FINAL RATINGS TOTALS:
HOUSE: 239 at least Leans Democratic, 196 at least Leans Republican (D+24)
SENATE: 53 at least Leans Democratic, 47 at least Leans Republican (D+6)
GOVERNORS: 28 at least Leans Democratic, 22 at least Leans Republican (D+4)
Our final 2026 ratings
Donald Trump took command of the Republican Party by, at least in part, repudiating the legacy of the last Republican president, George W. Bush.
Yet now on the eve of his second midterm as president, Trump finds himself in Bush’s shoes. Trump, like Bush in 2006, is an unpopular president presiding over an unpopular war who is staring down the barrel of losing control of both chambers of Congress just two years after his greatest electoral triumph.
The political environment this year always seemed challenging for Republicans, and there’s been no real signs of recovery at the end of the cycle. The Crystal Ball has reflected this sour environment in our ratings: Since Oct. 1, and not counting our final moves, we moved 66 ratings across House, Senate, and gubernatorial races toward Democrats, with just two toward Republicans (one of which, moving the Minnesota Senate race from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic, we later reversed).
Our final ratings of the 2026 midterm show Democrats favored to easily win the House of Representatives.
The more interesting fight is in the Senate. After exiling Senate Democrats from red states in 2024, capturing all 50 Senate seats in the 25 states that voted for Trump all three times he was on the ballot, Republicans appear to be in serious jeopardy of squandering the Senate edge they just so recently secured.
At the start of the cycle, we wrote that Democrats netting two Senate seats in 2026 would be a good result for them, narrowing the Senate to a 51-49 Republican edge and teeing up a competitive race for the majority in 2028. Such a result now would be a success not for Democrats, but for Republicans, who now appear to be underdogs in the lion’s share of key races at the center of the Senate map.
The conversation following Tuesday may be more about Democrats rather than Republicans holding a longer-term edge in the Senate, although this very election cycle should caution any of us about making long-term predictions (just trying to forecast tomorrow is challenging enough).
In addition to going into the election favored to win the Senate and House, Democrats also have the inside track toward taking a majority of the state governorships, as states that seemed likelier than not to stick with Republicans just a couple of months (or even a couple of weeks) ago now appear likelier to flip to Democrats, such as Georgia, Nevada, and Ohio….
Note….
IF some of the poll’s are Wrong?
They are ALL gonna be wrong……
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