Kansas Hasn’t Elected a Democratic Senator Since 1932. Cook Now Calls It a Toss-Up.

On October 6, the Cook Political Report moved the Kansas Senate race from Lean Republican to Toss-Up. Two months earlier, the same race was rated Solid Republican.

That is a remarkable sentence to write about Kansas. Donald Trump carried the state by 16.1 points in 2024. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since George McGill won reelection in 1932, and Republicans have held this particular seat since 1919. Yet Sen. Roger Marshall, a first-term Republican and Trump ally, is running roughly even with Adam Hamilton, a first-time candidate who spent three decades building the largest United Methodist congregation in the country.

What Cook changed on October 6

Kansas was one of three Senate rating changes Cook made that day, all toward Democrats:

• Kansas: Lean R → Toss-Up
• New Hampshire (open, Pappas vs. Sununu): Toss-Up → Lean D
• North Carolina (open, Cooper vs. Whatley): Lean D → Likely D

According to the Washington Post’s report on the changes, the moves widen Cook’s range of possible Democratic Senate pickups from two seats to six. Democrats need a net gain of four for a majority. In North Carolina, former Gov. Roy Cooper has led consistently and Republicans have pulled their spending out of the state. Semafor reported on October 2 that the Senate Leadership Fund, the main GOP Senate super PAC, had spent more than $30 million there and was pausing further spending.

The same Semafor report carried the other half of the story: SLF was opening a seven-figure campaign in Kansas to defend Marshall. Money leaving North Carolina while new money arrives in Kansas is about the clearest signal a party can send about where it thinks the map has moved.

How the rating moved

• Aug. 4Hamilton wins an 11-candidate Democratic primary; Marshall is renominated over a long-shot challenger who wasn’t actively campaigning.
• Aug. 5Cook moves Kansas from Solid R to Likely R.
• Sept. 23Cook moves it again, from Likely R to Lean R.
• Oct. 6Cook moves Kansas to Toss-Up.

Every public poll

No single survey here is decisive. But the pattern is striking: since August, six credible public polls have been released, and five show a gap of two points or less. The only one with a clear leader, co/efficient in early September, had Marshall up five.

Libertarian David C. Graham is also on the ballot and drew 2% to 4% in the polls that named him. That is roughly the size of the margin in most of these surveys.

Why a pastor is competitive in Kansas

The candidate

Hamilton founded the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood in 1990, starting with a handful of members meeting in a funeral home chapel. It now has about 25,000 members across nine locations in the Kansas City area. He has written more than 30 books, mostly on Christian theology, and announced his campaign on April 30 in Prairie Village. He raised $3.6 million in his first two months.

He runs as a centrist and often notes that his congregation is split roughly evenly among Democrats, Republicans, and independents. At the September debate at the Kansas State Fair, he criticized immigration policy under both Biden and Trump, called for a year-round H-2A visa program for farm labor, and attacked the administration’s move to increase foreign beef imports. His central argument is that Marshall has been a “yes man” for Washington while tariffs and the Iran war have raised costs in Kansas.

The incumbent’s vulnerabilities

Marshall, an OB-GYN, was elected in 2020 by 11.4 points. This cycle he has been dogged by a New York Times investigation, cited by Newsweek, which reported that he sued more than 700 patients over unpaid bills and that about 81 were arrested after missing court dates. Many of the patients lived in Barton County. His campaign says he treated patients regardless of their ability to pay and notes that judges, not doctors, issue warrants. Hamilton has put the story in an attack ad; Marshall calls the ad a lie.

The state fair debate also produced a rough moment for the senator: Hamilton supporters in a vocal crowd shouted him down several times, forcing him to pause.

The state

Kansas is redder at the top of the ticket than further down. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has won two statewide races. In 2022, 59% of voters rejected an amendment to remove abortion protections from the state constitution. And on August 4 of this year, the same electorate that nominated Hamilton rejected a GOP-backed state Supreme Court amendment 62% to 38%. Kansans have repeatedly shown a willingness to split from the Republican position when the choice is framed as something other than a party-line vote.

The Republican response

Republicans are treating the seat as genuinely at risk. Vice President JD Vance campaigned for Marshall in Olathe in September. SLF’s new ad calls Hamilton a “two-face extremist,” ties him to Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, and attacks his immigration views, all aimed at undercutting his centrist image. Marshall himself has called Hamilton “too woke and too weak for Kansas” and has run ads stitching together clips from two of Hamilton’s sermons.

The case that Marshall still wins

It would be easy to overread a handful of close polls. There are real reasons Marshall remains a slight favorite in many people’s eyes:

• Markets still favor him. On the evening of October 5, Kalshi gave Marshall about a 66% chance and Polymarket about 68%, per Newsweek. Those odds have tightened since mid-September (74% and 71%), but they have not flipped.
• Partisanship is a powerful anchor. In a Trump +16 state, late-deciding voters may break toward the party they usually vote for.
• The polling margins are tiny. Every lead in the table above is inside its poll’s margin of error. “Tied” is the honest read, not “Hamilton ahead.”
• Money. Republicans can redirect resources from North Carolina and are now spending to define Hamilton before Election Day.

What it means for Senate control

With Kansas on the board, Cook now rates seven seats as Toss-Ups: six held by Republicans (Maine, Ohio, Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and Kansas) and one held by Democrats (Michigan). Add North Carolina at Likely D, and Democrats have more than enough plausible targets to net four seats without needing to win them all.

Kansas matters less as a must-win than as a stress test. If a state this red is genuinely in play, Republicans have to spend money defending it that would otherwise go to Ohio, Iowa, or Alaska. That is already happening.

What to watch

• October 13: Kansas’s voter registration deadline (Oct. 13).
• New public polling. Seven surveys in two months is a lot of attention for a Kansas Senate race. Any poll showing a lead outside the margin of error would be news.
• Ad spending. Whether SLF’s seven-figure buy grows, and whether national Democratic groups follow it in.
• The governor’s race. Republican Ty Masterson has led Democrat Cindy Holscher in recent polls, including Emerson 51–44. A Marshall–Masterson gap would tell you how much of Hamilton’s strength is personal.