Welcome back to Ten Blocks. This is Teddy Kupfer, an associate editor of City Journal. And joining me on the show today is Joe Simonson. Joe is a friend of mine, a senior investigative reporter at the Washington Free Beacon, and he's been all over the country in recent weeks reporting on various House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. With Election Day a week away, I can't think of a better person to have on to preview the

midterms. So, Joe, thank you very much for joining. So let's just dive right in. The Democrats currently

hold control of the 50-50 Senate. They have an eight-seat House majority. But as of now,

betting markets and forecasting services see Republicans as a pretty safe bet to win back control of the House, as tends to

happen in the middle of a president's first term. They also rate the Senate a toss-up, and of course,

there's plenty of fascinating governors and local races as well. But I want to start with two states

that sort of look like mirror images, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

In PA, we have an extremely tight contest for the Senate seat currently held by Pat Toomey.

Republican Mehmet Oz is gaining momentum on Democrat John Federman.

After Federman, shall we say, unfortunate debate performance.

But the governor's race, polling suggests, is much less tight. Democrat Josh

Shapiro has a commanding lead over Republican Doug Maseriano, who's associated with the stop

the steel wing of the GOP. Then in Georgia, you have something similar unfolding with the parties

reversed. So Republican Brian Kemp and the incumbent governor holds a commanding lead to

win re-election over political celebrity Stacey Abrams. But there's a tight contest in the Senate

with Herschel Walker, Republican, trying to fend off bad press against Democrat and incumbent

Ralph Vail Warnock. So, you know, in both cases, you have two very close Senate races. You have this confounding variable of lopsided, or what appear to be lopsided gubernatorial races. And you have the question of whether Oz and Warnock can overcome their weak party mates or, you know, whether we're likely to see a lot of ticket splitting. So I don't know, you can take the Georgia or PA in whatever order you'd like, but tell me what you're seeing in both of these races. Yeah, well, in Pennsylvania,

obviously the debate performance from Federman probably moved over a lot of undecideds. And in every race,

every year, the amount of undecided. And in every race, every year, the amount of undecides probably

shrinks just due to general polarization. But I will say that Oz's numbers were really strengthening,

and more importantly, Federman's numbers are really weakening in the weeks leading up to

the debate. And that was purely due to the fact that Federman really hasn't been on the campaign

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