Fox News’ final Power Rankings shifted to show Republicans could lose control of the Senate after the network moved South Carolina’s Senate race to a toss-up.
The move came Thursday in a Fox News Power Rankings forecast five days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
The forecast moved the race between Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) and Democratic challenger Annie Andrews from leaning Republican to a toss-up, yet President Donald Trump won the state by 18 points in 2024, a Fox News map shows.
Trump is spending part of the campaign’s final week shoring up a state he won by double digits, with a trip there Thursday night to help Graham, the forecast said. A New York Times poll this week found Graham and Andrews tied at 48%.
“So this is not good news, not good developments for Republicans here, as … South Carolina has traditionally been a stronghold for the GOP,” Ryan Schmelz, an anchor on Fox News’s sister network, LiveNOW from Fox, said Thursday.
The forecast also moved Ohio’s Senate race from a toss-up to leaning Democratic.
Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown led Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) 52% to 47% in a Fox News poll last week.
“President Trump won by double digits,” Schmelz said. “Now you’re looking at a situation where [Republicans] could be losing the Senate because of Ohio.”
Neither party reaches a majority in the forecast, which gives Democrats 48 seats and Republicans 46, with six races rated toss-ups, Numa wrote. Republicans would keep control with 50 seats because Vice President JD Vance breaks ties.
“On a good night for the Democrats, their ceiling rises to 54 seats,” Numa wrote. “A good night for the Republicans could see them retain control with up to 52 seats.”
“You can throw a coin up in the air,” Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer said on air of the toss-up races earlier this week, before the South Carolina shift. “It’s anybody’s guess.”
Fox’s forecast tied Republicans’ weaker position to the war with Iran, which it said has cut into Trump’s approval and given Democrats an edge on voters’ top concerns.
Trump’s approval rating “was 44% in the last pre-war survey and sits at 36% now,” Numa wrote of the war, which began with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes in February.
Since the war began, Democrats have opened a 16-point lead on inflation and a 12-point lead on gas prices, according to Fox’s October survey, in which more than eight in 10 voters said those issues concern them.
The forecast also projects Democrats will win at least 223 House seats, five more than the 218 needed for a majority.
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