The Senate Majority Is Within Reach

I’m going to stick my neck out and say it: Dems could retake the Senate this November.

That’s admittedly a political limb to go out on. Most of the midterm attention has rightfully been on the House, where Democrats need to flip just three seats. That’s very doable, and historically speaking pretty likely, especially given current polling and special election results. But the path back to the Senate majority has always been brutal, with Democrats needing to flip four Republican-held seats while holding two vulnerable Democratic ones.

Worse still, the two seats Dems need to hold (Georgia and Michigan) and the four out of six they need to flip (among North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, Iowa, Texas and Alaska) are all states Trump carried in 2024, some quite comfortably.

That’s still a tall order, but Republicans are starting to worry. They remain saddled with a president growing more unpopular by the month. They’re also being hammered on state-specific issues while facing candidate quality challenges. The stars have to align for the Dems, but they are now visible in the night sky and heading in the right direction.

What’s changed since the map looked bleak

Let’s start with the president’s own numbers. Trump’s job approval sits around 33 percent (per Reuters/Ipsos) in recent polling. That’s lower than August 2018, a couple of months before the last blue wave wipeout and Senate overperformance by Dems.

That 33 percent is essentially Trump’s hardcore MAGA base, and this time they aren’t that psyched to turn out to vote, especially with Trump himself not on the ballot. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll found Democrats with a 10-point edge on voter enthusiasm, 8 points larger than in 2018.

What accounts for this meh among the GOP? For starters, there are gas prices, driven up by a war in the Middle East Trump promised never to start. Trump has been glib about pump prices, which isn’t helping. When told higher prices were hurting Americans, Trump called it “a little glitch,“ adding, “We had to take this detour.“ Some 80 percent of Americans now expect the Iran war to drag on.

Then there are the tariffs. Inflationary pressures from Trump’s “Liberation Day” taxes on imports show up everywhere from Iowa’s farm economy to household budgets in Alaska. It helps explain why only 37 percent of white voters without a college degree (Trump’s core constituency) give him a thumbs up on the economy.

Trump has also backslid with several key demographic groups that helped power him to victory in 2024. Cook Political Report found Democrats with a 17-point lead among young registered voters on the generic ballot. Latino voters overall have moved away from the GOP: Pew’s latest midterm survey found Hispanic voters preferring the Democratic candidate 49 to 26 percent. That’s nowhere near the 50/50 split in 2024, with big ramifications in states like Texas.

Independents are the GOP’s biggest headache. AP-NORC drew on some two dozen polls and found that favorable views of Trump among independents without a college degree fell from 48 percent in the early months of Trump 2.0 to roughly 25 percent by early 2026. Ouch. That has erased the wide education gap among independents on Trump. Now he’s deeply underwater with nearly all of them.

I know what many are thinking at this point. Sure, the polling looks bad, but polls aren’t votes, and they can be way, way off. Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary is a fresh example. The polls had state Rep. Francesca Hong leading Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley by huge margins in the weeks before the vote. Crowley won anyway, by half a percentage point. What we ought to demand is corroboration across multiple sources, rather than reliance on polls.

One such signal is special elections. It’s imperfect, but it tells us something about who is eager to show up and vote. Since Trump returned to office, Democrats have flipped 31 state legislative seats from Republican to Democratic control. Republicans have flipped zero. Across more than 110 special elections, Democrats have overperformed Harris’s 2024 numbers by more than 12 points. Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a Texas state Senate seat that Trump carried by 17 points. Democrats have won two special elections in Florida, including a state House seat that overlaps Mar-a-Lago itself. And on Tuesday, Democrats flipped a state House seat in Butler County, Pennsylvania that Republicans had held since the 1990s and Trump carried by 18 points in 2024.

None of this guarantees a Democratic bonanza in November. After all, 2018’s early special elections were hotter than that midterm’s result. But when polling and actual-vote evidence point in the same direction, that’s a more reliable signal than either on its own.

Georgia and Michigan: Democratic must-holds

Georgia looks solid on the fundamentals. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) is an incumbent with a huge war chest and a formidable coalition operation. His opponent, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), has significant MAGA baggage: a hardline abortion position, a pending ethics investigation and a combative social-media presence. A true Trump acolyte! Indeed, Cook Political described Collins as not a natural fit for suburban Atlanta voters; he won a bruising primary only after a last-minute Trump endorsement.

The polling reflects the gap. The most recent InsiderAdvantage poll found Ossoff leading 50 to 43 percent, with other recent polling also showing him comfortably ahead among Black voters, independents and moderates.

Michigan is a different story, and one I’m watching closely. Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a former Wayne County health director, is campaigning on getting money out of politics and passing Medicare for All. Republican nominee Mike Rogers, a former congressman making his second consecutive Senate bid after narrowly losing to Elissa Slotkin in 2024, is running on lowering energy costs for the auto industry, protecting jobs from Chinese competition and defending Trump’s tariffs as a tool that’s “actually started working” for Michigan manufacturing. On this, Rogers may be vulnerable: Michigan’s manufacturing employment has fallen from 624,500 jobs in January 2019 to 583,000 in May 2026, a decline of more than 41,000. El-Sayed has pressed the contrast directly, accusing Rogers of demonizing electric vehicles while driving one himself. Both candidates support tariffs to bring manufacturing home, so the real dispute is over Trump’s approach and results so far.

The campaign also turned ugly since El-Sayed’s primary win. As I wrote earlier this month, the attacks began within a day. Trump referred to El-Sayed as a “jihadist,” Rogers falsely claimed El-Sayed believes America deserved the September 11 attacks, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee ran a digital ad branding him a “radical” tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. Senate Republicans amplified similar language: NRSC chair Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) called him “disqualified from serving,” and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted that “every Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse.” El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate, responded that Republicans are “going to use Islamophobia because their ideas are tired.”

Polling in Michigan is a bit of a mess. Pollsters were nearly uniformly wrong about the Democratic Senate primary, with pre-primary surveys predicting El-Sayed would win by double digits. He won by a single point. That miss may be carrying into general-election polling, which is already all over the place and probably unreliable. A Susquehanna poll published August 19 found El-Sayed up 46 to 39 percent, while a Fox News poll conducted August 6-10 had Rogers ahead 51 percent to 47 percent.

Another reason for caution: El-Sayed’s favorability is 13 points underwater. That’s worse than every other Democratic Senate candidate in a competitive race. The gap is likely from sustained attacks on his faith and background; a national smear campaign built on false terrorism claims and religious fearmongering, from the president on down, would move favorability numbers on anyone. Democrats will need to rally strongly behind El-Sayed to hold Michigan.

The clearest flip: North Carolina

The best pickup opportunity for Dems is in North Carolina. Roy Cooper is a two-term former governor who won statewide multiple times, even in years Republicans carried the state. His opponent, former RNC chairman Michael Whatley, is a longtime party operative with a national fundraising resume but comparatively little name recognition in North Carolina. His tenure at the RNC ties him closely to Trump, who remains deeply unpopular.

Hurricane Helene’s stalled recovery has become one of the most volatile issues in the race, with both campaigns trying to capitalize on it. Whatley serves on the administration’s FEMA Review Council, which evaluates disaster policy. Democrats are tying him to slow federal aid to western North Carolina, though his campaign says the council doesn’t manage day-to-day recovery operations. Cooper has his own Helene problem because he was governor when the storm hit. Whatley’s campaign has attacked him for being in New York at a climate event as the storm approached, and for his veto of a state recovery bill that Republicans argue was hurricane funding but Democrats say was a power grab dressed up as disaster relief. Notably, Helene aid was absent from a recent White House supplemental spending request that included nearly $88 billion for the Iran war and farm aid, a contrast Cooper has highlighted.

The polling looks strong for Cooper, though it could tighten by Election Day. A Carolina Journal poll conducted August 9-10 found Cooper up 51.5 to 39 percent, a 12.5-point lead. As with Trump, independents are sour on Whatley: Carolina Journal’s survey put the gap at 55 to 34 percent.

The toss-ups: Maine and Ohio

Maine Democrats are running Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and former Maine Senate president after soon-to-be “who?” Graham Platner withdrew in July following sexual assault allegations. Jackson emphasizes his rural, working-class roots against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who is seeking a sixth term and running on her seniority as Appropriations Committee chair and her record of securing $1.5 billion in congressional spending for hundreds of Maine projects.

But that voting record has also become a centerpiece of Jackson’s attack. Collins’s 2018 vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who later joined the majority overturning Roe v. Wade, is a central theme of Democratic advertising, despite Collins calling the Roe reversal “ill-considered” at the time. Notably, Collins maintains she doesn’t regret her Kavanaugh vote. Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju called abortion one of Collins’s biggest vulnerabilities, arguing Maine voters have soured on her handling of the issue.

Collins has sought to portray Jackson as a radical, but a Fox News poll found Maine voters more concerned about Collins voting with Trump too often than Jackson being too close to the democratic-socialist movement. It’s an early sign the race is being fought more on Trump’s unpopularity than Jackson’s positioning.

Polling since the nominee swap has been consistently tight, with Jackson slightly ahead. A Fox News poll conducted August 6-10 found Jackson leading 48 to 46 percent, with other polling also showing a close race.

But most of us remember being burned by overconfidence. Collins faced similar margins against Sara Gideon at this stage in 2020 and won anyway. Maine hasn’t backed a Republican presidential nominee since 1988, which should make this Democrats’ easiest pickup, but Collins has defied that logic before.

The other real toss-up is Ohio. As I wrote about for The Big Picture, a defining issue in the state is data centers, and it’s rare to see a single local controversy shape a Senate race this directly. Incumbent Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) spent years as lieutenant governor aggressively recruiting data center investment, including a 2024 appearance praising a multibillion-dollar Google expansion. Turns out, that’s a terrible record in the eyes of most voters. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, attempting a comeback, has made Husted’s data center record the centerpiece of his campaign, running ads calling Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio” and highlighting sweetheart tax deals he claims have driven up utility bills.

A National Republican Senatorial Committee memo to AI companies, obtained by Axios, called the race a “dead heat” in its own private polling and warned that data centers have become “a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle” nationally, not just in Ohio. A recent Fox News poll has bad news for the GOP: It found Brown leading Husted by 8 points. But Ohio remains a state Trump carried comfortably, and a Brown romp would still be a bigger surprise than a narrow victory.

The reach states: Iowa, Texas and Alaska

In Iowa, Democratic nominee Josh Turek, a state representative and two-time Paralympic gold medalist, has centered the race on farm pain. He argues Iowa’s tariff and Iran-war exposure has produced a second farm crisis, and the numbers back him up: Iowa leads the nation in farm foreclosures, with farmers facing poor commodity margins and high fertilizer costs tied to the war’s effect on energy prices. Turek has hit his opponent Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) for repeatedly voting for Trump’s tariffs and to continue the Iran war, which he ties to rising gas, diesel and fertilizer costs for Iowa farmers. Hinson disputes this and points to provisions in the Republican tax-and-spending law, including a $50 billion rural health fund, while highlighting her own farm bill and an E15 gasoline measure, though both have stalled in Congress.

The polling has been both tight and inconsistent. An Emerson College poll conducted August 2-4 found Hinson leading 47.5 percent to 45 percent, while a Fox News poll from late June found Turek ahead by 4 points. Once again, independents are the clearest source of Democratic strength: the Emerson poll found them breaking for Turek by 11 points, 49 percent to 38 percent.

Texas is a longer shot mathematically, but its demographic movements are the most dramatic on the Senate map. Democratic nominee James Talarico, a state representative, is running against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose long history of corruption charges and a messy divorce are well known to Texas voters, who nonetheless elected him three times.

This time, though, Paxton is bleeding support, especially among Latino and independent voters, over the high cost of living. A Texas Public Opinion Research poll from late July found Talarico leading 45 to 40 percent—and winning Latino voters 66 to 20 percent and independents by 20 points, driven substantially by voters ranking affordability as their top concern.

An Emerson College poll from early August found the race tighter, with Paxton up 47 to 46. It still showed Talarico with a wide favorability edge among Latino voters, 50.5 percent to Paxton's 33.9 percent.

Texas has broken many Democratic hearts before. No Democrat has won statewide in more than three decades, and that history remains the biggest obstacle. Could Talarico break the curse? It will come down to enthusiasm and turnout.

Finally, Democratic chances in Alaska moved from theoretical to real this week. Mary Peltola, the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, is running on affordability, fixing what she calls a “rigged” political system in Washington and restoring the state’s fishing industry. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, seeking a third term with Trump’s endorsement, has leaned on his record steering federal investment to Alaska’s military infrastructure. But even he has acknowledged affordability as the top issue facing voters.

After narrowly losing her House seat in 2024, Peltola led Tuesday’s top-four, all-skate primary with about 48 percent of the vote to Sullivan’s roughly 43 percent, out of a 16-candidate field. MS NOW’s analysis now rates the race a pure toss-up, placing Alaska alongside Maine, North Carolina and Ohio as Democrats’ best pickup opportunities.

In my experience, as voters begin to focus on the midterms after Labor Day, it tends to get worse for the party in power. And Trump, being Trump, isn’t doing much to help. He continues to downplay affordability, the war in Iran has no end in sight and he seems preoccupied with vanity projects in Washington, D.C., rather than the welfare of the electorate. Normally, candidates would steer their campaigns away from such a frothy whirlpool, but in Trump’s case many are simply too afraid.

That, above all, makes me think holding two Democratic seats and winning four of six Republican ones isn’t as far-fetched as it once was.