| Dear Readers: After the publication of these initial Senate ratings, Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) announced that she would not be running for another term. As a result of that announcement, we changed Minnesota from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic. The new Senate ratings map is here.
— The Editors |
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE
— While Republicans, who will be defending 22 of the 35 Senate seats up in 2026, may have the political environment working against them next year, they are still favored to retain the chamber.
— Part of the reason for this is that Democrats hold two of our three initial Toss-up races, Georgia and Michigan, while GOP-held North Carolina will likely see another hotly-contested Senate race.
— We are giving Maine’s Susan Collins (R) a degree of deference by starting her race as Leans Republican, although as the only Republican representing a Kamala Harris-won state, it is hard to see Democrats getting close to a majority without her seat.
— If Democrats were to be on track to regain the Senate by the end of the decade, they would almost certainly have to come out of the 2026 cycle with a net gain of seats.
Rating the 2026 Senate map
The last two midterm elections help illustrate why even though the presidential party often draws the ire of the electorate in midterm elections, the trend of seat loss is much clearer in the House than in the Senate.
In both 2018 and 2022, the president’s party lost the majority in the House of Representatives. While Democrats seemed to overperform expectations in the House in 2018 and Republicans seemed to underperform in 2022, the basic result of those elections was the same—voters put a check on the president by taking the House majority away from his party.
But in the Senate, the story was different. In each of those years, the president’s party netted seats. Republicans came out of 2018 with 53 seats after they had won 52 in 2016, and Democrats came out of 2022 with 51 seats after they had won 50 in 2020.
A basic, Politics 101 explanation for the differences in outcomes in each of those years is simply that all 435 House seats are elected every two years, while only a third of the Senate is up every two years. So the makeup of the Senate map matters greatly in determining the outcome.
In 2018, Democrats were defending the lion’s share of the seats contested, including in several states that are deeply Republican at the presidential level. Republicans flipped a number of these seats in that election, and then finished the job six years later, in 2024 (we looked at the partisan realignment of the Senate following the election). Meanwhile, in 2022, Republicans were defending more seats than Democrats, and a combination of factors allowed Democrats to defend all of their vulnerable seats while flipping an open seat in battleground Pennsylvania.
We see this dynamic throughout recent midterm history. Table 1 shows how the presidential party has performed, on average, in midterms since the end of World War II.
Table 1: Presidential party performance in midterm elections
There have been 20 midterms in the postwar era, starting in 1946. In 18 of those elections, the president’s party has lost seats in the House, with exceptions coming in the back-to-back midterm cycles of 1998 and 2002. But in the Senate, the presidential party penalty is less pronounced. Yes, the president’s party more often than not loses seats in the Senate, but in 7 of the 20 elections, the president’s party either played to a draw or actually netted seats, as we saw in the last couple of midterms.
The specifics of the 2026 map give the Republicans an opening to once again produce an exception to the midterm seat loss trend for the presidential party in the Senate, although Democrats have credible targets too.
Republicans find themselves defending 22 seats this cycle, while Democrats are only defending 13. However, 20 of the 22 Republican-held seats are in states that Donald Trump won by double-digits, leaving only Maine, which is reliably Democratic for president but which has a proven incumbent in Republican Susan Collins, and North Carolina, a GOP-leaning battleground where Republican Thom Tillis is seeking a third term, as obvious Democratic targets. Meanwhile, 11 of the 13 Democratic Senate seats are in states that never voted for Donald Trump, while a pair—Georgia, defended by first-term Sen. Jon Ossoff (D), as well as an open seat in Michigan—voted for Trump in two of his three elections.
Those four states, two on each side, form the competitive core of the 2026 Senate map. This basic alignment works out well for Republicans, because if this holds and there really are only four highly competitive Senate races, the worst they could do would be to lose two net seats, which would still keep them in the majority at 51-49. Republicans are clearly favored to hold the Senate at the starting line of the 2026 cycle—in the conclusion, we’ll set some expectations for how we’re planning to judge the cycle.
But first, let’s go a little more into depth on our initial ratings, including these four races and a handful of other contests we are starting in a category other than Safe.
Map 1: Crystal Ball 2026 Senate ratings
Dissecting the ratings
Last year, the presidential race hinged on seven states that were widely considered Toss-ups. Of those seven, three will host Senate races this cycle, and all are starting out in our Toss-up category.
In the southeast, the aforementioned Ossoff and Tillis are the most vulnerable members from their respective parties. Both incumbents could find themselves in marquee races against popular former, or outgoing, governors: national Republicans would love for Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) to challenge Ossoff while Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairwoman Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has namechecked former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) as a strong potential candidate in North Carolina. However, even if both Kemp and Cooper decline—there have been instances in recent years of governors passing on potentially promising contests, most notably now-former Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) in 2022—Georgia and North Carolina are so critical both sides’ math that we’d be shocked if those states did not see costly contests.
While Georgia’s red lean has lessened over the past decade, the state GOP still retains an ample “farm team.” With that, national Republicans feel they can beat Ossoff even if Kemp doesn’t make the race. Rep. Buddy Carter (R, GA-1) and state Insurance Commissioner John King (R) have expressed some interest in the race, although both seem to be deferring to Kemp. We’d note that Carter is in office because his predecessor, Jack Kingston, ran for this Senate seat in 2014—while Kingston put up crushing margins with the voters who knew him best, in the Savannah area, he lost a primary runoff because metro Atlanta voted against him. In what could be interpreted as an attempt to raise his profile with primary voters, Carter made news this week by taking up a Trump cause and introducing legislation that would authorize the United States to acquire and rename Greenland. Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, GA-14) has not ruled out challenging Ossoff—if she ran, we could easily see Democrats, or their allies, boosting her in a contested primary, as they have done in many other contests in recent years.
In the 2022 midterm cycle, Georgia was one of a handful of swing states that illustrated the importance of candidate quality: as Kemp led much of the statewide GOP ticket to victory, the only Republican statewide candidate who lost was former football star Herschel Walker, whose personal baggage was too much for him to overcome against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D). Kemp is strong enough that he could hypothetically push this race out of the Toss-up category and towards the Republican column in advance of Election Day. Greene, on the other hand, could push it the opposite way.
Moving to North Carolina, Tillis has long been a Republican whom the conservative grassroots has viewed with at least a modicum of suspicion. However, over the past several weeks, Tillis has moved to shore up his right flank by taking a visible role in backing Trump’s Cabinet nominees. In a Cooper-less Democratic primary, former Rep. Wiley Nickel (D, NC-13) would seem to have a head start. In 2022, Nickel won a very marginal Raleigh-area seat before state Republicans drastically reconfigured the map for 2024—in late 2023, he announced that he had set his sights on a 2026 Senate bid instead of reelection to the House (although we presume he’d ultimately stand down if Cooper entered the race).
It may be tempting to chalk up Tillis’s past election successes to macro factors that were at play during his campaigns: in 2014, he flipped a Romney-won state in a pro-GOP wave year, and in 2020, he was reelected as Trump carried his state. But, as one of our Republican contacts half-joked last year, “the guy has never led in a poll but he’s the state’s senior senator”—something that, to us, speaks to Tillis’s skills as a political operator.
Of the 25 states that voted for Trump three times—a group that holds half of the nation’s Senate seats—North Carolina is the most competitive state. Republicans have blocked Democrats from winning a Senate race there since the late Sen. Kay Hagan’s (D) victory in 2008. But Republicans also did not have to defend a Senate seat in North Carolina in the last two pro-Democratic midterms, 2006 and 2018. If Democrats are to win back the Senate majority anytime soon, they will probably need at least one of North Carolina’s seats.
A few weeks ago, we touched on Michigan’s Senate contest shortly after Sen. Gary Peters (D) announced his retirement. While we hinted at it back then, we are formalizing our Toss-up rating today. Though there haven’t been any major candidacy announcements from either side, the contours of the race may be taking shape. Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R, MI-8) is reportedly close to announcing a second bid for the Senate in as many cycles—last year, he lost to now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D) by three-tenths of a point, which represented Republicans’ best showing in a Michigan Senate race since 1994 (the last year where they actually won). Rogers’s entrance into the race would be a good development for Republicans, although he may not get a clear primary field.
Meanwhile, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (D) is reportedly taking a serious look at the contest. Though he previously served as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he has been a resident of his husband’s hometown, Traverse City, Michigan, for the past few years. In recent cycles, Democrats have had success in making the “carpetbagger” label stick to some Republican candidates in key contests—with Buttigieg, Democrats would probably risk giving Republicans a similar opening. In fact, an EPIC-MRA poll from earlier this week gave Rogers a 47%-41% lead over Buttigieg. While early polling is not always predictive, we’re watching to see if any potential “Stop Buttigieg” movement appears among Michigan Democrats. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who represents a Detroit-area seat and is known as a strong fundraiser, is reportedly preparing to run, and term-limited state Attorney General Dana Nessel is another possibility. We do think Buttigieg, despite his appeal to college-educated Democrats and Never Trumpers, has a lot to prove as a Senate candidate, particularly in a state where Black turnout is so crucial to Democrats. It is reasonable to wonder how Buttigieg, who never gained traction with Black voters during his 2020 presidential primary run, would motivate that crucial bloc. In a midterm with a Republican in the White House, Democrats should win a Senate race in Michigan. But there’s enough uncertainty that we thought a Toss-up rating was merited to start this contest.
The only state that we put in the Leans category, from either side, is Maine. While we are doing this, at least for now, as a nod to the crossover support that Susan Collins has generated through the years, given the bigger state of play, we fully expect it’ll eventually make its way towards the Toss-up column. Collins, at 72, is running for a sixth term. For now, Democrats are searching for a candidate. Gov. Janet Mills (D) remains popular and will be term-limited in 2026; while she did not close the door on challenging Collins, Mills will turn 79 shortly before the next Congress is sworn in. Looking to Maine’s House delegation, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D, ME-1) could run, although she lost to Collins by 17 points in 2002’s Senate contest, while Rep. Jared Golden (D, ME-2), who has won perpetually close contests in a Trumpy seat, seems more likely to run to replace Mills if he runs statewide.
A September 2024 poll from the Portland-based Pan Atlantic Research gave Collins a 49%/47% favorability rating spread. So, to us, Collins would start a reelection effort from a positive, but not insurmountable, position (it may be worth noting that the same poll found Harris leading by 9 points in the presidential race, and she went on to win the state by a comparable 7-point margin).
Either side has two races apiece in our Likely category, although, going by presidential numbers alone, our Democratic states are shakier for their incumbent party than their Republican counterparts. Minnesota and New Hampshire are mildly blue states where Harris’s single-digit margins last year were worse than Biden’s from 2020 but better than those that Hillary Clinton got in 2016.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) is not the electoral juggernaut that her same-state colleague Amy Klobuchar (D) has proven to be. But even as some recent statewide Republicans have come close in Minnesota, the better-than two-to-one margins that the core Twin Cities metro counties give to Democrats have been tough for the GOP to overcome.
In the Granite State, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) has not announced whether she’ll seek a fourth term, although her recent fundraising does not suggest that she is. If Shaheen retires, Rep. Chris Pappas (D, NH-1), who has held down the more competitive of the state’s two districts with relative ease since 2018, would be a name to watch, as would Stefany Shaheen, the incumbent’s daughter who previously served as a local official in Portsmouth.
Former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), who held Shaheen to a 3-point win in 2014, posted a selfie with National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott, with the implication seeming to be that another Senate run could be forthcoming. After that 2014 loss, Brown a became relatively early backer of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and served as ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa during Trump’s first term. Brown would bring some name recognition to the campaign, but it seems unlikely that 2026’s political environment will be as advantageous to Republicans as 2014’s was. While New Hampshire Republicans have done well in state-level races in recent years—they hold a trifecta—their performance in federal races has been far weaker, which is also why we give Democrats more of the benefit of the doubt.
While Republicans could very possibly come out of 2026 with a net gain in the Senate, if more “typical” midterm patterns take hold—that is to say if public opinion turns markedly against the presidential party, a dynamic that worked against Republicans in 2006, and then Democrats in 2010 and 2014—some double-digit Trump states will inevitably seem more competitive. While we are leaving most of those states in the Safe Republican category for now, we are flagging Ohio and Texas as potential “wave watch” prospects by calling them Likely Republican.
In the case of the Ohio special election, Democrats are apparently lobbying former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) to run against Sen. Jon Husted (R), who was recently appointed to replace now-Vice President JD Vance. Last year, Brown lost his seat by just over 3 points to now-Sen. Bernie Moreno (R), although he was one of Senate Democrats’ strongest overperformers. While 2026 may be a better year for Democrats than 2024, Husted is at the very least a more proven candidate than Moreno was—before his time serving as Gov. Mike DeWine’s (R) lieutenant governor, he won two statewide races to serve as Ohio’s Secretary of State.
Aside from Ohio, Florida will also host a special election next year. But while Ohio had fairly competitive Senate elections in both 2022 and 2024 despite the state’s clear GOP shift in the Trump era, Florida Democrats saw credible recruits lose by double-digit margins during those cycles. That helps explain why Ohio makes more sense as a dark horse Democratic target than Florida, which starts as Safe Republican.
A few months ago, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was in the mix for the Senate Majority Leader position but lost out to South Dakota’s John Thune. Cornyn is running for a fifth term, but may draw a serious primary challenge. Specifically, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trumpier Republican, has not ruled out a Senate run and is more popular among state Republicans. In 2023, Paxton was impeached by the Texas state House but acquitted by the state Senate—he and Cornyn have since sparred on social media.
Elsewhere on the map, we are starting Republicans off as strong favorites in some red states that were at least somewhat competitive in 2020, when this map was last up—examples include Alaska, Iowa, Montana, Kansas, and South Carolina.
Our Safe Democratic category includes several single-digit Harris states which could become more engaged depending on how GOP recruitment efforts go. Such is the case in our home state of Virginia. With Sen. Mark Warner (D) likely to seek a fourth term, national Republicans’ best prospect for the race would be outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). However, at this point it would be at least a slight surprise if Youngkin, who got some buzz as a presidential prospect last year and could very feasibly land a job in the Trump administration, saw a Senate run as his next move. The trajectory of this year’s race to replace Youngkin may encourage, or deter, other potential Republican recruits ahead of 2026.
Last year, independent union leader Dan Osborn was the best-performing non-Republican Senate candidate relative to his state’s presidential lean. Though he never committed to caucusing with either side, and even floated the idea of an independent caucus, Osborn became the de facto Democrat against Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE). Given the Democrats’ relative lack of obvious targets, and the abundance of red states on the 2026 Senate map, it seems more of a question of where rather than if another Osborn-type candidate emerges. As an aside, Osborn himself appears to be seriously considering challenging Rep. Don Bacon (R, NE-2) in that Harris-won, Omaha-based House district.
Conclusion
After their losses in 2024, Democrats were likely going to face a multi-cycle struggle to regain a majority in the Senate. Even if 2026 is an overall “blue wave” environment, expecting Democrats to win back the Senate sets the bar too high—the seats just are not there, at least as we assess the map at the start of the cycle. Likewise, for Republicans, simply holding control of the Senate sets the bar too low for them: They should look at this election as an opportunity to cement their new majority so that when 2028 comes around, the majority isn’t really in play that cycle, either.
Peeking ahead to 2028, we see that 6 of 2024’s 7 battleground presidential states have Senate elections—all but Michigan. Democrats hold more of these seats than Republicans do: They will be defending Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, while Republicans will be defending North Carolina and Wisconsin. If Democrats were to net two seats this cycle, cutting the Republican majority to 51-49, they could look to 2028 and chart a plausible course to a 50-50 effective Senate majority by netting just one additional seat, along with winning the presidency, which would provide the vice presidential tiebreaker. Likewise, if Republicans could hold their net loss in 2026 to just a single seat, that would force Democrats to win all six of those battleground Senate seats and the presidency just to win a 50-50 majority starting in 2029. Obviously if Republicans do better than that, holding at their current 53 seats or even expanding their majority, it becomes much harder to imagine a Democratic Senate majority any time soon.
Sports gambling is ever-present in modern advertising, so let’s borrow some betting parlance to set expectations for the Senate in 2026.
An “over/under” is a wager on whether a certain score is higher or lower than the given number. For instance, an over/under for total points scored for last weekend’s Super Bowl was 48.5. The Eagles and Chiefs combined to score 62 points, so those who bet the “over” won.
For 2026’s Senate expectations, we’d set the over/under at a Democratic net gain of 1.5 seats. If the Democratic gain exceeds that—netting two seats or more—they probably had a good election in the Senate, setting themselves up to realistically compete for the majority in 2028 or maybe even winning it in 2026 if enough things broke well for them. Likewise, if the Republicans hold the Democrats to just a gain of one seat or less, Republicans likely would have had a good election of their own, at least in the Senate, having not only held their majority but also setting themselves up to be strongly favored to defend it in the next election.
Based on our initial ratings, Republicans are better-positioned to hit the “under” than Democrats are to hit the “over,” but we’ll be keeping these expectations in mind as we watch how the race for the Senate evolves over the course of the cycle.
Obviously, these are turbulent times. How voters view Donald Trump will be a major factor in the midterms, although the Senate results may not match the overall political environment, as we saw to some degree in both 2018 and 2022. The early days of Trump’s second term have even more of a “bull in a china shop” quality than the early days of his first, with a series of aggressive actions spearheaded by Elon Musk pushing (and, according to many judges so far, exceeding) presidential authority. The sheer scope of Trump’s boundary-pushing and boundary-breaking may widen the variance of what the political landscape may look like next year. Perhaps the public ends up siding with Trump and Republicans overperform, or perhaps the public will throw a fit, making an outcome that seems very unlikely today—Democrats flipping the Senate—more possible.
For the time being, the Republicans getting to 53 seats in 2024 gives them a major buffer for 2026, and their odds of holding the majority following this election are quite high.