The Official 2026 Midterm Outlook: Schumer and Jeffries Need to Resign Immediately

An early look at the Senate map and the possibility of a blue wave next year

It is eight months into a president’s first term. Nearly a year after they were swept into office with a Congressional trifecta on lofty promises of rebuilding and renewing the country, things have not gone as planned. Central campaign pledges have been broken and ignored. Scandals, setbacks, and high-profile embarrassments have dominated headlines and shattered public confidence. With every week that passes, a victory that was once celebrated as a once-in-a-generation political realignment and nationwide cultural turning point looks more and more like a poisoned chalice, arguably more destructive for its cause than an outright loss would have been.

We are currently living under the third consecutive administration to fit this exact description. While they may now feel routine, these kinds of collapses are simply not normal. Prior to Trump’s election in 2016, no political party had won a trifecta and lost everything in the span of only one term since the Democrats in 1892. Since then, it has happened twice, and it could very well happen once again. Today, with Trump already matching both Joe Biden and his past self in terms of being deeply hated very early on, Democrats are presented with yet another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make major political gains. Yet the midterms still remain an open question. Recent history gives us no guarantee as to how next year’s elections will turn out, even with a sitting president as unpopular as Trump is today.

On the plus side for Democrats, there is the precedent of Trump 1.0, the first time we ever saw a presidency collapse so thoroughly so quickly. During that administration’s first and only midterm election in 2018, the Democrats managed to reap the immense electoral rewards one would have expected them to. They secured a strong majority in the House, won more than 2/3rds of the seats on the ballot in the Senate, and rebuilt their ranks at the state level. A similar performance by them in 2026 could completely change the political game, most profoundly so by putting the party firmly in the driver’s seat in the Senate in the near-future.

Yet there is another, far less comforting precedent: 2022. That year, the out-of-power GOP entered the midterm elections enjoying the best conditions one could imagine. On paper, things were arguably even better for them than they were for Democrats in 2018. But when the time came, they utterly failed to convert. Rather than making world-changing gains, they became the first opposition party since 1934 to outright lose both Senate seats and governor’s mansions in a midterm. If Democrats were to clock in a similar performance next year, they would very likely fail to flip either chamber of Congress and leave Trump with two more years of uncontested power despite his historic unpopularity.

What kind of midterm will 2026 be? It depends on what Democrats will make of it. Even now, as they impose innumerable handicaps upon themselves, their position is still more or less serviceable. They hold a national lead against Republicans that is outside of the margin of error, and they have assembled a formidable roster of candidates in crucial Senate and House races. Yet they are far away from where they were at this same time in 2017, and they should not wave this fact off. As much as some ancient pundits and AIPAC concubines may wish for it to be the case, catching a blue wave in 2026 will not simply entail sitting back and waiting for Republicans to fail. It will require doing big, decisive things that the party is not comfortable with, and it will require doing them soon.

The Official Ettingermentum Preliminary 2026 Senate Ratings Map. No Tossups.