Pennsylvania’s seventh district. Brooks is picking up steam among Democrats, and undecided voters lean in his favor. In September, his campaign put his working-class biography at the center of its messaging, including an ad featuring Brooks decked out in firefighter gear promising to “smoke out the billionaires and their lobbyists,” as well as the creation of a Latino outreach coalition, “Bombero Bob.” Brooks’s support among likely-voting Democrats rose from 63 to 72 percent as more Democrats became familiar with him, though small losses elsewhere kept his overall lead about the same. More working-class voters are also learning about Brooks’s working-class background: among voters with an opinion of the candidate, the share who say he did working-class work before politics rose from 46 to 60 percent—mostly among voters without a college degree, although that hasn’t yet produced an increase in support among non-college-educated voters in the district. Crucially, however, Pennsylvania’s seventh is the only one of the four races where undecided Democrats outnumber undecided Republicans, 36 to 27 percent, and another 18 percent of undecideds are independents. If each of these groups breaks the way voters in the same group have who’ve already made up their mind, Brooks’s lead would grow to about five points.

Wisconsin’s third district. This is the one race we’re tracking where the challenger appears to be losing ground with the Democratic base. It also shows that a working-class image can help Republicans as well as Democrats. Van Orden spent the month of September attacking Cooke’s working-class credentials, calling her a “phony” who “occasionally waits a table.” In August, Wisconsin voters were about equally likely to say that Cooke and Van Orden had done working-class work before politics; by September, 37 percent said so of Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL, and 30 percent of Cooke. Over the same month, Cooke’s overall lead narrowed from six points to two. Wisconsin has the fewest undecided voters of the four races, and they are 31 percent Republican, 24 percent Democratic, and 16 percent independents who lean toward neither party. If they break the way decided voters in their party have, Cooke would still eke out a narrow lead. Are the Populists Doing Better Than a Generic Democrat Would?

Even if all four candidates win, however, it won’t be clear that their particular blend of working-class economic populism was the driving force. In a wave year, any other Democrat might have done just as well. To assess this, we compare each candidate’s support with which party the same voters say they will support in the 2028 presidential election. Brooks, for instance, trails the Democratic Party by about three points on this measure but still leads Mackenzie. What the comparison tells us is how much support each candidate is getting beyond the partisan lean of their districts.

Here the results are surprising. These candidates were recruited on the theory that working-class backgrounds and economic populist messages would help them pick up more working-class voters. Two of the four are indeed running ahead of a generic Democrat, but that additional support is coming from independents, Democrats and, in Osborn’s case, affluent college graduates, not from working-class voters.

Here again, little has changed between the two months. Cooke was about four points ahead of the party in both August and September, and Osborn about three points ahead in August and two in September. Poindexter matched the party in both months, and Brooks sat about three points behind. Because this picture has stayed roughly stable since August, below we combine our data for August and September to look more closely at which groups of voters are driving these differences.

Independents, who make up about one in 10 voters in each district, are the clearest source of the populists’ edge. Among them, Osborn outpaces the Democratic Party by about 21 points, Cooke by about 20 and Poindexter by about nine, while Brooks does no better. Put simply, if Cooke and Osborn did only as well as the party among these independents, much of their advantage would disappear: Cooke’s four-point edge over the party would shrink to about two points, and Osborn’s three-point edge to nearly zero.

The candidates differ most in their support among Democrats. Cooke does about eight points better than the party among 2024 Harris voters. Brooks lags the party by about nine points among Democrats. Because Democrats make up only about a third of his district’s voters, that shortfall works out to about three points overall, and since he is about even with the party among everyone else, it accounts for virtually his entire deficit relative to the party brand. Poindexter falls slightly short of the Democratic Party among Democrats, which offsets his gains among independents and leaves him even with the party overall.

Osborn is about six points behind the party among Democrats, but he makes that up elsewhere: He is the only one of the four who outperforms the Democratic brand among Trump voters, by about three points, and among people who voted for a third-party candidate in 2024, by about 13. The other three do about as well among Republicans as the Democratic Party.

Our findings on working-class voters are the most sobering for the economic populist theory of victory. Combining both months gives us enough respondents to split each district’s voters by education and household income as well as gender. None of the four candidates is measurably ahead of the party among voters without a college degree in households earning less than $100,000. Among this group, Cooke is about three points ahead, Osborn is even, and Poindexter and Brooks trail by about three to four points, all within the margin of error.

The candidates’ performance among working-class voters splits sharply by gender. Cooke does better with working-class women than with working-class men: Among women without a college degree in households earning less than $100,000, she is nearly eight points ahead of the party, while among men in the same group she is even. Brooks and Osborn show the reverse pattern: Brooks trails the party by about six points among women without a degree in lower-income households, and by about 10 points among lower-income women with a degree, while among working-class men he is about even with it. Osborn sits about four points below the party among women without a degree in lower-income households. His advantage comes instead from affluent voters: He outperforms the party by about 10 points among college graduates in households earning $100,000 or more, and by about 14 points among the men in that group. Poindexter’s differences among all these groups are small, generally within about three points of the party label.

Putting these pieces together, the populists who are running ahead of the Democratic Party are doing it mainly by winning independents who don’t lean toward either party, and by how effectively they inspire Democratic voters. But they are not outperforming the party with working-class voters: Among voters without a college degree in lower-income households, all four are doing about as well as a generic Democrat would, with the exception of Cooke’s strength among working-class women. Republicans make a difference only in Osborn’s race, where he is running a few points better than the party among Trump voters. The Road to November

The populists outperforming their party are doing it mostly with independents who lean toward neither party. But winning in November depends on who is still undecided, and in every race most undecided voters are Democrats or Republicans, as independents who lean toward neither party make up only 13 to 18 percent of undecided voters. That makes undecided Democrats the most important target for the three House candidates. Brooks, whose undecided voters include more Democrats than Republicans, can grow his lead simply by becoming better known among the Democratic base. Poindexter and Cooke will need to hold on to undecided Democrats as well as independents to stay ahead as undecided Republicans settle on Miller and Van Orden.

Osborn is the only one of the four who cannot win without substantially more Republican support. For the three House candidates, the weeks until November 3 are likely to turn on Democrats who still aren’t familiar Brooks and Poindexter, working-class men in Cooke’s district as Van Orden claims the working-class mantle, and non-college-educated voters in Brooks’s district who now know he was a firefighter but haven’t yet moved into his column.

Each of the four economic populists we’re tracking has a real shot at victory in November. But even if they win, the bigger test for the theory of the case of progressive economic populism is whether they can deliver working-class votes above and beyond what any Democrat could in a highly favorable electoral context. That remains to be seen.