Four weeks out from the election, the article opens noting that most Americans focus on football, foliage and flannel while politics watchers wait for an October surprise. Fox News Power Rankings argues otherwise: the biggest surprises come after October.
The ranking cites a long history of late-breaking developments that changed campaigns. The 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers was a turning point for John McCain’s presidential campaign against Barack Obama. McCain trailed in every survey after the news broke and lost the popular vote by seven points.
A History Of Late Surprises
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter’s failure to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis was cited as an October surprise. Eight years earlier, President Richard Nixon’s announcement that “peace was at hand” in Vietnam was noted.
Some surprises did not clearly change elections. George W. Bush’s DUI incident in 2000 and James Comey’s letter to Congress about Hillary Clinton’s email server in 2016 did not shift the outcome.
The 2018 midterm offered a different pattern. The GOP warned about a migrant caravan, Brett Kavanaugh sought a Supreme Court seat, and a gunman attacked a Pittsburgh synagogue. Those three events together created a late surge that shaped that race.
The 2018 Elections
Herschel Walker faced allegations about paying for former girlfriends’ abortions in 2018. Meanwhile, Hurricane Ian gave Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis the chance to show he could handle a crisis.
“Stop the fraud”
That line comes from Michele Tafoya, the former NFL sideline reporter who is now running for Senate in Minnesota. Her message targets Democrat Peggy Flanagan, the state’s lieutenant governor.
Races To Watch By State
New Hampshire offers Republicans a favorable matchup. Former Sen. John E. Sununu faces Chris Pappas, with the latter seeming to struggle to animate his voters.
Oregon’s gubernatorial race is described as competitive.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas has spent $13.6 million on his reelection bid, outspending his opponent Hallie Schoffner 65 to 1. In 2020, Cotton’s spending fell short of $1 million.
Idahoans received a letter from Vice President Vance warning of Democrats pouring millions into independent challenger Todd Achilles, called an “urgent national race.”
Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has run ads attacking her opponent Scott Colom, calling him a “failed prosecutor” with a “chilling” record on crime, with $5 million in ad spending so far this year.
The Senate Math
The Senate picture stands at 47 seats each for both parties, with six toss-up races determining control: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas.
Polls released last week show the Democrat ahead by only five points in New Hampshire and the Kansas race dead even.
North Carolina moved from Lean D to Likely D after the Senate Leadership Fund pulled resources from the state. South Carolina is getting more competitive.
Nebraska and South Dakota are listed as solid Republican states that could have closer-than-expected margins.
The Big Picture
Democrats are described as playing more defense than they’d like in some unexpected places. The ranking’s framing is that October surprises are real, but the bigger shifts often arrive later.
The ranking also notes that all of the examples cited as October surprises happened in presidential years. The 2018 midterm was the exception that proved the rule, with three separate late developments converging at once.
What This Means For Voters
The takeaway is simple: watch November, not just October. The biggest surprises come after the month that bears their name.
The ranking’s own framing is worth holding onto. October surprises are real, but the bigger shifts often arrive later.
- The Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 turned the McCain campaign around.
- Jimmy Carter’s hostage crisis in 1980 was an October surprise that hurt him.
- The 2018 midterm saw a migrant caravan, Kavanaugh’s court fight and the Pittsburgh attack converge.
- Herschel Walker’s abortion allegations and Hurricane Ian in 2018 showed late-state developments can still move races.
The ranking’s argument is that the calendar does not decide the outcome. The next few weeks will.
Where the paper stands
The paper backs neither the candidates’ campaigns nor the media machine pushing rankings, and instead says the history cited — late financial collapse, unresolved foreign crisis — shows how campaigns turn not on rankings but on real events beyond any machine’s control. That history includes the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, which sank John McCain’s campaign, and the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis, which hurt Jimmy Carter’s.
The paper’s north star is individual freedom, support for small business, and avoiding concentrations of power — in government or business. It judges candidates issue by issue against that standard, says where a candidate is right and where wrong, and is AGAINST treating politics as a horse race between two machines that both gather power.
What the reader should watch for is whether late events — a financial collapse, a crisis abroad, a hurricane — actually shape the race rather than a ranking on a list somewhere. The paper’s position is that the calendar does not decide the outcome; the next few weeks will.
Source material: “Fox News Power Rankings: The biggest surprises come after October,” Fox News.
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