WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – President Trump is visiting Salina rallying behind Sen. Roger Marshall in an increasingly tight Senate race.
A new survey published by the Washington Post Friday shows Marshall’s challenger, Adam Hamilton, has a nearly ten-point lead over Marshall. While most previous polls showed the race to be close, the new poll shows Hamilton clearly in the lead.
Some wonder if this is why Trump is visiting Kansas for a second time.
“If this poll was done correctly, these results are quite surprising,” said Professor Michael Smith, a political science professor at Emporia State University who participates in the annual Kansas Speaks survey.
With Hamilton leading Marshall 52% to 43%, that’s outside the margin of error. Smith explained the margin of error.
“Even though the sampling was done perfectly, there is still a little wiggle room,” Smith said. “That’s what that margin of error is.”
Related story: Marshall, Hamilton clash over offensive ads, split with their own parties in final U.S. Senate debate
Smith said polls should not be considered an absolute indicator of how elections are going, and in order to make these polls as accurate as possible, not all responses are treated the same.
“You take a sample and test the sample. And there’s nothing wrong with that, every farmer knows that. You can’t test all the soil on your farm,” Smith said. “And so, they are sensitive to the quality of the sampling. Was it representative? Did we have enough Republicans, enough Democrats?”
In the article, the Washington Post admits that it did not get as many Republican voters as Democratic voters to respond to the survey.
“Republican responses should carry more weight due to the fact that Republicans were undersampled,” Smith said.
He added that the poll should be compared to other polls to see if it is an outlier.
When asked if President Trump’s decision to come to Kansas was driven by this new poll, Smith said it probably wasn’t.
“If they made a decision based on that, and not their own internal polling, that would indicate they are panicking,” Smith added.
Smith said with these close races, he wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t know all the final results by election night.
Related content:
Copyright 2026 KWCH. All rights reserved. To report a correction or typo, please email news@kwch.com
Gn usa
