The 2026 Election That Matters Most Of All

The most important race of the year might not be what you think it is.

Sure, you know the swing states that will determine control of the Senate, and the districts that need to flip for Democrats to take the House. But some races are freighted with far deeper meaning, with potentially sweeping consequences for the future of American politics.

So we asked 17 top reporters and editors across the POLITICO newsroom to make the case for one race as the single most significant to appear on the ballot nationwide. They could be campaigns for Congress or a governor’s mansion or a crucial ballot initiative. They just had to be truly revealing.

The results were fascinating, and varied — fitting for a group with expertise not just in politics but also policy areas including energy and trade and AI, and who report from bureaus that span the country, from Washington to California. The results of the races they chose will shed light on the state of the Democrats’ ideological civil war, the demographic shifts that brought Donald Trump to power and the contours of the electoral map for the 2028 presidential campaign.

As we speed toward Election Day, here are the races to watch if you want to know what really matters.

Kansas Senate

Democrats Find God

Can faith help Democrats win back the heartland? The unexpectedly tight race for Kansas’ Senate seat between GOP Sen. Roger Marshall and his Democratic opponent, Rev. Adam Hamilton, suggests the answer is yes — so much so that it could help decide control of the Senate.

Hamilton is a pastor, and he campaigns like one. He prays over voters, invokes the Bible with ease and counters attack ads calling him “woke” with quips like “If Jesus were here, you would call him too woke.” He has put a notable distance between himself and Democrats on the coasts:He told POLITICO that Chuck Schumer is a “liability” in Kansas and that Kamala Harris should stay in California. If Hamilton pulls off the unlikely win, he offers Democrats a new model for campaigning in a way that could reshape the political map.

— Dasha Burns, co-author of POLITICO Playbook and global anchor

North Carolina 1st Congressional District

The Redistricting Gambit Backfires

Don Davis was said to be the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in the nation, an almost certain casualty of North Carolina’s mid-decade redistricting pushed by Republicans.

But no one was counting on a backdrop like this where the president’s approval ratings would nosedive, Democratic Senate nominee Roy Cooper — a native of eastern Carolina — would have a comfortable lead at the top of the ticket and Blackearly voter turnout would surge.

Now, not only is Davis improbably in the hunt for reelection, the redistricting changes designed to oust him could end up backfiring against neighboring GOP Rep. Greg Murphy, whose solidly Republican seat was reshaped as part of the effort to target Davis.

Murphy’s district is still a long shot for Democrats — it would likely take a blue tsunami to pull him under. But he’s suddenly looking less secure, a development that’s giving off unmistakabledummymander vibes.

— Charlie Mahtesian, senior editor and editor of POLITICO Forecast

California Wealth Tax

Populism on the Ballot

A real estate billionaire occupies the White House, where he regularly dines with tech billionaires who aim to develop an artificial intelligence that could lead to the end of human existence. The very, very wealthy and their immediate families account for one-fifth of all federal campaign contributions in the 2024 election. Meanwhile, most Americans struggle to pay for a tank of gas.

Proposition 40, a one-time tax on California’s billionaires to fund health care, will test just how fed up voters are with that dynamic — particularly in a deep blue state. The measure faces a fractured coalition, an imperfect messenger and an opponent with endless resources, but voters may approve it anyway, if it means sticking it to the billionaires.If they balk, however, it suggests there are real limits to what left-wing populist movements can achieve.

— Will McCarthy, California reporter focused on ballot measures

Ohio Senate

Reversing a Realignment

Sherrod Brown’s effort to claw his way back to the United States Senate at age 73 awakens memories that have seemed distant in recent times: Remember the days when the nation’s political class used to obsess about Ohio?

Brown’s campaign to dislodge incumbent Republican Jon Husted matters in 2026 because it could determine whether Democrats in turn dislodge the current GOP majority. If he pulls it off, this could also make Ohio matter a lot in 2028.

In short, perhaps the future of American politics — after the upheaval of the Trump years — might resemble the past, with Ohio and its 17 electoral votes returning to the center of both parties’ strategies to win the presidency.

To Make Ohio Important Again would require more than Brown squeaking by barely in the context of a broadly Democratic year. However, a more emphatic win — if it came by bringing a generous slice of working-class voters in places like the industrial Mahoning Valley of northeast Ohio back into the Democratic fold — would clearly have broader lessons for both parties and their 2028 electoral strategies.

It was Trump’s original appeal to these once-reliable Democratic voters that dethroned Ohio’s almost mystical status as the ultimate swing state. It had voted with the general election winner in every presidential race from LBJ in 1964 to Barack Obama in 2012. By the fall of 2016, it was no longer in serious contention by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. For those paying attention — most reporters and analysts were not — her weakness in Ohio hinted strongly at the troubles the party would also face in neighboring Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as in Wisconsin.

If a coalition of working-class voters and vehemently anti-Trump college graduates lifts Brown on Election Day, this would surely get special attention from Ohioan JD Vance (whose Senate seat Husted was appointed to fill) and hint strongly that the sun is setting on the Trump era in one of the very spots it first rose.

— John F. Harris, founding editor and chairman of POLITICO

California 11th Congressional District

AI’s Factional Fight

The fight over the House seat being vacated by Nancy Pelosi is a test of two visions within the Democratic Party when it comes to managing AI’s various risks.

State Sen. Scott Wiener was an early champion of regulating potentially catastrophic AI harms, authoring California’s first-in-the-nation AI safety law. Super PAC groups backed by safety-minded AI employees and executives like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have shelled out millions of dollars to support him. His opponent, San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, has criticized Wiener as too close to the AI industry. Chan’s AI stances are more in line with progressives’ longstanding techno-skepticism, focusing on a data center moratorium, worker surveillance and the concentration of corporate power.

Do Democratic voters reward candidates offering technical safeguards on AI or gravitate toward those demanding more expansive limits on the industry’s growth? Will voters distinguish between the AI debate’s factions or view all AI political spending negatively? This race will begin to answer those questions.

— Christine Mui, co-author of Decoded by POLITICO

Ohio 7th Congressional District

Appetite for Scandal

GOP Rep. Max Miller is attempting to hold onto his deep-red Ohio seat amidserious allegations of domestic abuse from his ex-wife, who also happens to be the daughter of the state’s GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Miller, who denies the allegations, has remained defiant despite calls from Moreno and others for him to step down from office, much less run for reelection. Facing a spirited challenge from Democrat Brian Poindexter, who hashighlighted his own family in ads, the GOP has had to start spending to try to keep an otherwise safe seat.

Tuesday’s results will test whether even longtime Republican voters who have tolerated a range of controversial behavior in the Trump era have finally reached their limit.

— Mia McCarthy, congressional reporter

California Governor

The invisible candidate

This year’s most consequential election is also suspense-free: Xavier Becerra will be the governor of California. The former federal health secretary is sure to defeat Tory-turned-Republican Steve Hilton and claim the quasi-presidential powers of America’s premier governorship.

Still, the way Becerra wins could matter a lot.

Right now, Becerra looks like a small figure bound for an enormous job: a party regular who muddled through the Biden administration, then lucked into the gubernatorial nomination after multiple opponents imploded. As my colleagues in California have reported, Becerra has run a barely-seen-or-heard campaign, outlining few plans for the world’s fourth-largest economy and the cradle of AI.

When California last chose a new governor, Gavin Newsom beat a Republican carpetbagger by 24 points. Can Becerra’s visionless candidacy do as well against a Brit? The answer might determine whether he’s inaugurated as an accidental governor, overwhelmed by his in-tray, or something more formidable.

— Alexander Burns, senior executive editor, North America 

Tennessee 7th Congressional District

Battleground Over Data Centers

Justin Pearson faces a stiff challenge in trying to win a district that had been the state’s sole Black-majority seat and the only one held by Democrats until GOP state lawmakersredrew it in May into a shape that favored Trumpby 21 points in 2024.

But the 31-year-old Democratic state representative has made it into a real race — largely bycampaigning hard against data centers. He’s zeroed in primarily on two of Elon Musk’s xAI data centers that straddle the border with Mississippi, but also others along his district’s now-200-mile-wide swath of rural Tennessee. If Pearson pulls out the win, or even comes close, it’s a sign that data centers and the broader fallout from AI can be politically toxic.

— Debra Kahn, editorial director of energy and environmental coverage

Maine Senate

Centrist Survivors

Susan Collins believes the Senate is an important institution, and in Maine, she’s an institution of her own. But Trump has vaporized a lot of institutions in the last 10 years.

Much of the narrative of the race has focused on the rise and dramatic fall of the Democrats’ first nominee, Graham Platner, and the scramble to replace him on the ticket with Troy Jackson. But in the end, the race is likely to be a referendum on Collins.

Collins has spent much of the fall talking about her disagreements with Trump — showcasing her independence and what she’s been able to deliver for the Democratic-leaning state. For her critics, it’s not enough: Why have one of the most powerful senators in the country if she and the GOP-led Congress can’t stop Trump when it counts?

This year, Mainers are not just voting on Collins, but on whether the moderate institutionalism she strives to embody still has a place in American politics.

— Jessica Piper, political reporter

New York Governor

Blue State Blues

Gov. Kathy Hochul is favored to win reelection, but her vulnerabilities are warning signs for Democrats across the country and could limit the party’s gains in Congress.

Hochul’s job approval and favorability ratings are middling, while polls suggest independents are breaking for her Republican foe Bruce Blakeman. The governor’s soft numbers reflect a rising anti-incumbent sentiment in a state where Democrats have ruled for 20 years and appear to be growing frustrated with blue state governance.

Hochul, a moderate, needs to win over far-left voters who flocked to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani a year ago, without losing her core base of older Black and Jewish voters alarmed by the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America. Without strong results at the top of the ticket, Democrats might fall short in a series of swing House seats — potentially even denying fellow New Yorker Hakeem Jeffries the speakership.

— Nick Reisman, Albany bureau chief and co-author of New York Playbook

Texas Senate

A New 2028 Map

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and the results of this year’s Senate race will prove it. The state’s Democrats, who haven’t elected one of their own to the Senate in nearly four decades, believe James Talarico will lead them out of the wilderness. A win would signal their long-hoped dreams of becoming a swing state are nearing reality — maybe even scrambling the 2028 electoral map.

But one Texan is trying his best to block their entry to the promised land: Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who sees his efforts to boost Ken Paxton as both a dutyand a political opportunity. A Paxton win could cement Cruz as a Texas kingmaker and a gatekeeper to the state’s deep-pocketed donors, while boosting his own White House aspirations in 2028. If Paxton falls short, however, it’s a black eye not just for the GOP but Cruz in particular.

— Samuel Benson, national politics reporter 

Michigan Senate

The Democratic Civil War

To hear progressives tell it, winning Michigan’s Senate race is the whole bag of marbles in the Democratic Party’s civil war. If Democrat Abdul El-Sayed beats former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, they’ll argue it proves progressives have real pop — more, some say, than a bottle of Vernors, Michigan’s iconic ginger soda.

“What we do is that we break open the entire political calculus in America — period. Because if you can win, if Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who is eyeing a possible 2028 presidential campaign, said at a New York City fundraiser in October.

The party’s centrist faction won’t be convinced, especially if El-Sayed only narrowly wins. But if he does lose, look for moderate Democrats to seize on it as confirmation of the left’s weaknesses — and a warning to steer to the center in 2028.

— Adam Wren, co-author of POLITICO Playbook

California 2nd Congressional District

Redrawn, Reelected, Recalibrating

Democrat Jared Huffman will win reelection, and it probably won’t be close. But that’s when things get interesting in his Northern California district. Huffman is among the representatives likely to return with a very different set of constituents than those who sent them to Washington two years ago.

Last year’s mad redistricting scramble looks like a potential wash in national terms — with limited net impact on the map’s partisan balance despite redraws in 10 states — but the impact will be real for members of both parties whose seats were never in play but now have to respond to a very different set of considerations at home.

In the case of Huffman, in line to chair the Natural Resources Committee if House control flips, local pressures could have a significant effect on the national agenda: California’s Democratic gerrymander redrew his seat away from its base in the progressive, climate-conscious Bay Area to include conservative rural inland areas whose economies rely on timber and cattle ranching.

— Sasha Issenberg, managing editor for enterprise

Florida 27th Congressional District

Hispanic Voters Swing Back

Hispanic voters helped deliver the White House to Trump in 2024 — but they’re frustrated by cost-of-living concerns, and many have recoiled at Trump’s deportation agenda. Meanwhile in South Florida, exile communities are growing impatient that the administration hasn’t done more to shift power in Cuba and Venezuela.

Enter GOP Rep. María Elvíra Salazar, who handily won her last reelection yet is now in a fight for her political survival. A Cuban American former news anchor, Salazar released a direct-to-camera TV ad telling the president his deportation program went too far. The ad drew criticism from Trump, but whether it’s enough to display her independence and win over Hispanic swing voters will test Republicans’ staying power with a crucial constituency.

— Kimberly Leonard, author of Florida Playbook

Georgia Governor

2028 Ripple Effects

The contest between Republican Rick Jackson and Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has a lot more at stake than the Georgia governor’s mansion. Jackson’s first campaign ad suggested Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was a “Judas” for resisting Trump’s pressure campaign to “find” more votes in the 2020 presidential election. Would Jackson question the state’s presidential results if he were governor and Trump gave him a similar call? Jackson has acknowledged Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and recently vowed to stand up to any president, though Bottoms argues there’s reason to be skeptical.

A Republican win could also lead to a redrawn congressional map, as Jackson called for ahead of the midterms, netting the GOP at least one more seat ahead of the 2028 election. Oh, and a Jackson win might make Democrats think twice about tapping Jon Ossoff or Raphael Warnock as their 2028 presidential nominee, since a Republican would get to name their replacement in the Senate.

— Dan Goldberg, White House editor

New Hampshire Senate

Trade War Comes Home

Trump’s global trade war could prove decisive in New Hampshire, with its small business-focused economy and proximity to Canada. The results will also underscore the ongoing political realignment of the Trump era.

Rep. Chris Pappas, the state’s Democratic nominee for Senate, has made repealing Trump’s global tariffs a key part of his campaign. Meanwhile, former Republican Sen. John Sununu has argued for only repealing the tariffs on Canada and on building materials. It’s a bit of a swap: Until Trump took office, Republicans had been far bigger boosters of free trade than Democrats.

If Pappas can maintain Democratic control over New Hampshire’s Senate seat with an electorate eager to reject Trump’s trade agenda and higher prices, it will further cement the parties’ shifting identities and havemajor implications on trade policy for years to come.

— Daniel Desrochers, international trade reporter 

Iowa

It All Comes Down to Here

The most important race of the cycle isn’t a race but a state full of vowels: Iowa.

Few other places in America moved as sharply from Obama to Trump. And it seemed, because of that, Iowa had become one more red state. It was even more apparent further down the ballot: Democrats haven’t won a governor’s race there since 2006 and their last Senate victory was in 2008.

This year they may prevail in both.

Just as telling is Iowa’s congressional map, which is drawn by a nonpartisan agency. Democrats could pick up three of the state’s four congressional seats, all of which are presently held by Republicans.

To know how big the blue wave grows — and how much ground Democrats can claw back in the heavily white Upper Midwest — look no further than those four letters: Iowa.

— Jonathan Martin, politics bureau chief and senior political columnist