The fantasy political drafting for the 2026 midterm election in Massachusetts has already begun, and pollsters have found that the Bay State’s junior senator could be in trouble if he’s forced to take on the state’s former governor.

According to the latest polling by the MassINC Polling Group, former Gov. Charlie Baker could stand a chance of unseating U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, should he choose to run in the upcoming midterm elections.

Asked “if the 2026 elections for Senator from Massachusetts were between Markey and Republican Charlie Baker, for whom would you vote,” more polled voters pick the former governor than choose the sitting senator.

“In a hypothetical 2026 Senate matchup, former Governor Charlie Baker leads incumbent Ed Markey 40% to 34%. Baker enjoys strong favorables nearly two years after his time in the corner office,” pollsters wrote.

While the poll doesn’t necessarily show Markey would lose the race — a full 19% reported they are undecided given those options, while 6% said they would not vote in that race or would vote for another person, and 1% declined to give an answer — it does show that the long-serving Malden native may have a bumpy road ahead of a potential third six-year term.

While the senator has been a fixture in Massachusetts politics for nearly half a century, the poll question made no mention of Markey’s age, and at 78 years old — he’ll be 86 at the end of a theoretical third term — something sure to come up in a statewide campaign.

Markey has pushed back on any assertion he’s too old to run, saying he feels more energized now than he ever has and that it’s the age of a candidate’s ideas that matters, not the measure of their years. Baker, who now serves as the president of the NCAA, also hasn’t necessarily indicated he intends to run against Markey in 2026 (though neither has he publicly ruled it out).

The results from the poll, however, suggest that the man once routinely labeled as the nation’s most popular governor, still maintains about the same strong support he held more than a year ago, when a Fiscal Alliance Foundation survey also found Baker holding pole position in a theoretical matchup against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.