It is coming. Midterm elections (November 3, 2026) are ten weeks away.
I will discuss in a separate post my fears for how Trump will try to corrupt the election and prevent a peaceful seating of the newly elected congress. (Those fears are intense and reasonable). But first let’s talk about the good news.
Everybody knows the Democrats are going to win back control of the House of Representatives. There is going to be a big blue wave that would normally sweep out the 15 Republicans elected in 2024 by 5 points or less. Even with the Republican shenanigans over mid cycle redistricting, the combination of a horrible economy for the majority of wage-earning Americans, an idiotic unpopular war with Iran and a corrupt demented incumbent President will put the Democrats back in control of the House with a comfortable working majority.
The landscape of the Senate race is surprisingly good. The Dems still need to pick up four Senate seats (from those that are currently Republican held) in order to turn a 47-53 deficit into a 51-49 majority. If the two parties end up tied 50-50 Vice President Vance will be able to cast the tie breaking vote. At the beginning of the cycle it looked like the Dems had a very narrow path that required them to hold Georgia and Michigan and pick up Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and then get lucky and find some other state that Trump had won in 2024 that they could flip. It’s a very different map today.
Georgia seems to be a solid hold for the Dems and former Governor Roy Cooper is on track to win in North Carolina.
According to the Cook Political Report there are currently 6 (SIX) senate races considered to be “Tossups”.
2026 CPR Senate Race ratings | Cook Political Report
One of them (Michigan) is a Democratic held seat so one way or another the Dems need to win four out of the six tossup races to end up with a majority. Here’s how I seem them in order of most likely to be a Democratic win.
- Alaska. Former Congresswoman Mary Peltola won statewide four years ago and lost her seat in anti-Biden wave in 2024. She came in first in the non-partisan primary and is in a solid position to beat incumbent Dan Sullivan.
- Ohio. Former Senator Sherrod Brown is well known and popular. Ohio has been hit very hard by the Trump economy and incumbent Republican Jon Husted was appointed to fill the remainder of JD Vance’s term and before that had served as Lieutenant Governor for six years elected as a team with Governor DeWine. He is not particularly well known or popular and is running in a bad Republican year.
- Texas. This race changed when corrupt right wing attorney general Ken Paxton challenged (and ultimately beat) incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn in a nasty Republican primary. Paxton is still underwater in personal favorability and is underfunded against the charismatic Democratic challenger James Talarico. In a normal campaign year Paxton might be able to pull it out but Talarico seems on track for a historic win. It will be the first statewide Democratic win since 1994.
I see those first three wins most clearly. The Dems still need one more to win majority control. It’s a flip of the coin in the next three races.
Maine. This should have been the year when the Dems finally defeated Susan Collins. Maine is a Democratic leaning state, and Collins was the deciding vote that confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Then the Maine Democrats fell in love with a Nazi tattoo wearing accused rapist and things changed. Platner is no longer the nominee (fortunately) but the whole thing left a very bad taste. Democrat Troy Jackson leads in the polls but Collins was behind in polls in 2020 as well and still managed a comfortable re-election. Collins’ superweapon is support from older women and that remains the demographic still spitting out the bad taste of Graham Plattner.
Michigan. This should have been a comfortable Democratic hold in an anti Trump year but ….. Abdul El-Sayed barely won a plurality victory in the Democratic primary and in the process displayed remarkable weakness with black voters and white union members who are the base of the party. He will need a strong turnout. His ties to antisemitic twitch streaming shock jock Hassan Piker as well as his own extreme anti-Israel position remains a problem with Jewish voters.
Iowa. Out of seemingly nowhere Josh Turek has run a remarkable campaign and seems on the verge of upsetting Republican Representative Ashley Hinson for the Senate Seat previously held by retiring Joni Ernst. As the saying goes “its the economy stupid” or in modern parlance “affordability”.
Traditionally in wave elections the side riding the wave wins all of the tossups. (a political version of the baseball phrase “the tie goes to the runner”.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Dems win all six races but I’d be surprised if they lose all of the last three.
EDITED – There are two other Republican seats to keep an eye on that might provide the real surprise of the night.
Florida is listed by Cook as solid Republican. The incumbent is Ashley Moody (you can say WHO. That’s the point) who was a non-descript local judge who was elected state Attorney General and served six years before being appointed by Governor DeSantis to replace Marco Rubio in the Senate. She is running against Angie Nixon who is a firebrand former union organizer who surprisingly won the Democratic Primary. People often think of Florida as a deep red state but forget that in 2018 (another Democratic wave year) Ron DeSantis only narrowly beat Andrew Gillum. The margin was something like 33,000 votes out of 8 million cast. Personally, I think Nixon might win this seat.
Nebraska has an Independent union activist Dan Osborne running dead even in the polls against incumbent (super wealthy) Pete Rickets who is underwater significantly in favorability ratings.
Breathe!!! The election is the easy part.