Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville predicted Democrats would pick up 40 seats in the 2026 midterms after the GOP-led House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump‘s “One Big Beautiful Bill” this week.
Newsweek reached out to the NRCC for comment via email.
Why It Matters
Trump has touted the bill’s passage as a victory for Republicans, but Democrats believe backlash to the legislation will fuel losses for the GOP next November. They point to measures such as estimated cuts to healthcare spending and its impact on the national debt as potential questions Republicans representing competitive districts will have to answer ahead of the midterms. Historically, the party of the president does lose seats in the midterm.
What to Know
Carville discussed how the bill could change the course of the midterms during an interview with CNN‘s Anderson Cooper and Democratic strategist Paul Begala Thursday night, predicting it will lead to big gains for Democrats.
“Every Democrat, regardless of the ideology or their ethnicity or their regional—we can all rally around this. And we can run on this single issue all the way to 2026. And Paul is right, we’re going to pick up more than 40 House seats, I can tell you,” Carville said.
He said political anthropologists will view it as a “mass extinction event” for the GOP.
“A lot of them are going to be extinct when people go to the polls, voting for this. I promise you. This thing is like 25, 26 points underwater already, and we haven’t even started our education program,” he said.
Most recent polls suggest Democrats would have a slim lead over Republicans in terms of the generic ballot. Real Clear Politics gives Democrats an average lead of 2.3 points in their aggregate.
A recent Emerson College poll found that on the generic ballot, 43 percent of voters would lean toward Democrats, while 40 percent would vote for Republicans. The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from June 24 to June 25, 2025, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
A Cygnal poll, on the other hand, showed Democrats and Republicans roughly tied at 47 percent. It surveyed 1,500 likely voters from June 3 to June 4, 2025, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.51 percentage points.
Republicans won the popular vote by 2.7 percentage points in 2022, which was considered an underwhelming performance despite former President Joe Biden‘s low approval rating at the time. They gained only nine seats. In 2018, Democrats won the midterms by 8.6 points, flipping 41 seats.
What People Are Saying
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a post to X: “Every single swing seat Republican who voted to gut healthcare must be held accountable in the midterm election.”
Representative Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the NRCC, the GOP House campaign arm, wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill: “Every House Democrat voted against this bill. They rejected relief for working families. They rejected work requirements. They voted to allow illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer funded healthcare. They rejected common sense. And we will make sure each one of them has to answer for it.”
What Happens Next
Democrats and Republicans are trading jabs over the bill ahead of the midterms, which are still more than a year away.
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