President Donald Trump spent $5 million on advertisements supporting Republican U.S. Senate candidate Darline Graham hours before Fox News announced it was shifting the South Carolina race from "solid Republican" to "likely Republican," according to an Axios report. Ratings tiers like "solid" and "likely" are how outlets communicate confidence in an outcome — a seat can slip a notch without the expected winner changing, and Fox's own explanation of the move confirms that is the situation here.

Graham, the sister of the late senator, has stumbled publicly on several occasions, most notably during her primary debate against Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), as reported by The New York Times. She polled poorly throughout the summer, but support has been turning in her direction since early September.

Although Fox News leans heavily to the right, political experts generally regard its polling as reliable, which makes the network's revised outlook — and the Republican Party's evident concern — all the more striking. Republicans clearly saw enough movement in the polls to justify a last-minute infusion of cash for the GOP candidate.

With 28 days until the election, Fox still shows an 11-point advantage for Democratic candidates on the generic ballot — a survey measure of which party voters prefer for Congress and one of the most closely watched gauges of the overall midterm environment. The network attributed the shift to continuing doubts about Graham.

"There are lingering questions about Graham's ability to turn out a broad spectrum of Republican voters against a Democratic candidate who, like her counterparts in Kansas and Nebraska, is pushing hard on the price of diesel," the Fox News report said. The network still views Graham as likely to win, but with less assurance than previously.

Trump has already appeared in the state once to urge his supporters to turn out for Graham, and Axios reported Tuesday morning that he has also thrown an extra $5 million her way — the kind of closing-stretch infusion campaigns use to rally turnout in an election's final month. Meanwhile, the same poll shows Trump down 23 points in approval, putting him at 38 percent — slightly better than his standing over the summer, and a figure closely watched as a barometer of the climate facing his party's candidates this fall.

Fox now counts a longer list of states that "could surprise Republicans" than those that could "surprise Democrats," with possible upsets identified in Arkansas, Florida, Ohio, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and South Dakota.

In Arkansas, Vice President JD Vance sent a letter supporting Sen. Tom Cotton (R), warning that Democrats would invest millions in the race and that Republican votes were desperately needed. Cotton has outspent his Democratic opponent 65 to 1, according to Newsweek. In 2020, when he was last up for reelection, he spent less than $1 million; this cycle he has poured $13.6 million into ensuring he makes it through November — a stark escalation from his last race and a marker of how the party's defensive needs have shifted this cycle.

An August Talk Business & Politics-Hendrix College Poll of 1,217 likely voters showed Cotton at 44 percent, while his Democratic challenger, Hallie Shoffner, drew 47.4 percent. A Libertarian in the race, holding nearly 3 percent of the vote, may be hurting Cotton, and only 5.65 percent of respondents remain undecided. The poll's full toplines are publicly available.

Complicating matters for Cotton, Trump is now locked in a very public feud with him over daylight saving time. Over the weekend, Trump raged that people should call Cotton's personal cell phone to lobby him into passing the Sunshine Protection Act of 2026, as PBS NewsHour reported.

Republicans conducted their own polling in September showing Cotton with a larger lead over Shoffner than the Talk Business numbers indicated. Still, Democratic enthusiasm may help in Arkansas's Second Congressional District, where Democrats believe they have a chance; the DCCC has added the district to its list of 2026 districts in play, a development also highlighted in a post on X.

Fox's numbers also show that while Democrats appear to be ahead in several races, the gaps fall within the margin of error. States including Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas are close enough that Election Day turnout will likely decide whether Democrats can win there. With the calendar now down to weeks rather than months, subsequent public polling and Fox's power rankings — the series behind this downgrade — will show whether more Republican-held seats slip or the current edges hold.

Source: Alternet