VERONA, N.Y. — Pushing further into Republican territory one week before Election Day, Democrats are poised to expand their majority in the House while Republicans, weighed down by President Trump’s low standing in crucial battlegrounds, are scrambling to offset losses.

Bolstered by an enormous cash-on-hand advantage, a series of critical Republican recruitment failures and a wave of liberal enthusiasm, Democrats have fortified their grip on hard-fought seats won in 2018 that allowed them to seize control of the House. They have trained their firepower and huge campaign coffers on once-solid Republican footholds in affluent suburban districts, where many voters have become disillusioned with Mr. Trump.

That has left Republicans, who started the cycle hoping to retake the House by clawing back a number of the competitive districts they lost to Democrats in 2018, straining to meet a bleaker goal: limiting the reach of another Democratic sweep by winning largely rural, white working-class districts like this one in central New York where Mr. Trump is still popular. Depending on how successful those efforts are, Republican strategists, citing a national environment that has turned against them, privately forecast losing anywhere from a handful of seats to as many as 20.

That is starkly at odds with Mr. Trump’s own prediction just days ago that Republicans would win back control of the House, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared “delusional,” echoing the private assessments of many in the president’s own party.

In what could be one of the final polls of the U.S. Senate race before Election Day, Democrat Sara Gideon continues to hold a narrow 3-point lead over Republican incumbent Susan Collins among likely Maine voters.

A survey of 879 individuals, developed and fielded by Colby College of Waterville, revealed that 46.6 percent of voters said they plan to vote for Gideon, compared to 43.4 percent for Collins. Independents Lisa Savage and Max Linn received 4.7 percent and 1.7 percent support, respectively, with 3.6 percent undecided. The poll was conducted Oct. 21-25 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

Gideon’s lead has been hovering around 3-5 points in nearly all public polling over the last three months.

“After $160 million spent, you might think there would be some movement,” said Dan Shea, chair of the Colby College Department of Government and the lead researcher on the poll.

The Colby poll also showed Vice President Joe Biden with a commanding 51-38 percent advantage over President Trump among Maine voters, although Biden’s lead shrinks to 4 points (46-42 percent) in the more conservative 2nd Congressional District, where Trump won four years ago and where his campaign has been focusing intently in recent weeks. Trump himself made a last-minute stop in Levant on Sunday.

https://www.pressherald.com/2020/10/28/gideon-maintains-narrow-3-point-lead-over-collins-in-latest-colby-college-poll/

Younger Americans are voting early in droves this cycle, far outpacing their pre-Election Day turnout in several key swing states at this time in 2016.

So far, voters ages 18 to 29 have cast more than 6 million early votes, according to data from NBC News Decision Desk/Target Smart, a Democratic political data firm. Four years ago at the same time, the number was about 2 million.

The increase is visible in states like Ohio, Texas, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina — swing states that saw substantial early voting last time around.

In each state, more than twice the number of young Americans have already voted in the election when compared with 2016.

A surge in coronavirus cases has damaged President Donald Trump's re-election campaign in Wisconsin, with growing criticism of his work on the pandemic and preference for former Vice President Joe Biden to handle it. Biden holds a slighter advantage in Michigan, with sizable leads among women, moderates and independents in ABC News/Washington Post polls in both states.

Biden leads Trump by 57-40% among likely voters in Wisconsin, a state that's now reported to be third in the nation in per capita COVID-19 cases, with a 53% increase in average daily cases in the past two weeks, a record number of hospitalizations and a 112% jump in deaths. That compares with a closer 52-46% in mid-September.

In Michigan, it's 51-44%, Biden-Trump, among likely voters, a slight Biden lead in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. The Senate race there stands at 52% for incumbent Democrat Gary Peters versus 46% for Republican John James, not a statistically significant difference, thus a rare chance this cycle for a GOP pickup, with control of the Senate in the balance.