Iowa Senate poll has Hinson at 50, Turek at 48, and our forecast nudges up

A Wedgewood Polls survey of 600 likely voters, fielded August 27-29, put Republican Ashley Hinson at 50 percent and Democrat Josh Turek at 48 percent in Iowa's open Senate race. A two-point gap on that sample size is not a measurable lead. The poll describes a close race and nothing more precise than that.

Our forecast moved a little on it. The model now gives Turek a 27 in 100 chance against 73 percent for Hinson, up from 21 percent for Turek in our previous run at 12:30 PM ET on Sunday. The mean margin tightened to R+4.0 from R+5.0. Our 5th-to-95th percentile range runs from R+14.4 to D+6.4, wider on the Republican side than the Democratic one, which is where a race with this mean sits.

That is a modest shift, and it is the news here: we wrote on August 26 that a close Iowa poll had left the forecast where it was. This one did not. The direction is toward Turek, the size is a few points of probability, and the race remains one our model expects Hinson to win more often than not.

The seat matters for the chamber arithmetic. Our model gives Democrats a 45 percent chance of Senate control and Republicans 55 percent, with a mean of 50.0 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control; Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to them. A mean sitting exactly on the wrong side of that line is why Iowa's six points of movement register at all.

Our national generic-ballot average stands at D+6.6 across 22 polls in the last 45 days. In the House, our model gives Democrats a 94 percent chance of a majority, with a mean of 241.2 seats against the 218 needed.