Introduction
Okay, so let's talk about the 2026 United States Senate elections.
This is pre-2024, so a lot of factors, like the Senate balance, are not determined.
Who's the president, who's going to be the president in 2026, that's also not determined.
Notably, 2026 is a midterm, and the way midterms will go usually depends a lot on the party of the president, usually in their second or sixth year in office.
Most presidents are underwater in their midterms:
Take a look at Obama’s two midterms, in 2010 and in 2014, respectively. In both, he saw a pretty significant dip in popularity.
In 2010, Obama had just passed the Affordable Care Act after a pretty long legislative battle. and he faced an economic recession. The dip in his popularity was reflected in the midterm election result.
Democrats lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives. Democrats had a pretty big majority from 2008 and 2006, but after 2010, they were capped at under 200 seats in the House — a very small minority compared to previous congresses. And in the Senate, Democrats lost six seats.
Now, prior to 2010, Democrats’ had a pretty big majority; they controlled 57 seats in the Senate. After 2010, Democrats had 51 seats - so still a majority.
Fast-forward to 2014, Obama's second midterm, the Democrats lost seven seats, pushing them down to 44 seats in the Senate, and they also lost more seats in the House.
All of this goes to show that midterms are often not great times for the incumbent president.
The same dip happened in 2018, President Trump's first midterm, when Republicans lost the House by losing 41 seats.
Republicans gained seats in the Senate, but that's mostly due to the unbalanced composition of the Senate map that year.
But midterms aren't always the worst for the incumbent president.
If you look just one and a half years ago — in 2022 — Joe Biden, who was very unpopular, successfully kept the Senate. In fact, Democrats gained a seat in Pennsylvania.
Democrats lost only nine seats in the House, when some prominent forecasters projected them to lose as many as 30 or 40.
There were some special factors in this election that prevented things from going the same way as 2010 or 2014 for Biden, namely: the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and a lot of extremists among the Republican candidates. But it still goes to show that midterms aren’t necessarily always unfavorable to the incumbent party.
And so now, looking ahead to 2026, arguably, there are two main scenarios that’ll impact outcomes greatly:
The first of them is that Joe Biden wins reelection in 2024, and it will be his second midterm.
And the other scenario is that Donald Trump wins the election, making it his second midterm after the one in 2018 … but really the first midterm of his new term.
Right now, it's impossible to predict whether something else will happen that will change the situation or the state of the elections.
But I would wager that if Joe Biden is president, the midterm will probably not go the way he wants or Democrats want.
And if Donald Trump is president, I suspect that the country will vote in spades against him and the Republicans in 2026, just as they did in 2018.
So, I'll consider both of those two possibilities while making the predictions.
SAFE FOR REPUBLICANS
Now, I'm going to start with the safe seats, seats that, regardless of most circumstances, unless something really crazy happens, regardless of whether it's Trump or Biden sitting in the Oval Office, I could fairly reliably say that these seats will stay in the same hands as they normally do, and I would be willing to bet money on these.
So, to start off, for the Republicans, their safe states are:
IDAHO
Call: Senate seat safe for Republicans.
That would be Republican Jim Risch. He's currently serving his third term.
In 2020, the last election, he was up for reelection; he was reelected with 63% of the vote. It's difficult to see that election going any other way, even if he retires.
WYOMING
The same thing with Wyoming, where first-term Republican Cynthia Lummis was elected in 2020 with 73% of the vote.
That's nearly three-quarters of the vote.
It's hard to see how that changes substantially in 6 years.
SOUTH DAKOTA
The same thing with South Dakota, where the incumbent is Mike Rounds. He was a popular governor before being elected.
A more marginal state than the ones I mentioned before, it only went for Trump by around 15 points, and Democrats did contest this seat 6 years ago with Barbara Bollier, a Republican state senator who ran for the seat as a Democrat.
Yet, despite a lot of investment on the state level, she ultimately still lost the seat by around 13 points.
So, a small overperformance, but not really a significant one.
OKLAHOMA
For the time being, additional safe states for the Republicans include Oklahoma.
That's one of the most Republican states in the nation, like around 2/3 of voters leaning Republican.
ARKANSAS
The same thing with Arkansas, where Democrats didn't even bother contesting the Senate seat six years ago, and instead, a Libertarian faced off against incumbent Tom Cotton and gained around 30% of the vote, so pretty irrelevant.
LOUISIANA
The same thing with Louisiana, which again, not as unanimously Republican as the other states I've mentioned, but still, there's no real chance Democrats will win it.
MISSISSIPPI & ALABAMA
I also include Mississippi and Alabama.
Alabama is a little bit funny because only 6 years ago, the Democrat held that seat. Democrat Doug Jones, he won a special election, and where he benefited from Trump's unpopularity and a really terrible Republican candidate, one of the worst candidates in the 21st century, with Roy Moore, who was accused of child molestation.
Sadly, he, for the Democrats, he lost his seat by 20 points in 2020 against Tommy Tuberville, and considering he was a very strong Democrat, he was an incumbent, he was probably the best person Democrats could have fielded, and he only, he couldn't even muster 40% of the vote.
It's very difficult to see how any other Democrat is going to come closer in Alabama.
TENNESSEE & KENTUCKY
Finally, Tennessee is looking safe for the Republicans as well, as Kentucky.
Kentucky was a state that Democrats did contest very seriously in 2020 with Amy McGrath, mostly because they faced off against the really unpopular Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mitch McConnell.
He had like consistently under 40% popularity in most polls, and Democrats invested over 100 million dollars in their candidate, yet McGrath was unable to muster even 40% of the vote against him.
McGrath ultimately lost by over 20 points.
Another state where it's really hard to see Democrats making a resurgence, for the time being, that's Kentucky.
WEST VIRGINIA & SOUTH CAROLINA
Additionally, West Virginia is looking safe for Republicans, and South Carolina is looking safe for the Republicans.
South Carolina was also one of those states, like Kentucky, which was very seriously contested by Democrats six years earlier, in 2020.
Lindsey Graham, another nationally unpopular figure who was closely associated with Trump's first term, seen as an ally or sycophant in Congress, Democrat Jamie Harrison, now the head of the DNC, he ran against him in 2020.
A lot of money was spent, again nearly 100 million, or perhaps more than that. He could not even come close either; he lost by 11 points to Lindsey Graham, while Joe Biden lost by around 14 or 15 to Donald Trump.
Again, it's an overperformance but not one that could really yield a Democratic win. For the time being, so those were all the safe states.
MONTANA
Oh, and Montana, which was in Democratic control as recently as 2014 with Max Baucus. But since then, Steve Daines has won every election by at least around 10 points or so, and it's unlikely he'll face another strong opponent like Steve Bullock, who was the governor when he faced off against Daines in 2020.
It's unlikely that Daines will face another serious challenge in 2026, so he should be resting happily for the time being.
Continue to Senate 2026: Part 2