Guardian tracker maps 2026 midterms with ratings and AP race-call rules

Cook ratings outline control paths in the Senate and House

The Guardian published a live results tracker for the 2026 US midterm elections with full results pages for Senate, House and gubernatorial contests across all 50 states. The interactive also provides Cook Political Report ratings and explains the Associated Press methodology for calling races and estimating statewide vote totals.

At publication, the tracker showed 0 of 35 Senate races and 0 of 435 House races called. Its ticker said first results were expected after 18.00 EST, or 15.00 PST and 23.00 GMT.

The Guardian said most US election seats are reliably won by one party, so control of Congress comes down to a few competitive battleground seats. Experts track those seats to predict overall results, and a victory in a seat a party was expected to lose often signals a successful night. In the tracker’s charts, blue shapes on the right signaled a good night for Democrats, while red shapes on the left signaled that Republicans had done well.

Before the election, Cook Political Report classified six Senate races as genuine toss-ups: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas. Democrats needed to win at least three of those races alongside the other races they were expected to win, and the tracker described their path to control as narrow. The tracker listed Georgia and North Carolina as likely Democratic, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire as lean Democratic, Nebraska and South Carolina as lean Republican, and Florida and Mississippi as likely Republican.

Thirty-three of the Senate’s 100 regular seats and two special elections were on the ballot. Republicans entered election day with the Senate majority and were defending 22 seats to the Democrats’ 13; Senate Republicans were led by John Thune, while minority leader Chuck Schumer led Senate Democrats, who needed a net gain of four seats for control. Senators serve six-year terms, and the tracker’s Senate results display included two independents.

All 435 House seats were contested. Republicans entered with 218 seats and were defending their majority, while Democrats held 212 and needed 218 to take control. House Republicans were led by Speaker Mike Johnson, and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries led House Democrats. The Guardian described Republicans as the main US conservative party and Democrats as the main liberal party.

Cook Political Report’s pre-election House ratings gave Democrats enough favored seats to take the chamber without winning any of the 18 seats it classified as toss-ups. If Democrats won every seat they were expected to win, they would have held a comfortable majority. The balance rested on whether Democrats held the 18 seats rated lean Democratic; Republicans, favored in 195 seats, would have needed to sweep all 18 toss-ups and flip five Democratic-leaning seats.

Congress has two chambers, the House and Senate. The House has 435 voting seats representing districts of roughly similar size, and elections for every seat occur every two years; members serve two-year terms and face reelection every even year. The House speaker is the chamber’s presiding officer and is elected by the representatives. The House has exclusive powers such as initiating revenue bills, impeaching federal officials and electing the president in an electoral-college tie.

The Senate has 100 members who sit for six-year terms, with one-third of its seats coming up for election in each two-year cycle. Each state has two senators regardless of population, giving Wyoming, with fewer than 600,000 people, the same Senate weight as California, with almost 40 million. Most legislation needs to pass both chambers to become law. The Senate approves senior presidential appointments, including appointments to the Supreme Court, and has the sole power to advise the president, consent to the ratification of treaties and try impeachment cases referred to it by the House.

In most states, the candidate with the most votes on election day wins the seat. Georgia and Louisiana require the winner to receive 50% of votes cast; if no candidate reaches that threshold, the top two candidates meet in a runoff. Maine and Alaska use ranked-choice voting rather than first-past-the-post voting in congressional elections. Voters rank candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the least-supported candidate is eliminated and ballots are transferred to each voter’s next-ranked candidate until someone wins a majority.

In some states, an election can feature two candidates from the same party. Under top-two or jungle primary systems, candidates from all parties compete in the same primary, and the two receiving the most votes advance regardless of party. The congressional candidates could therefore be both Democrats or both Republicans.

Florida and Ohio held special Senate elections because the previous holders of those seats, Marco Rubio and JD Vance, resigned to join the executive branch following the 2024 presidential election.

Gubernatorial contests were taking place in 36 states and three territories. Republicans and Democrats held 18 state governorships each before the election, and three incumbent governors were retiring. In every state, the executive branch is led by a governor. Governors are elected by direct vote in their states, and the candidate with the highest number of votes is declared the winner. Governors generally serve four-year terms, except in Vermont and New Hampshire, where terms last two years. Their responsibilities include implementing state laws and using powers such as issuing executive orders, preparing executive budgets, proposing legislation and vetoing bills.

The Associated Press reported the tracker’s election results. AP calls the winner in a state when it determines that the trailing candidate has no path to victory, which can happen before 100% of the votes in that state have been counted. AP also provides estimates of the total vote in each state. The estimates update throughout election night and in the following days as more voter-turnout data becomes available.

The Guardian’s map used The Downballot as its cartogram source, with every House seat displayed at the same size regardless of geography. In redistricted seats, more than one candidate may be marked as an incumbent if the candidate represented part of the redrawn area before redistricting. AP determines whether a redistricted seat has flipped by examining overlap between the previous districts and the new one, meaning a seat can be counted as a flip even when an incumbent wins it. When a race ends in a runoff between two leading candidates from the same party, AP classes the race as already won by that party. The Guardian credited Antonio Voce, Seán Clarke, Ed Gargan, Anna Leach and Ashley Kirk as contributors.