- Ted, welcome back.

So Election Day is approaching, and polls show that, once again, Rhode Island is poised to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket.

With that in mind, let's look at the local races for Congress, which really have not been very contested.

- No, and that's not a huge surprise, right, Michelle?

Because Republicans have only won two US Senate races in Rhode Island in the last 90 years, John Chafee, and then, of course, his son, Linc Chafee.

The Republicans did have some success in US House races, but that was all the way back in the eighties and nineties, and it's now been, it's actually been 32 years since the last time Republicans won a US House seat in Rhode Island.

- Let's take a look at the major federal races in Rhode Island.

Of course, the big one being the race for US Senate.

We have Democratic incumbent, Sheldon Whitehouse, who is seeking his fourth six-year term, and he's facing off against Republican State Representative Patricia Morgan.

You and your colleague, Tim White, recently moderated what has been the only debate between the two candidates.

Here's what both had to say about the bipartisan border bill that failed in Congress earlier this year.

- I was closely watching the recent bipartisan measure in the Senate for a very good immigration bill, I believe, that Republicans were lining up behind until Donald Trump said, "I would rather have this "as an issue than I would have a solution "to this problem," and he told them all to back away from the bill they had negotiated, and obediently, they did.

- It was a bad bill.

A much better bill was the one passed by Congress, which is H.R.2.

That has been sitting in the Senate waiting to be taken up for over a year.

That would've actually put in place the real policies that would've stopped that flow of humanity across our border.

- And as you very well know, immigration is just one of the many issues that Morgan and Whitehouse have differing views about how to address.

- Yeah, voters have a real choice, for sure, in this US Senate race.

You know, we talk a lot about Sheldon Whitehouse's political advantages here.

Obviously, incumbency is a big advantage.

He has a financial gap, millions of dollars more than Morgan, which he's putting to use, but of course, even if he had less money, as you said, Michelle, at the top of this segment, Democrats are poised to win Rhode Island again at the presidential level.

The majority of voters around, generally, are siding in this era with the national Democratic Party, so that helps Whitehouse too.

- I'm curious how the race for US Senate in Rhode Island compares to that in neighboring Massachusetts, where we have Democratic incumbent, Elizabeth Warren, who's facing off against Republican, John Deaton.

What are you seeing there?

- Well, it's really interesting, Michelle, because you see two very different strategies being applied here.

It's almost like a political science test case.

In Massachusetts, John Deaton is painting himself very much as a moderate Republican.

He says he supports abortion rights.

He's not for Donald Trump.

He's clearly trying to paint himself as closer to the center of the electorate there than Warren, saying she's too far left.

Patricia Morgan in Rhode Island, on the other hand, is not putting a lot of distance between herself and Donald Trump.

She's not made big moves to the center ground.

She's really making this a traditional Democrat versus Republican race, and neither strategy is working.

Michelle, if you look at the polls, both of them are down by double digits, which, to me, just reinforces that it's just very, very hard for Republicans to compete in Rhode Island and Massachusetts at this moment.

- And back in Rhode Island, we have, of course, those two races for US House, where you have freshman congressmen who are facing opponents who really are not very well-known, and we're just a little bit more than a week away from the election.

- Yes, and I always say your first reelection race is the hardest, Michelle.

So this is a crucial year for the two incumbents.

First one is Democrat Gabe Amo in the 1st congressional district.

He won that special election last year to replace David Cicilline.

He's facing Republican nominee, Allen Waters, who people might remember the name because he's run multiple times, previous cycles, sometimes as a Republican, even as a Democrat.

Then, in the 2nd district, Democrat Seth Magaziner's running for reelection for the first time.

He's facing a Republican newcomer named Steven Corvi, who's an adjunct history professor.

But in both the case of Waters and Corvi, they have very, very little money to mount significant campaigns against these well-funded Democratic incumbents, and Amo clearly feels safe enough in his seat.

He's actually been traveling frequently on the weekends to swing states to campaign for Kamala Harris instead, which just gives a sense of how comfortable his team is about their prospects.

- Yeah, he does not appear worried.

- He doesn't seem concerned at all, no.

- Yeah, thanks so much, Ted.

- Great to be here.

- Good to see you.