Democrats are bullish, if nervous, about their prospects of capturing control of the Senate in next week’s elections. Polls in many states are close, but Democrats are competitive in enough places to win the chamber, if polls are accurate.
If that were to happen, it would be extraordinary, given the field of play.
The political environment favors Democrats this fall, but geography is the friend of Republicans. Democrats, who need to overcome a 53-47 Republican advantage, are competing mostly on Republican turf, in many cases deeply red territory. Tuesday’s vote counting will tell which of those factors proves the more powerful.
But no one should underestimate how much Democrats are running against recent voting patterns.
If Democrats are successful, they will have President Donald Trump to thank. The steep erosion in support for the president has turned safe territory into competitive ground, while several of Trump’s endorsements have elevated weak candidates.
It has become harder in the increasingly polarized political system for one party to win a Senate race in a state that went for the other party in the presidential election. Four decades ago, about two dozen states had split Senate delegations in Washington. Today, only three states — Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have a senator from each party.
For a century, voters often split their tickets, picking candidates from different parties for different jobs.
Then in 2016, there was perfect alignment between presidential and Senate results: In 12 states, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic nominee for Senate all won; in 22 states, Trump and the GOP Senate candidate prevailed. This was the first such occurrence since the introduction of direct election of senators early in the 20th century, as noted at the time by Eric Ostermeier of the University of Minnesota Smart Politics Project.
In 2020, only one state — Maine — voted one way for president and another for Senate. Not incidentally, that was the year Sen. Susan Collins (R) defied polls showing her trailing her opponent to win reelection when Joe Biden was winning the state by nine points. Biden won Maine by seven points in 2024 and Collins is again seeking reelection in a race that is within the margin of error in polls.
In 2024, four states — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin — went for Trump in the presidential race but also elected Democrats to the Senate. One was a pickup, the other three were holds. Republicans did not win any Senate seats in states won by former vice president Kamala Harris.
Notably, those four Democratic victories came in swing states where Trump’s margins were narrow. Today, Democrats’ hopes for a Senate majority rest on winning deep red states where Trump’s 2024 margins were significantly bigger.
Trump has won 25 states in each of the past three presidential elections. In those states, all 50 senators are Republicans. Most of the truly competitive Senate races are in that group of states. Of seven Senate contests rated as toss-ups by the Cook Report, Trump won five of them, all by double digits: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Texas and Ohio.
In 2018, Trump won Ohio by eight points and Democrat Sherrod Brown won reelection by seven points. Brown lost his seat in 2024 and is trying to win it back this fall, but against the backdrop of a state that Trump won by a margin of 11 points two years ago.
Brown holds a lead within the margin of error over Republican Sen. John Husted. Some strategists rate Ohio as the second-best chance for a Democratic pickup after North Carolina, where former Democratic governor Roy Cooper is clearly favored over Republican Michael Whatley.
Democratic candidates in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Texas must climb steeper hills than Brown. Trump won Alaska and Iowa by 13 points, Texas by 14 points and Kansas by 16 points. In short, Democrats are tasked with wrenching voters away from what recent and often longtime history says is their natural voting habit.
Since 2016, there have been a few cases of a Democratic candidate for Senate overcoming Trump margins in the double digits. They read like ancient history now.
Former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III (D) did it in 2018 in a state Trump had won by 42 points. By 2024, Manchin could see a likely defeat on the horizon and chose not to run again. Former Montana Sen. Jon Tester (D) won his reelection in 2018 even though Trump had carried his state by 20 points in 2016. In 2024, Tester lost his bid for reelection by seven points.
What accounts for this remarkable turn of events is plain to all. Trump’s governance and behavior has soured the public on his presidency and fractured the Republican coalition. Rarely have polls been as across-the-board bad for a president as what October has brought for Trump.
A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll portrays a president whose overall approval rating is at a low point; whose economic approval rating, once a strong attribute, has fallen below 30 percent; and who is seen as using his office for personal gain. Almost half of adults said they are financially worse off since he returned to office last year. Other national polls have shown similar results.
Republicans may have made a common mistake in politics, which is to assume the voting patterns in one election indicate a lasting shift. Because Trump’s second term has hit hardest some of the voters Republicans hoped would remain with them, Democrats now have several paths to a Senate majority.
Latino voters who moved toward Trump in 2024 have been peeling away, according to polls. Many are turned off by the abusive tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the administration’s overly aggressive deportation effort, and Trump’s failure to lower prices. That’s hurting Republicans in Texas, particularly South Texas where Trump made historic inroads two years ago.
Younger voters who moved in Trump’s direction in 2024 have seen little progress in making their lives better or more affordable. As with many older voters, the cost of gasoline, groceries and housing are a burden. White working-class voters, said to be permanent members of a new GOP, have shown less enthusiasm for the president today than they did two years ago.
Republicans also face defections in rural areas, where Trump’s policies have battered farmers and their communities. First came tariffs and a sharp reduction in corn and soybean exports to China in 2025. Then came the war with Iran, which caused fertilizer prices to spike during the planting season. This fall, at the arrival of the harvest season, diesel prices have hit record highs.
Coupled with Trump’s erosion is the quality of Republican candidates who have helped put deep red states in play, aided and abetted by Trump endorsements that put weak candidates onto the ballot.
In Texas, Democrat James Talarico would be having a much harder time if Republican Sen. John Cornyn had not lost the primary to state Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of the most compromised of all GOP candidates this fall but who still won Trump’s endorsement. In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton has been boosted by self-inflicted wounds of Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who sued his own patients for payment.
That anyone is even suggesting South Carolina’s Senate race is remotely competitive is solely because Republican Sen. Darline Graham, appointed to fill the seat of her brother, the late senator Lindsey Graham, and backed by Trump in the primary, has been a lackluster candidate. Similarly, in Mississippi, a race where Republicans remain favored, the weakness of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has given Democrats cause to hope there is a major upset possible.
Democrats have their own problems, including a chaotic nominating process in Maine that led to running uncharismatic Troy Jackson and internal party discord over the progressive and aggressive nominee Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official running in Michigan.
They must still get enough Republicans and independents to push their candidates over the finish line Tuesday — and then weather anticipated rhetorical and legal challenges from Trump and his Justice Department. But on the eve of Election Day, this cycle is ending as no one anticipated when the 2026 cycle began — with a battle for control of the Senate that runs largely through red America.
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