Election Night Guide: California through Hawaii

I am doing a final predictions series for the November 3rd general elections.  If you've missed previous articles, they're listed right here: Alabama-Arkansas,

Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert (D-CA), running in
the 48th district

California

Governor: One of the bigger, now forgotten, unforced errors of the cycle was Donald Trump insisting on endorsing in the California Governor's race, making it impossible for the GOP to get both of their candidates through to the runoff, and in the process getting Biden Cabinet Sec. Xavier Becerra (D) a free ride to the governor's mansion even though his approval ratings are already a bit sour with his base.

House: The redraw of the California map is one of the few for Democrats that actually stuck, and so we're in a situation where not only are the Democrats getting a probable blue wave, but they have some seats locked into place.  The 1st and 41st are both Safe Blue Flips (the numbering here is a little weird, but I'm doing old numbering so, for example, Linda Sanchez is getting a flip in the 41st even as an incumbent while Hilda Solis is getting a hold in the 38th, as that's Sanchez's current district number).  I honestly don't see a path for Rep. Kevin Kiley (running as an Independent in the most blatant desperation ploy I've seen in a while to stay in Congress) in the 6th or any Republican in the 48th district.  The 13th & 45th are not flipping this year even if they'd be a little bit more vulnerable in a normal year, so the real question mark for me is if David Valadao finally loses the 22nd district.  My money is on him losing, giving us D+5, though Valadao at least might take a bit to have the race called.

State Rep. Manny Rutinel (D-CO)

Colorado

Governor: Given some of the conservative shifts this year in Colorado, it might feel like Attorney General Phil Weiser is a flip, but this is merely a hold for the Democrats.

Senate: Sen. John Hickenlooper came closer than expected in the primary to losing (and is likely on his last term), but that should not be an issue as he shifts into the general.

House: There's two legs on this one.  First, there's the obvious Tossup, and honestly slightly Lean Dem with Rep. Gabe Evans looking like a goner against State Rep. Manny Rutinel, a seat that we might've wished we'd gone with a more moderate option in 2028 or 30, but for now is a flip for the Dems.  And then there's the other three seats in the fast-shifting blue state of Colorado, all of which (particularly the 5th, pitching conservative Rep. Jeff Crank against attorney Jessica Killin) could go blue, but I honestly don't think they will.  This is one of those lines where if it's a blue tsunami some of this will break...but as you'll see in the next few days, I'm not predicting a blue tsunami even if there's part of me that wonders if gas prices might portend some surprises. D+1

Connecticut

Governor: Nutmeg State governors have in the 21st Century been notoriously unpopular, with Democrats regularly courting tight races they ultimately pull off.  Which makes this year, where Ned Lamont feels on-track for an easy win, somewhat noteworthy (the only noteworthy thing about this race).

Delaware

Senate: At some point the Far Left are going to realize primarily Chris Coons with a progressive is probably a solution they'd end up with the sweet end of the lollipop, but for now he's just cruising to another term (doesn't it feel like he should've been in the running to succeed Schumer more than he is?).

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL)

Florida

Governor: I will be honest here-I don't buy the Florida hype.  In a cycle where Texas, Alaska, Kansas, & even South Carolina are giving me pause, Florida is a speed bump for me.  The Democrats have run a good race, and former Rep. David Jolly is a decent candidate, but I've been to this dance before, and Rep. Byron Donalds winning by a slim margin is still him winning.  Honestly, I wouldn't be stunned if Florida just ends up getting redder to the nation again in 2026.

Senate: The same can be said of Sen. Ashley Moody's preordained reelection over State Rep. Angie Nixon (a race we discussed in-depth here)-I just don't buy it's winnable even in the bluest of environments.  Florida feels like a polarized lost cause for the Democrats, like New Jersey in reverse.

House: Florida's mid-decade redraw always carried some risk.  The state is fast-growing, but also it's a relatively young "Safe R" state where (while overall it will stay red) pockets of it might flirt with Democrats still.  The DCCC did a decent job keeping incumbents in the races, but ultimately I think that Rep. Darren Soto goes down, as does the incumbent-less 22nd seat (had Debbie Wasserman Schultz jumped into this race instead of the safe 20th, this might've been a hold).  I also think the Dems will lose Kathy Castor thanks to Trump's 11-point margin there (though this is one of the last races I called), but they'll hang on with Jared Moskowitz in the 25th for at least one more cycle. R+3

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D-GA)

Georgia

Governor: One of the biggest question marks of Election Night 2026 is (for me) the Georgia Governor's race.  On-paper, the extremely strong showing here and increasing signs that Georgia is crossing from purple state into blue-purple state (Harris actually did better here relative to the nation than Biden did, though she still lost it and he won it) would indicate that the Democrats should be able to win the governor's mansion for the first time since 1998.  But former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has run a pathetic campaign, one that probably wouldn't have come to pass were it not for family issues for Jason Carter & Lucy McBath (both of whom would be winning this by now), and Health Care Executive Rick Jackson has taken advantage of that, and has led in most polling.  Here's where I'm a little flummoxed, though-polling says Jackson, and 95% of the time I go where the polling is, but Jon Ossoff is expected to win by a solid margin, and is doing everything in his power to get Lance Bottoms across the finish line (I would gather to keep his options open for a presidential run in 2028, which he denies but I still think happens if she wins).  So the question is-is Lance Bottoms' tepid approval as Atlanta Mayor enough to sink her against a no-name MAGA businessman, or can Trump lift all boats?  Agh-let's dream big here and think she pulls it off in the closing hours of the campaign...I need to acknowledge in at least a couple of races that it looks like a wave & that might mean some Democrats win races they're mild underdogs in. D+1

Senate: Six years after he pulled off a gigantic upset to win the US Senate seat from Georgia in a runoff, Sen. Jon Ossoff will cruise to reelection, and may well be using this as a pitstop on his way to a 2028 presidential run.

Hawaii

Governor: In one of the bluest states in the nation, Josh Green will get a second term with ease.

Election Night Guide: Alabama through Arkansas

Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK)

When I initially decided to stop writing my blog (and then eventually reversed, instead deciding to just make it a much more part-time gig), I did so with the 2024 Election Night Guide, and I thought "this is probably the last of these that I ever write."  I have actually written election night guides as far back as at least 2008, possibly 2006, long before "The Many Rantings of John" was a thing.  They are incredibly time-consuming (this takes many, many hours of my limited free time to compose), and occasionally embarrassing when it comes to making certain calls totally incorrect.  But it's also something I'm very thankful for to look back on-I can see, genuinely, if I was right or wrong.  And there are moments of bragging (I got every Senate race correct in 2014, predicting the landslide victory for the GOP in the upper chamber that year), though there are far sadder moments of defeat (I predicted both a Clinton and a Harris victory, though by far less than most of those races seemed to most pundits those years, getting most of the swing states correct for Trump).

So we're doing this for 2026, and I'll start out for the uninitiated with a guide to the guide.  I will be doing, over a seven-day span, a look at every single state for the midterms.  I'll break it up over a week (with the plan being on the final day including a recap of where I land in terms of total numbers) ending the day before the election.  Election Day, for me, is a "distract myself as much as humanly possible" situation where I usually go to the movies (and generally do not write on here, even when I was writing daily), and then watch something like Bob's Burgers or a genre movie I've seen before at night, actively avoiding television unless I want to see something super exciting as cable news is both too anxiety-inducing & also too uniformed for my taste, and watching on Twitter and a cascade of election results sites the returns...followed by sleeping in and then writing a next day recap on the blog.  And given that's what we've always done, that's what we're going to do.

I also follow the Larry Sabato rule (as opposed to Charlie Cook) of not leaving a single Tossup on the map.  Politics as a hobby carries some privilege aspects that I try to be aware of (I'm aware, including for myself, that politics isn't the same as a football game or the Oscars, where ultimately it doesn't matter who wins-here there are life-and-death stakes), but I also want to go all-in rather than just saying a race is a "tossup."  If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but there's no pride in calling a race a tossup and not guessing who the winner is.

I usually start with a few comments about the race that I can't get a gage on, and then move into the contest.  This year, honestly, there's really just three questions I have, as by-and-large this year feels pretty straight-forward in a way a lot of elections have not in the past decade.

The first, and the biggest, is just how bad has Trump's stamp with his voters gotten.  Going into this cycle, it was a challenge for the Democrats-there were options in the Senate and Governors races (swing states like Nevada & North Carolina had solid options...that Nebraska House seat was a goner), but on paper this cycle looked good, honestly better than the map would've been for the GOP if they had to face 2028 or 2030.  But Trump is insanely unpopular, more so than at any time in his presidency, and with skyrocketing food & gas prices, as well as an unpopular war and a major wave of corruption that has reached almost Snidely Whiplash-style levels of obvious, it appears at least some Trump voters are done with him.  Whether that translates to them finally siding with a Democrat is a huge question, particularly for the Senate, given the Democrats would need at least two Trump 2020 states to flip in order to win the Senate.

This combines with our second point, which is that it's unclear whom the polls are over or underestimating.  2024 polling, despite a lot of protestations, was not particularly off, slightly underestimating Trump but within the margin of error (it's remembered as worse because Harris was leading during much of the fall by a bigger margin than she closed).  This year, there are a host of very close races in red territory that, if the Republicans can gain a few points at the close, would make the difference (and possibly decide the Senate majority).  I personally think the polls are under-counting Republicans, and will reflect that in some of my predictions, though it is also very possible that polls are over-counting Republicans less because they'll side with Dems, and more because some won't vote (a sixth year midterm, Republicans might just not bother, which has also been an issue for Trump in 2018 and 2022, neither cycle of which Trump was as disliked as he currently is).  And if that's the case, the GOP would be in for a long night, as it's pretty easy to get from 50 to 54 or 55 Senate seats if the R's crater at the end.

And finally-I'm curious if the the Far Left has overplayed their hand.  There are about a half dozen close/lean races this cycle where a Far Left candidate outperformed the moderate/establishment choice in the primary, and has been underperforming in polling even with a blue wave at their back.  I will find out as a I count (I always count how much I'm up or down at the end so as not to influence myself), but there will be hell to pay if, say, the Democrats get 2-3 red state Dems pull off the miracle for the Senate, but the Far Left gets a surprise miss when they insisted on getting their guy in Michigan or Maine into the general.  As we go, we'll discuss all of that.  But for now, let's dive in and see what's happening in our 2026 Election Night Guide.

(Note: I'll be doing commentary on every race for Governor & Senate regardless of level-of-competitiveness.  I'll only do mentions for the House if I assume it'll be competitive in some way-if the House race isn't listed, I'm assuming an easy hold for the incumbent party)

(Second Note: While I will occasionally editorialize on some of the candidates, I will be picking totally based on what I think will happen, not what I wish will happen)

Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL)

Alabama

Governor: In a rare rematch from a Senate race, we have current US Senator Tommy Tuberville (R) and former US Senator Doug Jones (D) facing off six years after Tuberville beat Jones in 2020.  The Republican dominance in the Yellowhammer State does not seem to be abating, even in a blue wave, so I suspect that Tuberville will get his second victory over Jones here.

Senate: Every time I do this article series there's definitely Senate races I kind of forget are happening because it's just a "cruise to reelection" situation, but in this case it's an open seat and I still totally blanked it was a race.  Rep. Barry Moore (R), who weirdly will be replaced by the incumbent he beat in a member-vs-member race last cycle, will get a promotion to the Senate with very little fanfare.

House: Thanks to a mid-decade gerrymander (which undid a VRA-designated redraw from the Supreme Court because apparently the high court doesn't give a damn about upholding its own precedents), Rep. Shomari Figures (D) is a decided underdog in the second district.  Some seem to think that Figures could pull this off, and if we are in a position where the national tides are lifting ships like a 14-point Trump seat, this would be a place it happens...but I have my doubts.  Figures loses by a much-smaller than he would've otherwise margin, but this is still R+1. 

Alaska

Governor: Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited, and this could not be better timing for the Democrats to go after the Last Frontier for the first time since 1998.  The party managed to get a single candidate into the runoff when Tom Begich stepped aside (my gut says he will run in 2028 for whatever congressional seat his nephew skips), and honestly that may be what makes the difference for State Rep. Jonathan "JKT" Kreiss-Tomkins (D).  Polling has shown JKT in a lead over the other three Republicans in the race, and while he has not hit 50% regularly, runoff scenarios have given him the edge over the top Republican in the race, businesswoman Bernadette Wilson.  I think this will take a few days to call, but ultimately D+1.

Senate: One of the most important races of the night, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), a reliably conservative but decidedly establishment Republican who came to power in 2014 ousting Sen. Mark Begich (there's always a Begich angle in an Alaska race), is in the fight for his life against Rep. Mary Peltola (D), who lost reelection in 2024 but still remains quite liked, and polling has shown her with a consistent lead.  Alaska races are notoriously hard to poll, but the state has (perhaps more than any other) been hit by the rough economic climate (oil prices have made basic consumer goods here almost staggeringly unaffordable), and Peltola has run the kind of campaign that gets a surprise win.  I will note that this is a tight race, and like all of the Senate potential flips (save North Carolina), I'm saying this with some hesitation (it's very hard to believe in an era where voters return-to-form that Dems can flip a double digit Trump state), but I'm guessing Peltola will get a lot of Manchin moments in the next six years (compliment). D+1

House: While I'm guessing pickups otherwise statewide in Alaska, Rep. Nick Begich (R) should be able to hang on against Superintendent Bill Hill (I), whose campaign has not really caught much fire.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ)

Arizona

Governor: Four years after Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) won a nail-biter race in the Grand Canyon State, she seems primed for a comfortable (I'm guessing mid-to-high single digits) reelection against deeply conservative Rep. Andy Biggs.  I'm not guessing down-ballot races, but I am curious how many of these the Democrats can hold/flip, as Hobbs appears to have some coattails and only Mine Inspector seems locked for the GOP.

House: While I need to mention Rep. Eli Crane (R in 2nd district) in case there's a proper blue wave, the big question marks here are in the 1st and 6th.  The 1st is probably an easier lift for the Democrats, given it's an open seat (Rep. David Schweikert went on a quixotic bid for the governor's mansion that he would've lost even if he won the nomination, so one wonders if he just wanted to retire).  I don't think State Rep. Amish Shah is our best candidate here, but that's a 2028 problem as I think he'll take it.  USMC Sgt JoAnn Mendoza (D) is a better option in the 6th, which she'll need to be given that Rep. Juan Ciscomani is seeking reelection.  Harris lost this district by less than a point, and Ciscomani isn't entrenched enough for me to believe that he can hang on from goodwill. D+2

Arkansas

Governor: Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' reelection isn't remotely in question, but given her name recognition and link to Trump, I do wonder if she'll be toward the top of the VP list for JD Vance in 2028.

Senate: I do not care how many polls seem to say otherwise-no one is beating Sen. Tom Cotton in ruby red Arkansas.

House: If there is a true-and-proper wave, there's probably at least one Trump +15 seat that flips (I'm not sold on how big the wave is, but it'll probably happen in that case).  But it's hard to guess, and even though there's some vulnerability around French Hill (R) in the 2nd, if he's actually vulnerable we're looking at a world where the Democrats got 25-30 seats...and I just don't think that's real.

OVP: A Few Good Men (1992)

Film: A Few Good Men (1992)

Stars: Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Kevin Pollak, James Marshall, JT Walsh, Kiefer Sutherland

Director: Rob Reiner

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Jack Nicholson, Editing, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Tom Cruise: click here to learn more about Mr. Cruise (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Tom Cruise was (give-or-take Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson) the most consistent box office presence of the 1990's.  Cruise was able to make hits out of action films, romantic-comedies, horror, thrillers, even reviving a 1960's TV show to become a multi-billion dollar franchise.  This presents a slight problem for me with Cruise for this series, because I want to talk about the downfall of his celebrity in the late 1990's & early 2000's, but given the rules of this series are that I cannot see a movie I've already seen, I run into a brick wall because from 1994 to 2007 I've seen every single Tom Cruise movie.  So we're going to talk about A Few Good Men and how it continued a massive run at the box office for the star...while his personal life and celebrity were in questionable hands.

Last week we talked about the marriage between Cruise & Nicole Kidman, probably the most important celebrity marriage of the 1990's.  But by 2001, Cruise and Kidman were on the rocks, and divorced.  This led to a lot of public retribution about Cruise himself, and his public image.  Cruise is famously guarded about his private life (look at him in interviews, and he might be the most media-trained actor in the business), but the Kidman divorce took a toll on Cruise's public image.  Kidman was having a major moment herself, with the successes (critical & commercial) of The Others, Moulin Rouge!, The Hours, & Cold Mountain, and was winning the breakup while Cruise was enduring rumors about why the marriage ended.  They ranged from things that were eventually disproven (allegations that Cruise dumped Kidman after she suffered a miscarriage turned out to be untrue according to the actress in a 2007 interview), to ones that persist still.  Cruise sued a gay porn star for stating that they had had a relationship during his marriage to Kidman, one of several lawsuits that Cruise waged where the actor pushed back on long-standing rumors that he is gay.  But the most lasting rumor about Cruise's relationship ending with Kidman was around his involvement in Scientology, which does link back to A Few Good Men, because it came out the year that he first publicly announced (to Barbara Walters) that he was a follower of the controversial religion.

(Spoilers Ahead) We'll talk a bit about scientology in a second, but I don't want to totally neglect the movie at hand, as it's a rather important one for a blog that focuses on the Academy Awards, as it was up for four Oscars, including Best Picture.  A Few Good Men is a movie about a military private named William Santiago who dies in the middle of the night at Guantanamo Bay after being harassed by two members of his unit who are being tried for murder.  It turns out that there were pushes to have Santiago moved to a different unit but they were stopped by Colonel Nathan Jessup (Nicholson), who becomes something of a central figure in the investigation being conducted by JAG Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee (Cruise) and his commanding officer Lt. Commander Joanne Galloway (Moore).  The two find out, through a lot of friction in terms of their styles (he's a rebel, she's by-the-book...imagine which one the script prefers!) that Jessup essentially ordered a "code red" which is a violent (illegal) punishment of a military officer as a way to punish them for misbehaving.  This leads to Jessup being arrested for his involvement in the crime, and the two men who carried it out being dishonorably discharged.

A Few Good Men is most famous for the courtroom scene at the end of the movie between Nicholson & Cruise where Cruise proclaims "I want the truth!" and Nicholson retorts back "you can't handle the truth!"  There's a reason that this is the most famous scene in the movie-it's far-and-away the best in the picture, a movie that until this point doesn't really sing.  Despite having a lot of famous actors, Aaron Sorkin's script doesn't give them enough to do, and in particular underwrites Demi Moore's character to the point of problematic.  Her part is unbelievably sexist in the way it's approached not just by every man in the movie, but also by the way that he makes her so two-dimensional & incompetent (Sorkin is famously bad at writing women...that's the case here too).  It makes the film both heavy-handed and a bit silly, with Cruise constantly needing to prove Moore wrong.  But the courtroom scene...wow.  Nicholson got an Oscar nomination probably just from that scene alone, and it's totally worth it.

As I said above, A Few Good Men was a critical & commercial success, and one in a long stretch for Cruise during this era.  But it was during these years that his most defining celebrity quality would emerge, that of being an advocate for Scientology.  The secretive nature of the religion & its many controversies (not just in its beliefs, but in the way that it uses its members' financial assets & has levels of membership that seem to value celebrity members) have made it a black mark on Cruise's persona (and also the source of much litigation, so I'm watching my words carefully here).  By the late aughts, he had largely stopped talking about it publicly even though by all accounts he is still a member of the church, but rumors persist that he was (allegedly) pushed to end his relationship with not just Kidman, but future wife Katie Holmes (whose daughter with Cruise, Suri, again allegedly has no contact with her father) and future girlfriend Ana de Armas because they would not join the church.  Cruise has spent much of his career being one of the America's most loved movie stars, but pretty much every conversation about Cruise comes with an asterisk: his involvement with Scientology is a huge point of contention in an otherwise manically curated public persona.

Wedgewood and the Rise of Fake Polling

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-MI)

As a general rule, I try not to re-litigate Democratic primaries right before an election where I'm hoping the party is coming together to support the nominee, but there's a news story I feel I want to talk about on this blog, and it involves one specific primary (Michigan US Senate) it's hard to ignore at this point.  Until early Summer, the Michigan US Senate race was relatively even-keeled.  It had become apparent that something needed to break as polling showed that Dr. Abdul El-Sayed was going to take the lead from the Far Left if either Rep. Haley Stevens or State Sen. Mallory McMorrow didn't drop out.  But it wasn't clear which was the better candidate, and which made sense to drop out.  That was until a poll from Wedgewood Polling in late June that showed McMorrow with 9% support in the primary basically eviscerated her campaign.  McMorrow tweeted about this earlier this week, but the poll essentially caused severe donation drought, volunteers thought they were suddenly working for a lost cause campaign, and McMorrow was pushed by the press to drop out, which she eventually did.  But here's the thing: Wedgewood Polling never actually conducted that poll-they made it up.

Wedgewood Polling revealed in tweets that have since been deleted that they essentially made up the polling, for (as they claim) a way to prove that it was far too easy in modern political culture to essentially broadcast and make up a poll to influence a political race.  In that, they weren't wrong.  FiftyPlusOne and The New York Times both included Wedgewood polls in their aggregate reporting, and the polls were discussed in Newsweek, and on MS NOW & Decision Desk HQ.  These completely fabricated polls became an actual news item in the mainstream media, and were reported on in the same fashion as legitimate polling companies like Pew Research or Gallup.

It wasn't just in Michigan that this happened.  In Wisconsin, a Wedgewood poll in July showed State Rep. Francesca Hong significantly stronger than virtually any other polling outlet did, in many ways making it look like the Democrats had a new frontrunner, and hurting other Democrats in the process.  Here, if their goal was to help Hong, it actually did the opposite-the establishment was able to coalesce around a different candidate to beat her, which they did.  This was not the only fake poll in this year's Wisconsin gubernatorial election.  An outfit by the name of Median Strategies had also published a poll in August showing Hong up by 20-points, a lead that didn't remotely materialize in the results, when Hong ended up losing later that month by just under a point.  A third polling company (SoCal Strategies) has disappeared on social media in the wake of the Wedgewood scandal, and again-this is a polling outfit that messed in Democratic primaries, specifically the unusual 17-point poll lead in early August that showed Abdul El-Sayed destroying Haley Stevens, something that the results (Stevens lost by less-than-a-point) didn't pan out, but did result in an enormous amount of momentum for El-Sayed.  Again, like McMorrow, a fake poll hurt an establishment candidate.

The big blame here, ultimatelym is on the news organizations that run this.  Strapped newsrooms without as many researchers seem to have missed that these companies were not real, and were in fact lies designed to disrupt the electoral process.  But I will note that the news media is only partially to blame here.  Social media, where a lot of "in the know" political accounts have developed savvy followings, including from politicians & news reporters, is designed to not just tweet out about these polls without really checking their authenticity, it also is designed to blast it out and make pronouncements.  Twitter's search algorithm is a nightmare, but I can say with confidence that I knew about these polls (I remember seeing them), and I would not be surprised if I had tweeted about them myself, and certainly believed them to be legitimate.  The system is designed to allow bad actors like this to flourish.

Which is why I am tepidly happy that FCC Chair Brendan Carr is looking into this, but given the Trump administration's attacks on polling that does not favor the Republicans (see, for example, the lawsuit that Trump brought against pollster Ann Selzer & The Des Moines Register that was officially dismissed last month), I worry that they will be more willing to go after reputable pollsters like Selzer rather than just made up ones that are trying to shift an election.

Because ultimately that's what this feels like-trying to use polling mechanisms to hurt candidates.  It does not feel like a coincidence that all three of these pollsters were used to help bolster two Far Left candidates who had been seen to be harder sells in the general election (Francesca Hong & Abdul El-Sayed).  There is no evidence that either of their campaigns are linked to the pollsters, for the record, but also it's possible that supporters of them, or more likely, supporters of Republicans who might want easier-to-beat candidates, seemed to have as their aim getting them elected through perpetrating this deceit.  In El-Sayed's case, I don't totally buy that McMorrow was taken down solely by this poll, as there were other polls at the time that showed her losing ground to both El-Sayed and Stevens, but given the common phenomena of poll herding (where other pollsters sometimes withhold some results to match other pollsters and not be seen as outliers), having fake poll companies can do damage to campaigns.  It's hard not to look at the output from established, reputable polling house Susquehanna at the same time as Wedgewood's poll of Michigan that showed 49% of voters still undecided, and wonder if (without the Wedgewood poll) McMorrow would've had more room to grow with voters before Wedgewood framed this as a two-person race.  This is a deeply damaging moment in American politics given how much polling shapes news coverage of election races, and unless these companies are put on trial for perpetrating a fraud on the public, this will only get worse.

OVP: Days of Thunder (1990)

Film: Days of Thunder (1990)

Stars: Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Nicole Kidman, Michael Rooker, Cary Elwes

Director: Tony Scott

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Tom Cruise: click here to learn more about Mr. Cruise (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Like several of the actors we've profiled this year, Tom Cruise has had his share of celebrity run-ins in the romance department.  Despite decades of rumors to the contrary, all of his public-facing relationships have been with women, including dalliances with Melissa Gilbert, Rebecca de Morney, Cher, & Penelope Cruz.  He would have a first, brief marriage to actress Mimi Rogers (an actress most audiences might not know now but was ubiquitous for love interest and eventually "mom/best friend" supporting parts in the 1980's & 90's), and he would eventually have a very fascinating third marriage to Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes (which we'll get into next week).  But for most moviegoers, when you think of Tom Cruise's wife, you think of Nicole Kidman.  For the entirety of the 1990's, coming off of their meeting on this film (and subsequent marriage), there was really no bigger couple in Hollywood that could compete with Tom & Nicole (and this was the era of the tabloid-friendly super-couple, with Goldie Hawn & Kurt Russell, Susan Sarandon & Tim Robbins, Kim Basinger & Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore & Bruce Willis, and Dennis Quaid & Meg Ryan all providing sturdy counter to, say, the romantic lives of Julia Roberts or Madonna, which were plastered all over your supermarket checkout).  It's worth noting, especially now given that they are on pretty equal standing in the cultural conversation, that this was much more one-sided in the 90's: Kidman would give good performances, but she was very much "Tom Cruise's wife" and not a leading lady star in the same way he was until after their divorce.  This meant that while Cruise had a lot of major hits outside of their relationship, save for a couple of films in the late 1990's (most notably To Die For and The Peacemaker), Kidman's biggest roles happened opposite her husband.

(Spoilers Ahead) The first of these films was Days of Thunder, a movie that we think of now as a pretty conventional hit, but at the time was a really big deal in Hollywood.  The film itself is not good, and we're going to only talk about the plot for a minute because that's honestly all of the time the screenplay gives it.  The film is about Cole Trickle (Cruise), a rebellious race-car driver who builds a car with Harry Hogge (Duvall) and starts to be really good, eventually looking like he might win the Daytona 500 until a major car crash injures him and his rival Rowdy (Rooker).  Both men are seriously injured, but Cole, with the help of Dr. Claire Lewicki (Kidman) actually gets better, while Rowdy largely ignores what's happening, and basically makes his medical condition worse, eventually so that he wilil truly never drive again.  In the meantime Cole must contend with both his own ambitions (which get in the way of his romantic relationship with Claire), as well as another upstart who takes his place in the race Russ Wheeler (Elwes, and yes, the film has the Jerry Bruckheimer-esque subtlety to give a fictional professional driver the last name "Wheeler").  Eventually, Cole wins Daytona using Rowdy's car, as well as Claire's heart.

The film is not good.  For a couple that would spend the rest of the decade being discussed like they were the president and his wife by American households, Cruise & Kidman have very little chemistry (made weirder by the fact that they would have great chemistry years later in Eyes Wide Shut, which was near the end of their marriage).  More critically, Cruise doesn't have chemistry with Robert Duvall, his co-lead and a far more important relationship within the confines of the picture.  There's also way less racing than you'd assume (though the racing scenes are well-done...it's Oscar-nominated Sound work is solid).  The best part might be the music, as Days of Thunder features a solid soundtrack.

The film's spot in Hollywood history should be noted, because in a year where we have focused quite frequently on major action stars and Hollywood building films (and even franchises) around them, Days of Thunder changed that, and is spelling something of an end to this type of motion picture.  Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer in the wake of he & Cruise making the phenomenon Top Gun, the film went wildly over budget, by some estimations almost double what Bruckheimer had promised Paramount.  At nearly $60M, it was basically asking the film to make more money than most movies did at the time (i.e. it had to make north of $100M to make a profit).  While Days of Thunder did do that (it'd make $160M, a solid amount until you remember it was less-than-half of what Top Gun did), it tarnished Bruckheimer's reputation severely-he would not make another film with Paramount until 2019, and it took four years for his next film, the tiny black comedy The Ref (Bruckheimer escaped Hollywood jail with 1995's Bad Boys, a surprise success which launched Will Smith into action movie stardom, and gave Bruckheimer a new collaborator in Michael Bay, which he'd ride to major glory with dumb-but-profitable films like The Rock, Armageddon, & Pearl Harbor).  Days of Thunder is oftentimes thought of as a harbinger of things to come for the 1990's, when Hollywood's intense betting on star-driven vehicles, sometimes with insurmountable budgets, would make the decade a box office roller coaster.  And few actors got paid more consistently exorbitant fees in the 1990's than Tom Cruise

OVP: Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Film: Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Stars: Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley

Director: Oliver Stone

Oscar History: 8 nods/2 wins (Best Picture, Director*, Actor-Tom Cruise, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing*, Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Tom Cruise: click here to learn more about Mr. Cruise (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Growing up, Tom Cruise was not an actor that my parents liked a lot.  While stars such as Harrison Ford or Sandra Bullock being in a picture was pretty much a blank check ticket situation to see their new film, Cruise's movies were oftentimes only ones we would seek out if they had a lot of buzz.  When I would ask about this (as you can imagine, young John was always talking about movies), a big part of the reason was "I don't think he's a very good actor" which to be fair was something that was a relatively commonplace topic during much of Cruise's career with the general public.  Cruise, because of his arresting good looks (for me, it's always been the hair-Tom Cruise has spectacular hair) and the types of movies he picks (action films, franchise pictures, and romantic melodramas) has usually been dismissed as a pretty boy or a commercial star only.  This is something we've actually seen throughout this year: Errol Flynn, Charles Bronson, & Arnold Schwarzenegger were all never nominated for Oscars, and it took Sean Connery until the second act of his career to win one.

But Cruise, Cruise at the height of his fame did not seem content with being a pretty boy.  His onscreen idol was not Errol Flynn or Sean Connery...it was always Paul Newman, and Paul Newman got to be in action films and be nominated repeatedly for Oscars.  Born on the Fourth of July was not Cruise's first clear play at an Academy Award nomination (he had starred alongside Newman in The Color of Money, and the year before starred in the Best Picture winner Rain Man), but in both cases it was his costar that won Best Actor.  Born on the Fourth of July was the first time that Cruise got nominated, and it's a fascinating film that both signaled where he was headed with his career for the next decade (regularly appearing in films that were Oscar-adjacent) and also an anomaly, given it was the rare really "actorly" role that Cruise would take in his career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Ron Kovic (Cruise), the quintessential American young man who wrestles for his school, is in love with the prettiest girl at school (Kyra Sedgwick) and devotes his passion to God and Country (specifically the Republican Party).  When fighting breaks out in Vietnam, Ron is the first to enlist, and he goes to war...and promptly realizes how much patriotism relies upon the sacrifices of an average man.  He becomes paralyzed from the waist down, unable to have children or to ever walk again, something he initially refuses (to the point where he nearly loses his legs through obstinance), and then slowly works back to reality, though first having bouts of severe alcoholism & depression.  This leads him away from the Republican Party that sent him to war, and eventually he becomes a vocal supporter of the anti-war movement, nearly being trampled during the 1972 RNC while they nominate Nixon to a landslide victory.  The film ends with this low point being countered with a high point, Kovic's real life speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention.

It's worth noting before we get into Cruise's work here that this film is directed by Oliver Stone.  In an era where directors like Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, & Robert Zemeckis made films that were only subtly political (though politics are there, especially in Spielberg's work), Stone's films of this era were known for their hyper-political atmosphere.  Films like Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, & Nixon (all very popular with Oscar and usually with audiences) questioned authority to the point of feeling conspiratorial (as a youth who read entertainment & celebrity magazines weekly, I believe I learned the phrase "conspiracy theory" from it being linked to Oliver Stone).  The film's anti-war politics feel a bit more routine today, given that we've had decades of film that have been comfortable questioning the honestly of the US government in foreign affairs, but in 1989 it's worth noting that having the quintessential American boy next door (Tom Cruise) spouting off leftist dialogue in a year where ardent pro-Vietnam congressman George HW Bush had become president is an interesting counter.

The film itself occasionally feels underwritten as a result of the politics, mostly because Stone's politics are so well-honed into the script, sometimes at the sacrifice of character.  I loved, for example, the way that we are introduced to Kovic as a bit weak-willed (he's not the best wrestler, he doesn't have the guts to take the girl he likes to the Prom), and then seeing that the world doesn't actually care about him when he gets back.  He fervently believed in American exceptionalism, and in giving himself as a sacrifice, but when he gets back, he learns as he matures into a true adult that his sacrifice meant little to the people he did it on behalf of (and much of that was just talk, not deed), and those who stayed behind profited in his absence, or worse yet, simply want him to go away.  The cruelty of his not being perfect is felt on his parents, who want their old son back...and hate their new one (the relationship between Ron & his mother is really well done because it's so uncomfortable).  But this also means that we rarely get to know much about the side characters (Sedgwick and Willem Dafoe feel pretty two-dimensional from actors we know can do more), and I wanted to understand more about what made this story specific than trying to make it feel universal to fit Stone's lecture to the viewer.

As for Cruise?  I liked him in this.  I think Cruise, at the time very willing to mess with his star persona, plays Ron as unlikable, oftentimes nauseatingly so, but it works for the character.  I think the way that he embraces the arrogance that comes with youth, knowing that those around you couldn't possibly be right because they've lived longer and seen more of the world (something we all go through as young adults eager to be seen as equals) is really well done.  I do wish he had had more scene partner work-there are times when it feels like he's trying to inhabit the whole screen in his scenes, needing us to KNOW the message he's trying to convey, sometimes swinging a bit from scene-to-scene without giving consistency is an issue (though more the writer's fault), but this is proof of something I already know (I disagree with my parents on this one): Tom Cruise, when he wants to be, is a fine actor.

Are Democrats Missing Out in South Carolina?

Dr. Annie Andrews (D-SC)

It is odd, in many respects, that the 2020 election scarred Democrats in the way that it did given they literally won a trifecta that year.  But if you look at the Senate races that year, you understand that there is a lot of residual scarring.  Every cycle has a few elections where you lose, but it is close.  In 2020, the Democrats got relatively close in North Carolina, Iowa, and (once you factor in the RCV aspect) Maine; these races weren't wins, but they deserved the money that was showered upon them by small dollar donors.

But it's other races that cycle that got WAY too much attention and in the process became absolute sucks on the bank accounts of Democrats hoping to capitalize on what appeared to be a blue wave.  In the Montana Senate race, Democrats spent $82 million on behalf of former Governor Steve Bullock, only to lose by 10-points.  In Kentucky, Amy McGrath raised $96M in total, and yet got clobbered by Mitch McConnell (the phrase "no more McGraths!" has become a slogan for smart fundraising as a result of this race).  And then in South Carolina, Democrat Jaime Harrison raised $132M, more than George W. Bush raised for the entire 2000 presidential campaign...and still lose by 10-points.  Polling had born out that at least Harrison & Bullock were in competitive races, but Democrats felt smarted by it, and as you can see in 2026, where the Democrats are outpolling Republicans but being dwarfed in fundraising, it feels like the ghosts of these races are keeping them from getting money in reach seats because Democrats felt they were cheated out of their cash that cycle.

I bring up Harrison specifically, because if there's a race that feels like a "is this real?" with polling right now, it's South Carolina.  The contest, which pits Sen. Darline Graham (R), the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham who was appointed to his seat after his death, against Dr. Annie Andrews (D), a pediatrician who ran against Nancy Mace in the swing-y first district in 2022, but lost in a landslide.  In normal scenarios, this would be a good race to ignore.  Trump dominated here in 2024, winning the state by 18-points, and no Democrat has won a Senate race in the Palmetto State this century.

But polling does show a competitive race here.  The average polling from all major polling aggregate sites puts Graham up by about 1.6% right now.  For comparison sake, Mary Peltola, Sherrod Brown, and Abdul El-Sayed, all in "tossup" races lead by less than this, and Andrews' deficit would put her roughly in the same camp as Josh Turek, Dan Osborn, Adam Hamilton, & Troy Jackson, all of whom are getting much more attention & money from national Democrats.  It's worth noting that the Senate Leadership Fund (the main super PAC of Senate Republicans) is sending $5 million to bolster Graham, and both President Trump & Sen. John Thune are expected to campaign alongside Graham in the coming weeks.

Yet if you talk to most people about the race, they ignore it, as do most major Democratic fundraising arms.  As I said-South Carolina doesn't come close to the attention that Kansas, Iowa, or Maine are getting, and major prediction outlets like the Cook Political Report, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, and the Silver Bulletin all have it at "Likely R," a designation none of the other seats I listed have right now.  It'd be easy to say that it's just that South Carolina is too red, and we're just looking at fundamentals, but Trump won Kansas by a roughly similar number, and everyone is all in there.  Chuck Schumer has spent money on, Mississippi, despite it being a much more obvious longshot based on polling.

Which makes me think that Democrats are looking at Harrison's numbers six years ago, and assuming the state is simply "unwinnable" and Andrews' polling strength is a mirage...which honestly feels dangerous to me.  I don't know if Annie Andrews will win (I won't be predicting her in a few weeks), but I do think there's evidence this race is competitive, and worth the investment.  Waves oftentimes have races that pretty much no one saw coming as competitive and then they end up nearly flipping.  For example in 2014, Republicans were inches away from ousting Mark Warner in a race that Warner outraised the Republican by more than 2:1, and most sites had listed as "Likely D."  Had the Republicans bothered to invest in that race at all, they would've been able to end the Affordable Care Act.  These sorts of races don't always matter in terms of immediate majority math, but they're almost always consequential.  I am truly hoping that when election night rolls around, we are not staring at a clearly winnable race here that we ended up foregoing because Jaime Harrison's loss six years ago was so horrendous that we stopped believing in victory.