House Speaker Mike Johnson says the midterm polls are wrong and Republicans are being underestimated, pushing back hard against analysts who claim Democrats have already locked up the House.

On Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” the Louisiana Republican rejected the dominant media narrative that control of the House is already lost. Host Dana Perino put the question to him directly: political analysts say the House is gone and Democrats will take the majority. Johnson said that story does not match what he is seeing on the ground.

Johnson told Perino he was in Texas that day for three events, with a broader swing through eight states planned for the week. He has been on this trail for almost two years. His message was blunt.

Perino opened the exchange by framing the conventional wisdom.

"I’m going to give you a shot here to respond to some political analysts who say the House is gone, that the Dems are definitely going to be in the majority. You disagree. You say that you can defy those odds. Here’s, you have the floor. How so?"

Johnson did not hedge.

"Yes, thank you, Dana. Good to be with you. We’re excited. I’m in Texas today. We will do three events here, and then I will head, I think I have got eight states this week. I have been doing this for almost two years, and I’m telling you, the polling is wrong. Now, you have a lot of polling organizations right now acknowledging that they’re undersampling Republicans, because Republicans don’t want to respond to polls anymore."

That is the core of his case. Pollsters themselves, he said, are admitting they are missing Republican voters. Those voters are not picking up the phone. The numbers that dominate cable and newspaper coverage, in his view, are built on a sample that no longer reflects the electorate.

Johnson points to a long record of October misses

Johnson also cited recent reporting from CNN. He said the network ran a story just that week acknowledging a pattern that goes back decades: Republicans have been underestimated in October polls in 14 of the last 16 elections dating to 1994. That is not a one-cycle quirk. It is a recurring failure in the same month the pundit class treats as definitive.

"So, CNN did a story, Dana, just this week and acknowledged that Republicans have been underestimated in October polls 14 of the last 16 elections going back to 1994. Don’t buy it. I’m telling you, I’m on the ground in the swing districts. I am seeing huge energy in crowds. It feels like 2024 to me. That’s not registering in the polls, and we’re fired up."

The 2024 comparison is deliberate. Johnson is telling voters and donors that the same quiet intensity that upended forecasts then is visible again now, in swing districts, not in the models. His midterm strategy and messaging has focused on expanding the map, not managing decline.

Political analysts and Democratic-leaning coverage have spent weeks treating House control as settled. Johnson’s answer is that the people writing those takes are not in the rooms he is in. Crowd size and intensity are not scientific samples. They are also not nothing. When a party’s voters stop trusting pollsters, the gap between published numbers and Election Day can widen fast.

Travel schedule shows a Speaker still playing offense

Johnson’s itinerary undercuts the idea of a party already packing up. Three events in Texas in a single day, then a multi-state swing the same week, is the schedule of a leader who believes seats are still in play. He has described the work as nearly two years of continuous campaigning, the long grind of candidate recruitment, fundraising, and district visits that rarely makes the same headlines as a single bad poll average.

That posture fits other recent moves from his office. He has kept the conference focused on winnable fights and clear contrasts, including the SAVE Act push on voter ID that cleared a key House vote over Democratic resistance. Election integrity and border security remain central to how Republicans talk to the voters Johnson says pollsters keep missing.

House leadership decisions have also reflected a calendar discipline aimed at the midterms rather than cable-news drama. Johnson has shown he will cut short sessions and shelve side fights when they distract from the larger map. The message from the Speaker’s chair has been consistent: keep the conference on offense, keep the schedule tight, and do not outsource morale to outside poll averages.

Why Republican nonresponse matters

Johnson’s strongest factual claim is the simplest one. If polling organizations are already acknowledging undersampling of Republicans, then the headline “Democrats lock up the House” is only as good as the people still willing to answer surveys. A growing share of Republican voters treat unknown numbers and media pollsters as hostile territory. That habit has a cost for the industry that depends on their cooperation.

None of this guarantees a Republican hold. Johnson did not claim a crystal ball. He claimed a mismatch: published polls on one side, crowd energy and a documented history of October undercounts on the other. He asked viewers not to buy the inevitability narrative. For a national audience, the practical point is plain. Early consensus about House control has been wrong before, and the same month on the calendar keeps producing the same miss.

Johnson has also had to answer questions about his own future if the worst forecasts come true. Reporting has noted he remains open to a Louisiana return if Republicans lose the chamber, a sober contingency, not a surrender. The Tuesday interview was not about exit plans. It was about refusing to treat media math as destiny while candidates are still on the trail.

Perino gave him the floor to answer the “House is gone” line. He used it to draw a straight line from poll nonresponse to historical underestimation to what he is seeing in person. The analysts have their models. Johnson is betting on the voters who will not talk to the models.

When leaders who actually work the districts say the samples are broken, and even major networks admit a decades-long October pattern, the smart move is to wait for the ballots, not the next round of panicked forecasts.