From the moment President Donald Trump completed his comeback in 2024, voters had good reason to think that the Democrats would retake the House this November.
The president’s party has lost ground in all but two elections since 1934, including the two Trump-era midterms, where the party in power lost 40 seats (Republicans, 2018) and 9 seats (Democrats, 2022).
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With Republicans currently hanging by a thread in the House, most of the work has already been done for Team Blue.
The number of seats that will change hands is another question, and here, Trump’s signature policies are playing a big role.
As we enter fall, Democrats are enjoying their widest polling lead of the year. Voters say they prefer the Democrat to the Republican in their district by an average of 7 points in new polls (49%-42%).
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Democrats perform even better among likely voters, with an 11-point average lead (53%-42%).
That’s a larger and more consistent lead than the GOP had this time four years ago.
These polls suggest that we’re heading for a “blue wave” like the one Democrats rode eight years ago.
(That wave probably won’t rise as high as it once did. Thanks to redistricting, there are fewer seats in play for either party, so think of a gain of a few dozen as the modern equivalent of 40.)
Still, there are six weeks until Election Day, and there are some things we don’t know. With all signs currently pointing to a good Democratic night, where could it possibly go wrong?
The administration’s decision to go to war with Iran is proving costly for the GOP.
Gas prices sit at $4.48 today, up 50% from $2.98 at the start of the war, and increasing at a higher rate this month.
Trump’s worst ratings have been on inflation and the cost of living, and 61% of voters called gas prices a “major problem” in last week’s Fox News Poll.
Yesterday, Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson became the second Republican Senate candidate to call for an end to the war (the first was Sen. Susan Collins, in April). No doubt many vulnerable House GOP incumbents feel the same way.
In an election that looks less like an embrace of Democrats than a rejection of Trump’s agenda, a change of course in Iran would have an impact.
Democrats have presented voters with two economic visions: the first, championed by candidates like Abdul El-Sayed and Troy Jackson, calls for a revolution on healthcare and taxes. The other, more common and less sweeping, is largely about undoing the Trump agenda.
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Voters say they like core parts of the progressive agenda, including raising taxes on billionaires, which makes voters more likely to vote for a candidate by a 34-point margin, according to a new NBC News Poll, and “Medicare-for-all,” which has a 17-point margin.
But the movements to which those policies are tied don’t fare as well: voters are less likely to support a candidate endorsed by Bernie Sanders by a 10-point margin, and less likely to vote for a candidate who supports the Democratic Socialists of America by 19 points.
We don’t know yet whether candidates on the left wing of the Democratic Party will be able to thread this needle.
Trump’s economic messaging is broadly unpopular, according to the same poll, including his proposal to send $5,000 checks to voters if Republicans keep control of Congress, as well as sending funding and weapons to Israel. That’s what is likely to get Democrats over the line.
But watch whether the DSA hurts the Dems.
The Republicans’ midterm convention is now in the rear-view mirror, and it didn’t make a dent in the polls we’ve seen.
That probably wasn’t the goal for the GOP, who used the “Trumpapalooza” to remind loyal MAGA voters about the president’s wins on immigration and crime, among other issues.
How many of them will show up on Election Day?
In last week’s Fox News Poll, a quarter of voters said an endorsement from President Trump makes them more likely to vote for a candidate. That quarter is mostly the MAGA base, and it’s large enough to impact a race.
MAGA turnout could limit the Democrats’ ceiling.
In this week’s Power Rankings, Kansas’ Senate race gets more competitive and 17 House races shift toward the Democrats. Plus, updates in two gubernatorial races.
Democrats can celebrate a shift in the political environment, but every Senate race is different. It’s still a toss-up in this forecast.
Each party has 47 seats, with six in the middle to determine control: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas.
Races in the “lean” categories are highly competitive, too, and today, Kansas joins New Hampshire and North Carolina to round out the list of nine battleground states.
Kansas has been on the Democrats’ radar for most of the year, thanks to what they believe to be a star recruit in megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton. He is campaigning on gas and diesel prices, which have an outsize impact in the rural and agriculture-heavy Midwest.
Sen. Roger Marshall, the incumbent, got some help last week from a star of the Republicans’ own: Vice President JD Vance, who rallied with Marshall to promote the Trump administration’s manufacturing agenda.
The state hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in 94 years, but it isn’t allergic to statewide Dems: incumbent governor Laura Kelly is one, and she won in both 2018 and 2022.
Kansas moves from Likely R to Lean R.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is consolidating support as he seeks a second term. His race moves from Lean D to Likely D.
The Democrats have made bigger gains in the House, where this week’s set of polls has the most impact.
The party has 215 seats in this forecast, which means they would only need to win 3 of the 19 toss-ups to flip the House.
On a “good night” for Democrats, which would see them win all of those toss-up races, they’d take up to 234 seats, leaving the Republicans with 201.
Narrow pathways remain for the GOP. While this forecast sees an expansion of the Republican House majority as unlikely, a good night for the party would have them hold on to the House with 220 seats.
The shifts are largely a product of the generic ballot polling. The Democrats’ lead among likely voters of 8 to 13 points will be too much for GOP campaigns in some highly competitive areas to overcome. The same is true even for a few districts that Trump won by a healthy margin two years ago.
These changes also reflect the shift among Hispanic voters toward Democrats: from D+12 in the 2024 presidential race to D+29 in Fox’s latest generic ballot survey.
That will make a difference across Florida, where seven races shift towards Democrats, including the 25th District (held by Jared Moskowitz (D), from Toss-up to Lean D), and the 27th District (held by María Elvira Salazar (R), from Likely R to Lean R). It also impacts Texas, where the 34th District, held by Vicente Gonzalez (D), moves from Toss-up to Lean D.
Republicans are running strong campaigns in many of these districts, but if the Dems’ generic ballot advantage lasts, the party’s ceiling could get higher.
Data centers continue to play a major role in gubernatorial races across the country, especially in Ohio, where Fox’s Madison Alworth spoke to voters about the costs of data center construction yesterday, and in Texas, where incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott faces his toughest re-election challenge yet.
Abbott’s competitor, Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, has put the issue at the forefront of both of their campaigns.
Yesterday, Abbott widened his moratorium on data centers, with the construction of new centers now “effectively halted” until at least December.
The governor has important structural advantages as he seeks a fourth term, but polls keep showing a close race. Texas moves from Likely R to Lean R.
Finally, to Alaska, where new polling shows a close race for Senate, and what at first glance looks like a wide-open race for governor, with the Democrat ahead of three Republican candidates.
When the GOP candidates are combined, the party runs even with the Democrat in this poll. But Alaska is one of two states with ranked choice voting. If more Democrats mark their second, third and fourth choices than Republicans, it could hurt the GOP’s chances of holding on to the 49th state. It moves from Lean R to Toss-up.
