The final New York Times/Siena poll before today's election has Democrats ahead in all seven of the Senate races that will decide control of the chamber.
Look closer, though, and it's a lot less certain than that. Four of the seven races are inside the poll's margin of error. And voters who made up their minds in the last month broke for Republicans by nine points.
Here's where each race stands:
In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leads former Rep. Mike Rogers 53% to 42%, an 11-point gap and the biggest of the seven.
In Texas, Democrat James Talarico leads Attorney General Ken Paxton 50% to 43%.
In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson leads Sen. Susan Collins 51% to 45%.
In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown leads Sen. Jon Husted 49% to 44%.
In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton leads Sen. Roger Marshall 49% to 44%.
In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola leads Sen. Dan Sullivan 48% to 46%.
In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek leads Rep. Ashley Hinson 48% to 47%.
If all of that held, Democrats would take the Senate 54 to 46.
The poll itself isn't that sure. Peltola's 2-point lead in Alaska is well inside a margin of error of 5 points. Turek's 1-point edge in Iowa is inside 4.7. The 5-point leads in Ohio and Kansas sit right at the edge of 4.4. Any of those four could flip with even a small miss.
Even Siena, which conducted the poll, put it this way: "While a blue wave, and Democratic control of the Senate is, according to our polls, a distinct possibility, with so many races within the poll's total margin of error, a Senate majority for either party remains possible."
Then there are the late deciders. "Voters who decided only in the last month favored Republicans by a nine-point margin," the Times reported.
Those are the people who decide close races, and the Times' own poll has them breaking right.
There's also the question of who answers the phone. The Times' chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, reported that registered white Democrats were about 30% more likely to respond to the poll than registered white Republicans. That kind of gap, he wrote, "introduces the risk of a systematic polling error like those in 2016 or 2020."
That gap isn't always fatal. In 2022, white Democrats were 28% more likely to respond, and the polls turned out fine. In 2016 and 2020, a similar gap meant Republican voters got missed, and the misses were big. In 2020, the final Times/Siena poll had Joe Biden up 11 points in Wisconsin. He won it by less than one. In 2024, the Times' final polls had Kamala Harris ahead or tied in most of the swing states, and Donald Trump won all seven.
Cohn laid out three ways this could go: the poll is right, Democrats do even better, or Republicans are being undercounted again. Nobody will know which one it is until the votes are counted.
The poll gives Democrats leads everywhere, but four of the seven are inside the margin of error. Late deciders are moving toward Republicans, and Republicans are still less likely to talk to pollsters.
Today, the voters decide.