Long-shot races may signal whether 2018-style wave is forming
The “reach” districts Democrats are adding to their 2026 target list are not competitive seats by any traditional measure. Republicans usually carry them by comfortable margins and are likely to do so again this fall. But Democrats are dreaming of pulling off upsets, watching whether unusually strong performances there could signal whether a wave election is forming in November.
Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said “House Democrats are expanding the battlefield deep into Trump terrain.”
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella countered: “National Democrats can keep throwing darts at the map and calling wherever they land a battleground, but nobody is buying it.”
The reach-district push draws on the historical midterm pattern, in which the party controlling the White House typically loses seats in Congress. Democrats avoided a widely predicted “red wave” in 2022, but Republicans went on to flip both chambers of Congress after Trump won reelection last cycle.
Now Democrats are looking to 2018, when a backlash against Trump during his earlier term changed the balance of power in the House. Democrats are hoping two specific headwinds for the administration could replicate those conditions: an unpopular war in Iran and lingering concerns about inflation.
The targeted contests remain long shots even by the party’s own accounting. But Democrats are watching whether unusually strong performances in reliably Republican districts might point to a national environment more favorable to their candidates than the fundamentals suggest.