Democrats Might Actually Win The Senate

When this year began, the Democrats were heavy underdogs to take back the Senate in the midterms. The task would require not only toppling Susan Collins in Maine but also winning at least five states that voted for Donald Trump in 2024, while holding on to all of the party’s existing seats. The realistic best-case scenario seemed to be a replay of the so-called blue-wave 2018 election, during Trump’s first term, in which Democrats took back the House but the Senate remained in Republican hands. To gain control of the upper chamber, Democrats would need an incredible stroke of luck. They might have gotten one.

Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran, and the resulting spike in oil prices, shifted the boundaries of the politically possible. A year ago, Trump was merely unpopular: By about 11 percentage points, more people disapproved of his performance than approved of it, according to The New York Times’ polling average. He would kill for such good numbers today. Seven months into the Iran debacle, his disapproval margin has widened to 23 percentage points—worse than his numbers in the immediate aftermath of January 6.

Predictably, Trump’s unpopularity is spilling out into the midterm races. Recent polls have been almost unbelievably positive for Democrats. Troy Jackson is ahead, albeit narrowly, in Maine. Abdul El-Sayed has a modest lead in Michigan, and Democrats have even bigger advantages in the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina, both of which Trump won in 2024. Most astonishing, Democratic candidates are in position to pull off upsets in Alaska, Texas, Ohio, and Iowa, which all went for Trump by more than 10 percentage points. Republican incumbents look beatable even in Kansas, where Trump won by 16, and Nebraska, where he won by 20. As a result, in prediction markets, Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate are now more than 60 percent.

[Read: The supporters urging Trump to declare martial law for the midterms]

If the election in November plays out as the polls are suggesting it will, Republicans will have their leader to thank—and themselves. With few exceptions, Republican candidates have created almost no distance from the president. Indeed, candidates in must-win red states, including Jon Husted of Ohio and Ken Paxton of Texas, gave speeches at the same Republican midterm convention where Trump led the audience in a pledge to the “greatest president in the history of the United States.”

Democrats, by contrast, have been relatively disciplined. Candidates with a track record of winning over moderate voters were successfully recruited in Alaska, North Carolina, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, and Nebraska, and primary voters in those states were wise enough to nominate them (or, in Nebraska’s case, nominate someone who promised to drop out in favor of an independent with a better chance to win). Even where candidates with narrower appeal were nominated, as in Texas and Michigan, they have been cannily pivoting away from their unpopular progressive stances.

If Democrats won both the House and Senate, they would be able to put a real check on Trump’s ambitions for the rest of his presidency. His legislative agenda would be at their mercy. Democrats would use their control of committees in both chambers to launch extensive investigations into government wrongdoing and corruption. And Trump’s judicial nominees would need to make a convincing case that they’d be impartial judges, not dogmatic loyalists.

A Democratic sweep would have ripple effects beyond 2026. Each Senate seat that the party picks up this year makes winning in 2028 that much easier. If the electoral environment remains favorable for Democrats two years from now, the party could feasibly pick up seats in Wisconsin and North Carolina. Suddenly, a stronger, more diverse, and more nationally competitive Democratic Party is at least imaginable.

All of this analysis hinges on assuming that the polls are accurate. For three presidential elections in a row, pollsters have badly underestimated Trump’s appeal. And in general, as the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini has pointed out, the pro-Democratic bias tends to be largest in red states, the very ones that Democrats need in order to take back the Senate. Moreover, not every poll has looked good for Democrats—a recent New York Times and Siena College survey found Collins ahead in Maine, though Jackson leads in most polls.

[Read: The Republicans are bolting from Trump]

The good news for Democrats is that Trump-era midterm polls have been highly accurate on average, much more so than in presidential-election years. That’s because the midterm electorate includes fewer of the low-trust, politically disengaged voters who are so hard for pollsters to reach and disproportionately turn out when Trump is on the ballot.

Even if the polls are accurate, things could change between now and November 3. Perhaps Trump could find a way to credibly declare victory in Iran. Individual Democratic candidates could become embroiled in scandal. Republican candidates could figure out how to distance themselves from Trump down the stretch.

Yet the likeliest scenario at the moment, hard as it is to believe, is Democrats winning multiple Senate seats in states that Trump won in 2024 by double digits, taking control of both houses of Congress, earning the right to be involved in the legislative process, and providing a meaningful check on Trump’s power. The remarkable fact is that Republicans are now the party hoping for a stroke of good luck.