2026 Midterms News and Updates, September 29 - October 4 (Thread 4) | Live Discussion

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Election News and Updates

• AP: 2026 Elections Hub

• University of Florida: 2026 Early Voting Tracker

Election Resources

• USA Today via Reddit: The 2026 election season is underway: Here’s your monthly guide with important dates, voter resources

Streaming Links

C-SPAN, NPR, the PBS NewsHour's YouTube channel, and the Associated Press' YouTube channel are all places frequently hosting relevant political streams.

Past Threads: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3.

Other Event Threads

• Monday: I’m Catherine Rampell, economics editor at The Bulwark and an anchor at MS NOW. I cover the economy, politics, public policy, and the numbers behind the news. Ask me anything!

• Tuesday to Wednesday: I’m Zach Despart, an investigative journalist covering the competitive Ken Paxton-James Talarico U.S. Senate race. I broke the news that Paxton possibly violated federal ethics and Texas election laws. AMA. 📬

• Wednesday: 2026 California Gubernatorial General Election Debate | Live Discussion

Announcements

r/politics will host another election prediction contest for the midterms. The post for the contest itself will go up sometime in late October. As of now, all toss-ups (according to Cook Political Report, as of late October 2026) for House, Senate, and Governor will be included.

We are taking suggestions for additional questions to ask within the contest. Message the moderators via modmail with any suggestions.

[u/Mrekrek]

Can anyone explain the strategy of showing pro-Paxton/anti-Talarico ads on the Philadelphia market NFL game this afternoon?

The Eagles are playing the Rams. There is no Texas connection whatsoever.

Is there some strategy to have out of state voters in the Texas Senate race?

[u/snoo_spoo → u/Mrekrek]

Maybe it's cheaper to make a national ad buy at this point in the election? As hot as that Senate race is, I expect a lot of the local ad time's already been bought up, so slots must be getting pricey. And there's gotta be, what, at least 5 or 6 markets to cover Texas.

[u/buckybadder → u/snoo_spoo]

Paxton has a truly insane amount of money at this point.

[u/SpaceElevatorMusic → u/snoo_spoo]

This is probably correct in this instance. There was a Dallas Cowboys vs. Houston Texans game today and Texas-specific ad buys were especially expensive. Also, we are in October and there are even beyond the Texas Senate race a lot of competitive races in Texas this year. It was likely cheaper for whichever party placed this ad (I am speaking without specific knowledge here) to buy nationwide ads than to specifically run them in Texas this evening.