A lot of folks think the 2026 election is going to be a landslide. I do think Democrats are likely to win the House this year, and I think they’ll do generally well in swing state governor contests across the country. I’m genuinely a skeptic on Democrats winning the Senate or winning numbers like 2006 or 2018 in this wave though. Trump is historically unpopular. He is double digit percentages worse than he was in his first term at this time or compared to Joe Biden at this point in his term. With the electorate we’re going to have in 2026, Trump would lose if he were on the ballot (midterm electorates are different than Presidential electorates). We’re not having that election though. Democrats are leading the generic ballot right now. Most polling averages are not showing Democrats polling astonishingly high though- in fact both of the ones I linked to here have the Democrats at the same 48% that Kamala Harris received in last year’s election. I’ll link to one more here, just to sort of drive home the point- occasionally there’s a poll that shows Democrats getting to the 51% Joe Biden got in 2020 or that Barack Obama got in 2012, but you don’t see a 55% anywhere. What you generally see is Democrats consolidating their voters and Republicans not feeling incredibly good about their party. Some probably won’t vote this year, others probably will come home in the end to the GOP. In any event, probably no less than 40 states will generically favor the same party they voted for in 2024, if not closer to 45. Democrats may hold slim advantages in places like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and North Carolina this Fall. Given the candidate quality gaps at the top of the ticket in some of these states, the generic lead might even be noticeable. I’d still venture a guess that even if all of those states tilt blue this Fall, and states like Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and Texas show vast improvement for the Democrats, this will change the result in a minimal number of Congressional districts. I’d venture a guess that 400 districts out of 435 are drawn so partisanly now that even a wave election doesn’t move them. If I had to guess, Republicans lose 15-20 seats this Fall. There’s just not that many more than that actually in play. I can’t see either party falling under 200 seats any time soon.

The best way to understand American politics is to understand that our country has been stuck in a 48-46% split for a quarter century or so now. Every Democratic nominee for President since 1996 has received at least 48% of the vote, and every Republican since 2000 has received at least 46% of the vote. The parties high water marks in that time are 53% (Obama in 2008) and 51% (Bush in 2004) in that time, which is to say they both have a range of 5% they have been able to grow. For every “brilliant” strategist that comes along to change politics, from James Carville to Karl Rove, from David Axelrod to Kellyanne Conway, our public is pretty static. Each crew comes along and moves the electorate a little bit at the edges, and over time you can see trend lines, but there’s almost always an equal backlash that leaves us in roughly the same spot.

Part of this is because no one really likes either party. 58% disapproved of the GOP in the May Pew poll, but 59% disapproved of the Democrats. People that are actually members and call themselves members in each party say they like their party- 84% of Democrats and 89% of Republicans. The rest of the country really doesn’t like either party very much. 45% of Americans now identify as independent. Prior to 2011 it would have been unheard of to have 40% of the electorate call themselves independent. Clear pluralities of Americans 50 and under (if not majorities in some cases) view themselves as independent. While the block of people who call themselves “liberal” is up to 28%, most of that growth is among Americans who self-identify as Democrats. Basically, Democrats are moving left. Meanwhile 47% of independents are calling themselves moderate, a clear plurality over conservative or liberal. More people prefer Democrats (47-42%) in this polling, but it would appear the 11% in neither camp are not exactly moving towards the Democratic Party as it shifts left. Basically a small group of the independents shift from party to party as power shifts in Washington, voting against whoever is in charge. We’ve been in this pattern at least since 2014, if not 2006. Democrats say they want the party to moderate, over and over again, but that is not what is actually happening to the membership of the party.

How does this impact the 2026 election in the real world? Let’s say this- Democrats will probably perform closer to Kamala Harris vote levels in swing districts and swing states in 2026 than Republicans will perform to Trump’s 2024 vote levels. One should assume that particularly strong Democrats at the top of the ticket, like say Roy Cooper in North Carolina or Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania may hold an even more commanding advantage. Candidates like Rob Sand and Josh Turek in Iowa, James Talarico in Texas, and Sherrod Brown in Ohio will probably hold polling advantages for most of the Summer because they are better candidates than their opponents, but those polling advantages need to rise over 50% of the vote to know that they are actually converting some of the voters you’ll need to get to move over to them and actually win. Meanwhile Democratic candidates with glaring potential problems in their candidacies, like say a Graham Platner, will probably poll ahead for most of the Summer before the large scale media buys go to death con five levels after Labor Day. Between now and the general election we’ll probably see a few more nuts win primaries in both parties, because nuts are making up a bigger slice of the primary electorate. People will scream about those nuts impacting the parties beyond their own races. A few figures will matter nationally, people with name recognition and coverage in the media like say Mamdani and Platner. They will matter less than Trump, who has the most name recognition and media coverage. What it will come out to is something like a 51-46% national popular vote victory for Democrats. That will get the job done for them.

Ok, so where the rubber really meets the road, what’s this mean? I think it means that a fairly generic Democratic candidate in a district that runs basically about where the national average district this year is, that candidate is going to win. You have districts like NY-17 and PA-1 where Harris won in 2024, and the only reason Republicans have been able to hold on is candidate quality. Then you have districts like PA-7, 8, and 10, or NJ-7, where Trump carried the seats in 2024 and the races probably hinge on how much of his base comes back out for the GOP in 2026, or how much the GOP can discredit the Democratic nominees. I’ll just give you my napkin math on where these seats all are right now:

-PA-7- Trump won this seat in 2016 50-47% and 2024 51-48%, while Biden won it in 2020 50-49% In every one of those instances, Donald Trump out performed his national numbers in this district (+5, +3, and +2, in order). On the other hand, Bob Casey won it in 2018 by 10% and Tom Wolf by 16%, in a year Democrats won nationally by 9%. The same was true in 2022, when John Fetterman won the district by 5% and Josh Shapiro won it by 12% in a year that Republicans won by a little over 2.5% nationally. In other words, this district is harder for Republicans in midterm years than Presidential years, mostly because of sporadic turnout voters not coming out for midterms. Thinking about this district that way, I think Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is probably entering the general election with about a 6% lead, as the generic ballot shows right now, in part because Mackenzie has an uphill climb to actually bring back out his base of voters from 2024. Mackenzie also doesn’t have the kind of electoral record that say Fitzpatrick, or Lawler, or Kean has in their districts attracting crossover support. He’s not Bresnahan or Perry levels of corrupted personally though either, his problem in this district is purely partisan politics. And of course, Crooksy has personal baggage. The guy is a mini-Platner. The question is, if this is a 5% popular vote spread or more on election night, can Mackenzie convince 1 in 20 voters to vote against Crooksy, rather than for the party they want? For what it’s worth, Susan Wild over performed the national party in 2022 by exactly 5%. I give Crooksy 60-40 odds to win this race, I just think Mackenzie has to overcome a lot, but it’s well within possible.

PA-8- This has been a district shifting right in a hurry. Trump has won it by 9%, 3%, and 9%, out performing his national numbers every time. At first, the district lagged his shift, with Casey and Wolf carrying it in 2018 and Fetterman and Shapiro carrying it in 2022, although by less than PA-7. In 2024 the dam broke. Bresnahan beat Cartwright, McCormick beat Casey, and obviously Trump won. In other words, if we think PA-7 is where the generic ballot is, PA-8 is probably a few points better for Republicans. Bresnahan’s big problem is not only is he not as strong of a candidate as Fitzpatrick, he’s weaker than Mackenzie probably too. But it’s a better district, and while Paige Cognetti doesn’t have Crooksy’s problems, I’m not sure you want your profile in PA-8 to be “Obama alum and pro-choice woman” with that electorate. I assume that a good chunk of the electorate won’t actually love either candidate. This race probably comes down to what exactly the generic ballot is nationally, and how far ahead of it Republicans can run in this area. At 5%, with no Trump on the ticket and Bresnahan’s candidate quality, it’ll be razor close, but I’d expect Cognetti to edge him out.

PA-10- Trump has won this seat by 10%, 4%, and 5%, and this is the most traditionally Republican of these seats, so I am not sold that Scott Perry’s January 6th sins are ever going to cost him his job. Even so, the district has narrowed over time and I’m going to go out on a limb and say Janelle Stelson would reverse her 1.2% defeat in the current political climate. If PA-8 is trending more red right now, this one is trending more blue, and Stelson ran ahead of Kamala Harris by almost 4% in 2024. I’m going out a limb here, but if I were her, I’d mostly run against Trump’s economy and kitchen table issues. If she does that instead of debating what a bad guy Perry is, I think she wins this race by 5%. Everyone who cares already knows about Perry. Hit him for supporting the pain people are going through now, not a six year old insurrection.

PA-1- Donald Trump has never won PA-1. His worst loss of the three was 5% in 2020, so it’s not as blue as other parts of the Philadelphia suburbs, but PA-1 isn’t a Trump seat. It is fair to say right now that PA-1 is probably somewhere between D+8 and D+10 right now. Brian Fitzpatrick is easily the strongest Republican running in any of these PA seats. I’d venture a guess that he has positive approval in the district, which makes him a political unicorn. He can credibly point to instances he has stood up against Trump in a way none of the other GOP candidates I’m talking about here can. With that said, this guy should still be a dead man walking in this political environment. Josh Shapiro really may win this seat by more than 20%. Are there that many people who will cross over and split their tickets in 2026? As his party lost nationally by 9% in 2018, Fitzpatrick won by 2.6%. In 2020, he won by 13% while Biden carried it by 5%, an 18% crossover rate. He won by just shy of 10% in 2022 and 13% in 2024, while Shapiro won by 20% in 2022 and Harris won it by 1% in 2024. Bob Harvie is probably the best candidate to run against Fitzpatrick in a while, and this is the best environment since at least 2018. When I started writing this, I was kind of feeling like he’d probably win this year. Fitzpatrick’s numbers are strong though. If he survived 2018, you have to believe he survives 2026, right? At least right now.

NJ-7- This district is quite literally as swing as PA-7. Trump won it by 6% in 2016, Biden won it by 4% in 2020, and Trump won it by 2% in 2024. For what it’s worth though, this district is more Republican than New Jersey as a whole obviously, and that is a part of why Tom Kean Jr. has held it for two terms now. Cory Booker narrowly won it in 2020 and Andy Kim lost it in 2024. Even so, there are signs that Kean is dead here. Jack Ciattarelli won the district 56-43% in 2021 and *lost* it 51-49% in 2025. Traditionally New Jersey is more red in gubernatorial races than federal years, so a 15% move in a district is a sign of a bloodbath coming. With that said, it was only a 2% margin and Kean has always run better than most Republicans. Rebecca Bennett winning the nomination here is probably a good sign for Democrats though, as she’s been a solid fundraiser (as were most of the leading candidates, to be honest) and there’s nothing “extra” for Republicans to run against here. Add on Kean’s apparent health issues and I’d say this one probably tilts to the Democratic column. Probably by less than the national numbers, but a win’s a win.

Ok, so what am I saying here- I just predicted four competitive seats in this region to flip Democratic. I also don’t think any are slam dunks. I think I feel strongest about Stelson and probably Bennett winning, and weakest about Brooks and Cognetti. But I’d predict them all to win in this environment. Now I’m not saying I want that (I think I’ve been clear about Brooks), but as Trump trends towards Bush 2006 numbers, I don’t see how they survive that? Of course it’s worth noting that the GOP will make up for these losses with gerrymanders across the south that will probably keep this year from looking like a 2006 or 2018. But for now it’s looking like a blowout.