Good morning. Twenty-seven days out.

With poll after poll showing Democrats ahead, the natural question is whether to believe them. Our Russell Payne has a good answer to that below. But it's also worth watching what the parties do with their money, because that tells you what they actually expect.

Last Friday, Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing Senate Republicans, paused its future ad spending in North Carolina. It had already spent about $32 million there, in a state President Trump won by just over three points in 2024.

That's a lot of money to walk away from. A super PAC's job is to spend where it can do the most good, though, and right now Republicans don't seem to think that's North Carolina. Where they're spending instead is, in my view, one of the clearest signs yet of the kind of year they're having.

Below, you'll find Kim Lyons' interview with Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee about what Democrats owe voters if they win, the deep-red state Republicans are now spending to defend, and Russell's report on why pollsters aren't as worried about missing Trump voters this time.

— Elias Isquith

Democratic Rep. Summer Lee represents Pennsylvania's 12th District, which covers all of Pittsburgh and part of Westmoreland County, long a Republican stronghold. Lee told The Caucus's Kim Lyons that whichever part of the district she's in, people tell her the same thing: everything costs too much.

Here's what she wants her party to do about it if Democrats win back power in Congress:

"The thing that we have to do when we win, if we are able to earn gavels, is make a strong balance. We can do that work while also still putting forth strong proposals to actually impact the material conditions of people's lives. People are suffering right now. They are struggling right now, and they need to know that the Democratic Party's allegiance is to them and not to our donors, not to the donor class, not to the corporate class."

Lee also told Kim about the unannounced visit she and fellow Pennsylvania Rep. Chris Deluzio made to an ICE detention center in Clearfield County. To hear what they found, read Kim Lyons's full interview at The Caucus.

Last night was the first of four planned debates between incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins and her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson. And according to our Russell Payne, the head-to-head rehashed many of the same attacks the campaigns have been lobbing at each other for weeks.

Maine is the only state Kamala Harris won in 2024 that sends a Republican to the Senate. On paper, that makes Collins the easiest Republican in the chamber to beat. But there's something else you should remember about Collins: she's never lost a Senate race.

To find out how the debate went, and where Jackson's campaign stands with less than four weeks to go, read Payne's full story at The Caucus.

If you've been burned by a poll before, you're not alone. 

Surveys underestimated Trump's support in 2016 and 2020, so it's fair to wonder whether the ones showing Democrats ahead now are making the same mistake.

Our Russell Payne put that question to pollsters, and the answer is: probably not. In 2018 and 2022, the two midterms when Trump wasn't on the ballot, the polls mostly got it right.

Trump keeps urging his supporters to act as if he is. "I'm going to ask you to pretend that I'm running," he told a rally in Nebraska on Monday night. As one pollster told Russell, that kind of pitch hasn't worked for past presidents.

To find out which three groups of voters pollsters are watching as their surveys switch to likely voters, read Russell Payne's full story at The Caucus.

There's a theme this week, and it's South Carolina. The state holds Democrats' first presidential primary, on January 22, 2028, and Black voters can make up more than half of the people who vote in it.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden all won big with those voters on their way to the nomination. That's why a trip there this far out tends to get read as an early audition.

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