“With just weeks left before Election Day, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) will report raising more than $15 million between the beginning of July and the end of September leaving roughly $5 million cash on hand, her campaign announced Monday — another record in a record-breaking fundraising election cycle for Cortez Masto, and roughly double the $7.5 million she raised in the second quarter of 2022,” the Nevada Independent reports.

Nate Cohn: “I’m not saying Democrats are favored. The likeliest scenario is still that Republicans will find the five seats they need to take control. And no one should be surprised if Republicans flip a lot more than that — especially with early signs that the political winds may be starting to shift in ways that might yield some Republican gains in key races.”

“But the idea that Democrats can hold the House is not as ridiculous, implausible or far-fetched as it seemed before the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade. It is a real possibility — not some abstraction in the sense that anything can happen.”

“In fact, not much would need to happen at all.”

A Politico analysis “of turnout data before and after Roe v. Wade was struck down in June shows that voters in rural counties were less motivated to cast ballots than those in more Democratic-leaning suburbs and cities after the Supreme Court decision. Though special elections are not a crystal ball, that could spell potential trouble for the GOP if the trend continues to the midterms in November, because rural voters, who overwhelmingly supported former President Donald Trump, are a key constituency for Republican candidates.”

“In four congressional special elections that have been held since June to fill vacant House seats — in Nebraska, Minnesota and New York — the portion of registered voters who cast ballots averaged 27 percent in suburban and urban counties, compared to 22 percent in rural counties, according to the analysis. Ahead of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe, those three groups had turnout numbers similar to each other.”

Maggie Haberman, whose new book is out this week, tells Politico that she think Donald Trump will run for president in 2024.

Said Haberman: “The second he says he’s not, he’s irrelevant. Everyone I speak to around him says that they believe he’s going to run. And, not all of them, but many of them say his heart isn’t quite in it.”

She adds: “Now, those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can run and have your heart not be in it. However, we have seen with other people who run when their heart isn’t in it, voters actually can tell you it has an impact on how you run.”

Ron Brownstein: “The map of competitive Senate elections is shrinking—and not just for November.”

“Though Republicans began the year expecting sweeping Senate gains, the party’s top-grade opportunities to capture seats now held by Democrats have dwindled to just two—Nevada and Georgia—and both are, at best, toss-ups for the GOP. And while Democrats, somewhat astoundingly, have emerged from the primaries with at least as many plausible flipping chances as Republicans, Pennsylvania is the only GOP-held seat clearly favored to go blue, and even that isn’t guaranteed.”

“It remains entirely possible that November’s results will leave the Senate divided again at 50–50, something that has not happened in consecutive elections since the Seventeenth Amendment established the direct election of senators more than a century ago.”

A new Nevada Independent/OH Predictive Insights poll in Nevada shows Adam Laxalt (R) edging Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D), 45% to 43%.

In the governor’s race, Joe Lombardo (R) edges Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), 45% to 42%.

“Democrats are facing fresh problems in two pivotal Senate battlegrounds in which their nominees are facing attacks for being too progressive,” Axios reports.

“In Wisconsin, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson has pulled ahead of Democrat Mandela Barnes in the latest wave of public polls. In Pennsylvania, recent polling suggests Democrat John Fetterman’s double-digit advantage over Republican Mehmet Oz has shrunk to a statistical tie.”