Two outlets, two different Senate races, no overlap
The NYT/Siena polls put Michigan, New Hampshire, and Maine on the map for 2026 Senate watchers, with Abdul El-Sayed leading in Michigan and Susan Collins holding a lead in Maine. Fox News ran nothing on those polls. Instead it ran an opinion column arguing El-Sayed has a Black voter problem in Michigan, and a separate news piece on a Minnesota Democrat's fundraiser host. Two outlets, ostensibly covering the same election cycle, reported on entirely different stories.
Senate polls show Democrats leading in Michigan, Collins ahead in Maine
2 sources · hover a dot to see coverage
What happened
The New York Times published results from NYT/Siena polls of three Senate battlegrounds on September 24, 2026. Democrats lead in Michigan and New Hampshire; Republican incumbent Susan Collins leads in Maine. The Times also published a methodological note acknowledging the Collins result stands out from other polling and cautioning against dismissing it as an outlier. Fox News published no coverage of the polls. Its two pieces on Senate races that day were an opinion column on Abdul El-Sayed's declining support among Black voters in Michigan and a news item on Minnesota Democratic candidate Peggy Flanagan's connection to a fundraiser co-host linked to a Medicaid fraud scandal. That is the wire version. Two outlets have Senate 2026 content. What separates them is that they are not covering the same story at all.
NYT published the polls and then immediately questioned its own Maine result
The Times ran two pieces: a straight news report on the three-state poll results and a separate Upshot methodological note asking whether the Collins lead is 'an outlier or an omen.' That second piece is unusual. Pollsters rarely publish a companion piece flagging their own result as potentially anomalous before anyone else has called it into question. The Times framed it as intellectual honesty. It also functions as pre-emptive defense if the Maine number turns out to be wrong.
Fox News covered Michigan and Minnesota without mentioning the polls
Fox's Michigan piece, an opinion column by Hugh Hewitt, argued that El-Sayed's support among Black voters is 'dropping fast' and that a Kamala Harris campaign appearance may not fix it. No polling numbers were cited to support the 'dropping fast' claim. The Minnesota piece focused on Peggy Flanagan's fundraiser co-host, Nathan Chomilo, described as 'enveloped in a fraud scandal' during his time as Minnesota's Medicaid Medical Director. Neither piece referenced the NYT/Siena poll results published the same day.
What one side told you that the other didn't
The polls exist. One outlet's audience doesn't know that.
The NYT/Siena surveys are the only public polling of Michigan, Maine, and New Hampshire cited in this coverage. Fox News published nothing on them. A reader following Senate 2026 through Fox News on September 24 got a column asserting El-Sayed has a Black voter problem, with no sourced numbers, and a fundraiser-host scandal story in a state neither outlet's polls covered. The actual topline numbers — Democrats leading in Michigan, Collins ahead in Maine — were absent from the right-leaning coverage entirely.
Hugh Hewitt said Black support is 'dropping fast.' He cited nothing.
The Fox opinion column makes a specific empirical claim: El-Sayed's support among Black voters in Michigan is declining. It offers no poll, no survey, no data point to support that. The NYT/Siena Michigan poll, published the same day, does not appear in the column. Whether the claim is right or wrong, the column gives readers no way to check it. An assertion about a measurable thing, presented without measurement, is not analysis.
Minnesota is in this coverage. Minnesota has no competitive Senate race.
The Fox piece on Peggy Flanagan covers a state where no poll in this set shows a competitive race. The NYT/Siena surveys covered Michigan, Maine, and New Hampshire. Minnesota did not make that list. Fox's decision to run a scandal-adjacent story on a Minnesota candidate, while ignoring same-day polling in three actual battlegrounds, reflects a different set of editorial priorities than horse-race coverage. Readers trying to track competitive Senate seats got a story about a state that isn't one.
What to watch
The Collins Maine result is the number the Times itself flagged as potentially anomalous. If other pollsters release Maine surveys in the next two to three weeks and show Collins with a smaller lead or a deficit, watch whether the Times Upshot piece gets cited as prescient caution or as having undersold a genuine outlier. That resolution will also determine whether Fox picks up the Maine race at all.
See how outlets across the political spectrum framed this differently — and what each side left out.