Polls, forecasters favor Democrats as 2026 midterms near

Trump approval at 32 percent amid Iran war, rising gas prices

On 3 November, voters across the United States will choose whether to keep Republicans in control of Congress or hand Democrats the majorities they would need to block President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda and more aggressively investigate his administration. Multiple indicators of voter sentiment now favor the Democrats. The Cook Political Report lists seven Senate seats — Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas — as tossups, with North Carolina leaning Democratic and Kansas leaning Republican. Democrats need to flip four Republican-held seats to win a Senate majority, currently a 53–47 Republican edge with 35 seats on the ballot.

In practice, the battle for the Senate is being fought across a very small map. At the start of 2026, Republicans appeared well positioned in the battle for the chamber, with many seats rated as solid for the party and a host of others held by Democrats as tossups. But as Trump’s approval ratings fell during the year amid discontent with the Iran war and rising gas prices, Cook and other major forecasters shifted several races in Democrats’ direction. Georgia, which had earlier been competitive, is now rated as a likely Democratic win.

In Texas — a longstanding Republican stronghold where no Democrat has won a Senate race since 1988 and where Texans last voted for a Democratic president in the era of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s — recent polls show the Democratic candidate ahead by a razor-thin margin, presenting the party with the opportunity for a historic victory. State representative James Talarico, whose campaign slogan is “It’s time to start flipping tables,” has focused on wealth inequality and called for billionaires to pay higher taxes. His Republican opponent, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, has highlighted his close relationship with Trump. Trump endorsed Paxton in a video filmed in the Oval Office, praising his work “defend[ing] our southern border from the Obama and Biden invasions.” Paxton replied: “Thank you very much, President Trump. We won’t let you down.” Trump won Texas in 2024 with 56 percent of the vote to Kamala Harris’s 42 percent.

In Michigan, a state Trump won in 2016 and 2024 but lost to Joe Biden in 2020, the Senate seat is currently held by a retiring Democrat and the race is neck-and-neck with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed polling slightly ahead. El-Sayed, a progressive endorsed by Harris and Bernie Sanders, has galvanized his campaign around a call for Medicare for All, proposing to expand the program for elderly and disabled people to every American. He recently sparred with Fox News anchor Jesse Watters over the costs of such an expansion, and polling suggests close to half of Michigan voters support the idea, though a sizeable number remain opposed. Michigan is a swing state at the presidential level, but Democrats have a long history of Senate victories there, and no Republican has won a Senate seat since 1994.

Iowa, which has grown increasingly Republican since twice backing Barack Obama and hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 2008, may also prove a test of Democratic fortunes. Iowa’s population is far more concentrated in the countryside than in states currently represented by Democratic senators, so a victory there would represent a major expansion of the party’s coalition. Republicans nonetheless dominate the U.S.’s rural areas; most of the 14 states where Cook considers the Republican candidate sure to win are rural. Polls indicate Republican Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist in wheelchair basketball, are running neck-and-neck. Hinson has attempted to keep the party’s agricultural base on side by championing year-round sale of higher-biofuel gasoline. Turek recently released a campaign video in which he shoots hoops with Barack Obama, the last Democratic president to win Iowa.

The battle for the House is also underway, with every seat up for election under two-year terms. The Cook Report rates more than 40 races as competitive, meaning Democrats need to win around half to take the majority. Overshadowing House elections is an unprecedented level of politically motivated redistricting; nine states have redrawn congressional boundaries in the run-up to the 2026 midterms, with analysis suggesting Republicans will gain more seats overall. Yet the redistricting has not dashed Democratic hopes of taking the House. A Democratic gerrymander in Virginia was struck down by the state supreme court, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Republican attempt in Missouri. It is possible that whichever party wins the House achieves only a single-digit majority of seats, as Republicans have had for the past four years, though there is also a chance of a “blue wave” of wins by Democratic candidates even in districts Trump won by wide margins in 2024.

Specific House contests illustrate the battleground’s breadth. In New York City’s exurbs, Republican Mike Lawler, a top Democratic target, is running to turn voters against democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, declaring that “Socialism, communism and Marxism have no place in New York City and no place in America.” In northwestern Ohio, Marcy Kaptur — one of nearly two dozen Democrats in districts Trump won in 2024 — has represented the district since 1983, the longest-ever tenure for a woman in Congress. Newly redrawn boundaries have increased her district’s Republican lean, making her re-election bid an important test of whether voters are still willing to split their tickets between parties. In California, Republican incumbent David Valadao, who voted for the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill extending tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations while slashing the Medicaid program for poor and disabled people, represents a district with some of the highest Medicaid enrollment rates in the country.

Polling shows there has been a nationwide shift towards the Democrats in the run-up to the midterms, even in states Republicans have dominated for decades. Many recent surveys of the generic ballot give Democrats a lead ranging from the high single digits to the low double digits. The events of this year — notably the Iran war and its impact on inflation — have changed the race, and much of the advantage seems to have swung towards the Democrats. Across all key races, Democratic candidates have campaigned on affordability, at a time when the Trump administration’s Middle East actions have pushed up prices, particularly for gasoline and diesel. Surveys show the economy ranks as the most important issue in the election, far ahead of immigration, healthcare or civil rights. President Trump’s own ratings have also declined. Reuters/Ipsos found only 32 percent of U.S. adults approve of his job performance, a figure worse than his previous low of 34 percent, recorded by Gallup at the end of his first term in 2021 after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

History favors the party out of power in midterm elections, particularly in the battle for the House. All recent presidents have lost control of a chamber in midterm elections, including Trump, who lost the House in 2018.