President Donald Trump’s low job approval ratings, coupled with large Democratic leads in generic congressional polling, have most analysts expecting the House to flip to team blue in November. That’s still the most likely outcome, but a seat-by-seat analysis reveals a tougher challenge for Democrats than the overall picture suggests.
Historically, parties whose presidents have pre-election job approval ratings as low as Trump’s 40 percent mark get wiped out in the midterms. Trump’s approval in 2018 was 45 percent, according to exit polling, and the GOP lost 40 House seats. President Barack Obama’s job approval was also 45 percent on Election Day in 2010, and Democrats lost a whopping 63 House seats. So a 40 percent rating portends losses at least that large, right?
Not in 2026 it doesn’t. Large midterm gains usually occur when the party in power loses seats that typically lean toward the other side. In 2018, Republicans held 25 House seats Hillary Clinton had carried two years earlier; they lost 22 of them. But thanks to increased polarization (and mid-cycle redistricting shenanigans), the GOP only holds eight seats won by Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024.
Redistricting has also shifted the House map sharply in the GOP’s favor. The median House seat — the 218th seat required for House control — under the 2024 maps was Arizona’s 1st District, which Trump carried by 3.1 percentage points. Now it’s Virginia’s 1st District, which he won by 4.9 points. Winning that district plus every single House seat Trump carried by less than that will be a tall order.
The Democrats’ current 6.4-point lead in generic congressional polling suggests they can pull it off, but that blunt instrument doesn’t take into account the peculiarities of individual races. Strong Republican incumbents and potentially weak Democratic candidates could cost Democrats some of the seats they need to win.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania’s 1st District holds a seat that Harris narrowly won. But he has held his suburban Philadelphia seat for 10 years — including through the 2018 blue wave — by crafting a strong record as a moderate.
Rep. Mike Lawler (New York’s 17th) defeated Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in 2022, after the district had been carried by Joe Biden by 10 points in 2020. Lawler’s seat also contains one of the largest Jewish populations in the country. Could many previously Democratic-voting Jews switch parties in reaction to the dramatic rise of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli sentiment within the party?
Democrats may also be hampered by the extreme candidates their voters nominated in some marginal seats. The nominees against Reps. Tom Barrett (Michigan’s 7th District), Gabe Evans (Colorado’s 8th) and David G. Valadao (California’s 22nd) all campaigned as ardent progressives, in some cases defeating candidates backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Trump won each of these seats by between one and two points. These incumbents will aim to convince Trump voters to turn out and turn back opponents they will portray as too extreme to be trusted. That’s not at all inconceivable, even in this environment.
Some of these seats don’t even have solid Democratic challengers yet. Rep. Bryan Steil (Wisconsin’s 1st District) holds a seat that Trump won by 4.5 percentage points. But his Democratic foe has not yet been added to the party’s “Red to Blue” target list. Neither has Barrett’s opponent, despite the importance of his seat. You aren’t likely to win a seat you don’t seriously campaign for.
No party ever sweeps all the seats a baseline partisan analysis suggests it can win. That means Democrats probably need to take a few of the seats above the median to secure control of the House. Those seats are demographically even tougher.
There are only five House seats that Trump carried by between five and eight percentage points. That’s uphill ground by definition. Democrats won only a handful of seats in 2024 that Trump carried by five or more points, and none that Trump carried by at least 10.
Democrats believe they have candidates who can break this barrier. Christina Bohannan (Iowa’s 1st District) and Rebecca Cooke (Wisconsin’s 3rd) are back for rematches with incumbents they lost to in 2024, and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti is taking on freshman Rep. Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania’s 8th District. They also believe they can defeat Rep. Max Miller, who is facing allegations of spousal and child abuse from his ex-wife, in Ohio’s deep-red 7th District. (Miller has denied the allegations.) All four of these seats, however, are dominated by White voters without a college degree, the constituency that has proved most loyal to Trump-branded Republicanism. Breaking through will be hard.
A host of Democratic incumbents are also hoping their local strength will be enough to hold on in the newly gerrymandered seats they find themselves in. In some cases, such as that of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (Missouri’s 5th), the demographic headwinds are probably too strong to overcome. In others, such as heavily Hispanic Congressional Districts 28 and 34 in the Rio Grande Valley, represented by Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, respectively, polling that shows Hispanics turning away from the GOP gives Democrats hope.
Other incumbents may not be so fortunate. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Ohio’s 9th District) narrowly won her Toledo-based seat in 2024 while Trump was carrying it by seven points. In redistricting, Ohio’s Republicans made her seat 3.5 points redder. Florida Democrats Reps. Darren Soto (9th District), Kathy Castor (14th District) and Jared Moskowitz (25th District) are now running in seats Trump won by between nine and 18 points. Maybe one or two will win, but it’s highly unlikely most will.
Democrats have wind in their sails. Trump is highly unpopular, and they have every reason to believe their voters will turn out for them. But that doesn’t mean House control is assured. Their path to a House majority runs through 2024 Trump voters, and convincing enough of them to switch allegiances won’t be easy.
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