Sabato shop just confirms the obvious….
They dangle a possible Democratic US Senate?
Donald Trump IS working HARD to Help Democrats for 2026 , it appears….
— Just a couple of basic factors—House generic ballot polling and the number of seats the presidential party is defending—do a decent job of predicting midterm congressional election results.
— This model suggests Democrats would be favored to win the House majority even without a substantial lead in House generic ballot polling.
— The model also is bullish on Democrats in the Senate, but we urge caution on the findings, as the Senate model is historically less predictive than the House model and does not take into account this cycle’s specific Senate map….
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While the generic ballot model’s current prediction of a Democratic gain of more than a dozen seats in the House probably will not surprise most observers of American politics, the model’s forecast of a Democratic gain of five Senate seats—one more than Democrats would need to regain control of the Senate—undoubtedly will. The main reason for the expectation of a significant Democratic gain in the Senate is the fact that Republicans will be defending 22 of the 35 Senate seats at stake in the 2026 midterm election, and seat exposure is a strong predictor of seat swing in the model. However, there are reasons to be skeptical about the model’s Senate forecast.
Over time, Senate elections, like House elections, have become increasingly aligned with presidential voting patterns. In 2022, for example, the correlation between the Republican share of the Senate vote and the Republican share of the 2020 presidential vote was a near-perfect .96, and 34 of 35 states voted for a Senate candidate from the party that carried the state in the 2020 presidential election. The only exception was Wisconsin, which backed Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020 and then reelected Republican Sen. Ron Johnson two years later, both by very narrow margins.
The challenge for Democrats in 2026 is, while 22 Republican seats will be up for grabs compared with only 13 Democratic seats, only one of the states with a Republican Senator—Maine—voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, while two states with Democratic senators—Georgia and Michigan—voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Moreover, only one other state with a Republican senator—North Carolina—voted for Trump by less than 5 points. The next likeliest states for Democratic gains in 2026 would be Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and Florida, all of which voted for Trump by margins of between 10 and 15 points.
Given the close connection between Senate and presidential voting patterns in recent elections, these results suggest that the national political environment would probably have to be tilted significantly in favor of Democrats for Republicans to suffer a net loss of four or more Senate seats in 2026. The current 1.5-point Democratic advantage on the generic ballot probably would not be enough. It would probably take a Democratic lead of close to 10 points to produce a swing of that magnitude….
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The party that controls the White House usually performs poorly in its first midterms, leaving many Republicans bracing for political headwinds in 2026. And in Iowa — the second-biggest agricultural exporting state in the country — not all Republicans have been fully on board with Trump’s sweeping — and ever-changing — tariffs, which, at a minimum, have created deep uncertainty for farmers who make a living selling their crops to other countries….
Note…
Such a cataclysmic shift in Congress would be a HUGE Hinderance to Trump , Musk and Project 2025’s current, past and future policy efforts ….
I’m waiting to see when House Republicans in soft districts begin to look out for themselves NOT Trump’s crazy shit….
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