AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Heading into this last weekend before Election Day, nearly 50 million people have already voted, either in person or by mail. The total vote in 2022's midterms was 112 million. This year's on pace to beat that number. NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
RASCOE: So where do things stand this morning from your point of view?
LIASSON: Well, Republicans and Democrats agree privately that the House will most likely go to the Democrats. It's unclear about the margin, probably a bigger one than the tiny majority that Republicans have now. Both sides say they are optimistic about the Senate. Of course, someone has to be wrong. Either Democrats will win the Senate majority, or Republicans will hold onto it.
The handful of races that are going to determine the majority in the Senate are all still polling within the margin of error. That means that they're too close to call. Democrats will probably pick up seats in the Senate, but it's not clear if they will get the net four pickups they need to take control. And the states that are going to determine that are Texas, Maine, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and Kansas, a lot of red states.
RASCOE: Campaigns are making their final arguments, and, you know, those are going to vary race to race. In general, though, are there any issues that have risen to the top of voters' minds that stands out to you?
LIASSON: Yes, data centers. That was surprising. In the beginning of the cycle, it wasn't clear they would be such a big issue. States had been competing to get data centers to come to their states, but it turns out they are very unpopular. That sentiment is bipartisan. It's an example of the kind of economic populism that we see converging from the left and right. It's why you saw Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon appear at the same anti-AI conference.
And data centers is the way that AI is most present to voters in their own communities. Majorities don't want them there. And it's caused some pretty dramatic flip-flops. Incumbent Texas Governor Greg Abbott courted data centers for years. All of a sudden, now he's for a moratorium.
And I think they've become a proxy for the backlash against billionaires. You know, the rich get richer while you can't afford gas. And the debate over the data centers also illustrates another big theme of the campaign, which is that Donald Trump is on the opposite side of majority popular opinion. On issue after issue, this is true - on Iran, on tariffs. On data centers, he says he's for them. He's called them a golden goose for the economy. He was in Ohio in October at a rally with Republican incumbent Senator Jon Husted. He said, we want data centers. He says, you can't turn them off. They'll go to China.
RASCOE: October has come and gone. Were there any so-called October surprises?
LIASSON: Well, I would say the closest thing to an October surprise is the double Dan Sullivan situation in Alaska. The Republican governor there says he's starting an investigation. President Trump has asked his Department of Justice to investigate how Daniel J. Sullivan got on the ballot. The incumbent senator is Dan S. Sullivan. There was some reporting in The New York Times that the Mary Peltola campaign - she's the Democratic candidate - was deeply involved in recruiting Dan J. Sullivan. Peltola denies that. The big question is, is any of this illegal?
RASCOE: I mean, that is a big question. Alaska's Supreme Court ruled in June that both Sullivans could appear on the ballot. And this is far from the first example of political parties, for lack of a better term, gaming the vote.
LIASSON: That's right. It happens a lot. Both parties do it. There are some examples this cycle. And one of them in Ohio, a Republican group, spent more than $2 million to promote a socialist candidate in the Senate race named Greg Levy. They're hoping to pull away votes from the Democratic candidate, former Senator Sherrod Brown.
So sometimes it's a person with a similar name, like in Alaska. Sometimes it's a person who's on the extreme of the opposite party, and the other party backs them in an effort to try to split the vote. Remember when Trump's allies tried to get Kanye West to run for president in hopes that he could split the Black vote? It's just unclear what, if any, laws these kinds of political shenanigans would break.
RASCOE: And yet the Justice Department is moving forward with its lawsuit about this, right?
LIASSON: That's right. They're asking a judge to separate all ballots in Alaska showing votes for the second Dan Sullivan, Dan J. Sullivan, until it can be determined if voters really meant to vote for him. Alaska officials say that would be impossible.
The Trump administration has also filed a lawsuit to block the certification of the Alaska Senate race in case the Republican loses, but Trump doesn't have a good track record in court on these kinds of suits. Last week, U.S. judge Trina Thompson ordered the administration to stop threatening state and local election officials with prosecution if they didn't refuse to issue ballots to people the administration says may be ineligible to vote. So this all adds up to what Trump's critics argue is an effort to try to take control of elections, overturn the results if they don't go his way.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you so much.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
