’s a variety of polls out there.”
Amid those competitive races, other Republican candidates say they’re paying no mind to the forecast. Uthmeier told HuffPost in an interview Sunday that, even with a polling advantage ahead of Tuesday’s election, his campaign isn’t leaving anything on the table.
“Polls are just polls,” he said. “You’ve got half of the electorate voting, so at this point you’ve got to do the job. We’re working as if we’re behind.”
While the veracity of the numbers remains to be seen, things are nonetheless looking grim for Republicans in key battleground races for the U.S. Senate. In the crucial Michigan race, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed maintains a slight lead over the GOP’s Mike Rogers. In Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton trails James Talarico. And in Kansas, one of the most expensive races of the 2026 cycle, Sen. Roger Marshall (R) is in a close contest with Democrat Adam Hamilton.
But, with days to go before ballots are counted, Republican leadership wants voters to look the other way.
“I have been all over the country, my friends, and I’m feeling really good right now,” Johnson said during a campaign stop in Michigan over the weekend. “I’m telling you, the polls are wrong. We’re going to be celebrating big victories on Tuesday night — that’s my prediction.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified the party affiliation of Rep. Jared Moskowitz. He is a Democrat.