How worried are the Democrats about the US midterms?

‘There are two things that are important in politics,’ said the 19th century senator Mark Hanna. ‘The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.’ The maxim remains true in 2022. Public polling is all well and good, and useful in its way. Yet in a country as sprawling and complex and bitterly divided as the United States of America, and with so much information available online at everyone’s fingertips, polls can easily be used to suggest whatever you want. 

Political parties inevitably lie about their electoral prospects and hide their rather more sophisticated (and less biased) internal polling. But campaigns can’t altogether conceal their spending patterns. Which means that ‘following the money’ tends to be a far more reliable indicator of election trends, especially as races enter the final days and parties spend frantically in the places they are most concerned about losing or excited about winning.