a senator explained the midterm polls on fox news. his answer: transgender witches. we have never been so flattered.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via Mediaite, Reporting From Alaska and the Fox News clip

Fox News asked Ted Cruz a perfectly normal question on Saturday: why are the midterm polls so close? Gas prices? Bad polling? Something about the candidates?

No. Witches.

"This happens a lot in midterms, where the party out of power, they're usually ticked off," Cruz said, in the clip. "And right now, if you're a left wing transgender witch, you hate Donald Trump. And you're going to show up. You're energized."

He was in Alaska campaigning for Sen. Dan Sullivan, who Mediaite reported trails Democrat Mary Peltola 48.5% to 46.2%. Fox's Aishah Hasnie had asked whether the polls were wrong or whether it was gas prices. Cruz went on to ask whether "common sense Americans who are not lunatics" would turn out, and then promised Sullivan would be reelected if they did.

the witch has a back catalog

This is not a new character. In March 2023, Cruz posted on X that "it gives no comfort to the flying public that their pilot might be a transgender witch who doesn't actually know how to prevent a plane from crashing." So in three years the transgender witch has gone from crashing your plane to deciding the Senate. Honestly, that's a promotion. Somebody get her a LinkedIn.

Alaska columnist Dermot Cole, who wrote up the same Fox appearance, called it "an early Halloween appearance" and noted that Cruz showed up in a Carhartt jacket. Cole also reported that Cruz and Sullivan tied Peltola to riots in France during the same hit. Peltola has already had one strange news cycle this campaign. Now she has a coven.

who the witch vote actually is

Cruz did not say how many transgender witches live in Alaska, or what they think about the Permanent Fund dividend. We would like to point out that if one demographic is now powerful enough to swing a Senate race just by being annoyed, Republicans have mostly been describing a very good turnout operation. Ted, if you need us, we'll be at the full moon phone bank.

Correction, Oct. 19, 2026: An earlier version of this story quoted Sen. Cruz from a published transcript of the Fox News segment. His quotes now follow the segment's audio ("you're going to show up," not "you're gonna show up").