Democrats face arduous math in retaking the Senate. However within the Home, it’s one other story.
Democrats maintain 213 Home seats to Republicans’ 220, with two vacancies in safely Democratic districts that might be stuffed by particular elections later this 12 months. If all goes as anticipated, Democrats can have 215 seats, three shy of a majority within the chamber.
Three additionally occurs to be the precise variety of Republican-held districts that Democrat Kamala Harris received within the 2024 presidential election, based on a Every day Kos evaluation of knowledge from The Downballot, the election-tracking website previously referred to as Every day Kos Elections. This exhibits a promising path for Democrats to retake the Home in subsequent 12 months’s midterm elections.
Although Harris received two of these districts—New York’s seventeenth and Pennsylvania’s 1st—by lower than 1 share level, she was additionally the primary Democratic presidential candidate in 20 years to lose the favored vote. The truth is, based on The Downballot, President Joe Biden fairly handily received each districts within the 2020 election, taking Pennsylvania’s 1st by 4.6 factors and New York’s seventeenth by a whopping 10.1 factors.
That mentioned, as a result of Republicans nonetheless received these seats final 12 months, they’re under no circumstances a certain flip for Democrats in 2026. The occasion may also must defend Democratic-held seats in 13 districts that President Donald Trump received final 12 months, 4 of which he received by greater than 5 factors—a ticket-splitting feat that Harris didn’t handle to tug off wherever.
However there was one feat that Democrats did handle final 12 months: They picked up two Home seats on web in comparison with 2022, regardless of Harris’ shoddy efficiency on the high of the ticket. Higher but, they’re very seemingly to enhance in 2026.
How do we all know that? Traditionally, the occasion not within the White Home picks up seats in a midterm. In solely two midterm elections since 1946 has a president’s occasion gained Home seats: 1998 and 2002. Each midterms had been rocked by main information occasions: one by Republicans’ overreach of their impeachment of President Invoice Clinton, and the opposite by the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults below President George W. Bush.
Excluding these two midterms, the worst end result since 1946 for the occasion not within the White Home was a achieve of simply 4 Home seats, based on 538. And flipping 4 seats subsequent 12 months would put Democrats again within the majority.
In all probability, Democrats will flip greater than 4 seats. The Trump administration has been chaotic and damaging, resulting in mass protests and GOP lawmakers getting viciously booed throughout their uncommon city halls.
The Democratic Occasion has additionally change into superb at overperforming in low-turnout elections. In 2025 particular elections up to now, Democrats have overwhelmed Harris’ 2024 margin in these seats by a median of 11 factors, based on information from The Downballot.
Democrats are unlikely to outperform Harris by 11 factors in each Home district within the 2026 midterms, which can have larger turnout than these particular elections. But when they someway managed it, Democrats would flip 30 seats.
The final time Trump confronted a midterm, in 2018, Democrats flipped 40 seats on web. Whereas there are numerous explanation why the 2018 and 2026 midterms might be totally different—for one, district maps had been redrawn between these elections—Democrats don’t want to select up an extra 40 seats. And even 30.
They want three.
