Four years ago, there was a lot of hype for sweeping Republican victories in the midterm… that didn’t pan out. In fact it was not a good year for Republicans, who flipped only on Governor’s seat, lost a U.S. Senate seat, and narrowly won the House with a handful of flips in large part due to redistricting.
There is good reason to be wary of the hype for Democrats this midterm. Much like how huge Republican gains in Virginia and New Jersey in 2011 failed to pan out, the huge Democratic gains in those same two states could fail to pan out as well. This isn’t to say that we should assume an equal an opposite outcome, though. In ‘22, a Democrat was President with high inflation and recent Covid lockdowns, yet they still did well. While many Republicans will be able to escape the high negatives of the Presidential incumbent, Trump casts a darker shadow than Biden did. Aside from the ‘25 Virginia and New Jersey general elections, we’ve seen Democrats with great turnout in both major primaries and special elections, usually doing far better than even the Democratic favorable polls indicated. While often in the past, polls have underestimated Republicans, that hasn’t been the case with polling since November 2024.
Trump has repeated the same mistake that Biden made when he was running for reelection: He tried to convince people that things were going great when people though it wasn’t. They felt lied to, and unlike with Biden, Trumps’ problems were far more clearly of his own doing. Still, Republicans benefit by the inability of many Democrats to simply act normal. All in all, there’s a lot of close races that still can as of writing go the other way from what your humble author is predicting. Much of the question then comes down to turn out, especially election day, and just how the independents (non-partisan and registered 3rd party) voters split.
So, on to the predictions!
Congress
Many Republican states engaged in mid-year redistricting in order to maximize the number of Republican wins and protect against likely mid-term loses. They problem is they based their redistricting on Trump 2024 numbers, which were always unlikely to be a new permanent baseline. The midterms will result in Democratic gaines, with them more than the few seats they need to flip control of the House of Representatives, with at least 230 seats.
The Senate, as usual, will have outcomes more heavily influenced by the personalities running than candidates running for the House. Starting off with Democratic held seats, Ossoff will likely win comfortably, with a good reported constituent service and an opponent with a poor choice in associates and staffers. Michigan is the seat Democrats are vulnerable in, with El Sayed being a poor candidate and the Republican being sane. While this would be enough to flip the Michigan Senate seat from Red to Blue in a neutral environment, the poor polling for Trump (and hence the Republicans) will likely result in a narrow loss for the Republicans.
On the flip side, North Carolina is already being treated as a Democratic pick-up to the point where no one is even talking about it being competitive, former Gov. Roy Cooper will win. From there, things are less certain, though in the rest of the predicted Democratic pick-ups the Democrats are swimming with the current. The next two closest states to flip are predicted to be Ohio and Alaska. Ohio isn’t as deep red as Trump’s wins may suggest, and we’ve seen people willing to split their vote down ballot. Combined with family problems, and a Democratic nominee that some people still think is an incumbent, Ohio is a likely Democratic pick-up with Brown over Husted. In Alaska, the Democrat has already previously won statewide. Though there is a bug brouhaha over Democratic involvement with placing someone with the same name of “Dan Sulllivan” as the Republican incumbent on the ballot, Peltola will likely get a narrow victory. With those two, it’s a 50-50 Senate
After that, the seats up for grabs are toss-ups. The races could go either way, and your humble author could just as easily be wrong as be right. A split Senate with GOP control by virtue of the Vice-President being President of the Senate, is a very real possibility and ought to be considered within your humble authors prediction of what is likely to happen.
Of the rest of the seats, there’s only three where the results is very much in play, and I predict Republicans will win two of the three. Since “toss-up” isn’t a valid prediction, your humble author will predict the Democratic candidates will narrowly win for different tie-breaking reasons. In Iowa, the Democrats are already poised to pick up multiple House seats and even the Governorship, and this will likely be enough to pull Turek over the line against Hinson. In Kansas, the debate as the Kansas state fair was telling. Unlike with the gubernatorial debate, the crowd as the state fair was openly booing the incumbent Republican, Marshall, while being respectful with eve a bit of polite applause for Democratic challenger Hamilton, which might give Democrats a Senate win for the first time in Kansas in nearly a century. In Texas, the Democrats have been turning out very well in the initial early voting, thus banking votes early and often. in heavily Democratic precincts while Republicans have been turning out overwhelmingly in heavily Trump-backing precincts. This, combined with the Republican nominee, Paxton, doing far worse than most other Democrats running statewide, could very well result in Talerico winning a narrow victory.
Both Kansas and Iowa have shown a willingness to elect Democrats statewide, with the incumbent governor in Kansas and state auditor in Iowa, so I’m assigning the win to the Democrats in that state. Texas will eventually elect a Democrat statewide this century, but I think that Gov. Abbott and the muscle memory of the state’s voters will very, very narrowly allow Paxton to slip by. Texas is the more of a gut check when it comes to Texans partisan habits, but it will be narrow and your humble author could easily see that seat flip. Collins in Maine will pull a Collins in Maine.
Again, is it important to note that the “tie breaking” reasons for those last three races are far from a sure thing. Plenty of the other Republican held seats will be close and in the single digits, but unlikely to be competitive unless a Blue tsunami occurs.
Governorships
There likely be less movement on the state level than on the Federal level. A lot of the consternation we’ve seen in 2025 and 2026 so far has been due to Republicans on the Federal level. Still, on the whole Democrats will likely pick-up seats. Ramaswamy in Ohio has has plenty of trouble on the campaign trail, and the “pedo-mom” add probably will sink him in the race against Acton. In Iowa, the Republicans have a nominee in Lahn who may not even be legal able to run, and will likely lose against Rob Sand who is a sitting statewide elected official. In Alaska, on the state level, the legislature is dominated by a Democrat/Moderate-Republican base and may very well go the way with this years Governor’s race. Lastly, Democrat Aaron Ford, the current state Attorney General, will likely defeat incumbent Republican Gov. Lombardo — more on that below.
Also, half-a-dozen to a dozen, at least, legislative houses will flip to the Democrats and we’ll see more than one new Democratic trifecta… which could start the next round of mid-term redistricting.
Nevada
Things are not looking good for Republicans in Nevada. As of writing, with not all of the mail ballots from the last day before Election Day in, the Democrats have a voter lead of nearly 45K voters between in-person early votes and mail ballot. This will likely grow as the rest of the mail for Monday, the mail on Election Day, and the late arriving ballots through the week come in. 50K lead for Democrats overall, if not 55K+ is a real possibility. Much of this comes from anemic in-person voting by Repubicans. In both 2022 and 2024, republicans crushed the Democrats—in this election Republicans barely eked out a lead of 8K voters. This does not bode well for them on Election Day.
Comparing 2022 with 2026, Republicans are more comfortable with mail ballots, and less likely to turn-out early for the in-person voting machines (rather than drop off their mail ballot at polling locations). In 2022, the Democrats had a total lead of combined early in-person voters and mail ballots of ca 20K voters. In 2022, Republicans crushed the Democrats 2:1 with Election Day Voters netting them ca 48K voters. In that election, Lombardo defeated a Democratic incumbent Governor, but they lost three of the other five statewide state-level partisan offices, the U.S. Senate seat, and were relegated to super-minority status in the Assembly.
In contrast, in 2024 they barely eked out a ca 2K margin with Election Day Voters. Also, there is the possibility that the non-partisan and 3rd Party voters For Lombardo to win reelection, the Republicans need both a huge Election Day turnout and a not unfavorable split in the independent and 3rd party vote. Not impossible, but not quite as likely as the alternative. Lombardo could win if the start align, which while unlikely is narrowly possible. The rest of the statewide Republican candidates will either share Lombardo’s fate (Lt. Gov, Controller, A.G.) while others would still lose (Treasurer, Sec. of State), though exceptions can happen even during bad years for the Republican Party (the Republicans retaining the Secretary of State’s office being the most recent example).
The Republicans will not win in the Clark County centered Congressional districts, or come particularly close. Flippo will likely win the Northern Nevada Congressional district, though winning by single digits is quite possible. Flippo will lose Washoe County, but due the highly Republican nature of the rurals in the rest of the district, he’ll likely survive. For Flipp to lose, the indepentend and 3rd party vote needs to overhwelmingly be against him and the number of disaffected Republicans still angry at the “carpetbagger” who stay home, vote for the conservative 3rd party Independent American Party nominee, or even the Democrat needs to be huge. Not impossible, but at most it’s a slim chance at a low single digit defeat.
The real horror for Republicans involves the state legislature. While Clark County is turning out at a lesser rate than the rurals, the Republicans there are turning out far less than the Democrats, with the 3rd partya and-nonpartisan voters out voting the Republicans with mail ballots! The state legislature is already gerrymander to give Democrats permanent majorities. In both houses, the GOP is one seat away from being in the super-minority. In the state Senate, the Republicans should be able to keep all the seats they currently hold that are up, though SD16 and SD20 will be uncomfortably close. The real danger for the Republicans in the state Senate comes from the fact that the Democrats are outvoting them in three seats (SD5, SD11, SD18) that are up in 2028. Losing even one of those would be devistating.
In the Assembly, the seat they picked up in 2024, AD35, is almost certainly lost, which means the Democrats will have a super-majority in the Assembly for the third time in five legislative session. However there are more seats that may fall with, in descending order of likeliness of Democratic pick-up, AD13, AD4, AD2, and AD22. The later two of those four will likely fall unless Election Day turnout is huge for Republicans or the non-partisans and 3rd party voters do not heavily fall to the Democrats; the first of those will likely fall unless both happen.
Conclusion
The fundamentals of the midterms favor the Democrats, in some ways quite heavily. While both parties have problematic nominees, the Republicans have more of them and have the additional detriment of being part of the Presidential incumbent party. Democrat take the House, are slightly favored to pick-up the Senate, and also net governorships. Republicans in Nevada will suffer.
tl;dr
Democrats will have a good night, but just how good of a nigth?
A Little Mood Music
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