ANALYSIS — Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in Tennessee since Al Gore was reelected in 1990, but they might need to win there next year to win the majority.
While midterm elections typically go poorly for the president’s party, that trend is more evident in the House — Democrats had a net gain of 41 seats in 2018 and 31 seats in 2006, while Republicans netted 63 seats in 2010. More recently, Democrats gained a Senate seat in 2022 when Joe Biden was in the White House and Republicans gained two seats in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first midterm.
This cycle, Republicans are at risk of losing their hold on Congress if Trump’s job approval rating doesn’t rebound, but the overall natural partisanship of states with Senate races on the 2026 ballot favors the GOP.
Trump won 21 of the 22 states where Republicans are defending a Senate seat next year; Maine is the lone GOP-held seat in a state where Kamala Harris finished ahead of Trump. If Democrats can finally find a way to defeat Sen. Susan Collins in the Pine Tree State — which is a big “if”— and win North Carolina, a swing state where GOP Sen. Thom Tillis is running, they would still need to gain two more seats for the majority. (And that’s assuming Democrats hold all of their own competitive seats, including Georgia and Michigan, which is not guaranteed.)
None of the other 20 seats currently held by Republicans look particularly promising for Democrats at this early stage of the cycle. But they’re going to have to break GOP winning streaks somewhere to have a chance of getting to 51 seats.
Democrats could target GOP Sen. Joni Ernst in Iowa. But Senate Democrats haven’t won the Hawkeye State since Tom Harkin’s reelection in 2008 and haven’t won a nonincumbent race for the chamber since his initial election in 1984. It’s also been 18 years since Democrats won in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and South Dakota.
But the GOP winning streak is much longer in other states. Democrats haven’t won a Senate election in Wyoming since Gale McGee’s reelection in 1970, haven’t won in Idaho since Frank Church won a fourth term in 1974, and haven’t won in Mississippi since John Stennis’ reelection in 1982. (The fact that Democrats mentioned Mississippi as a potential target in a recent New York Times article demonstrates how difficult the 2026 map is for their party.)
Democrats also haven’t won a Senate race in Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina or Tennessee since the 1990s. The longest GOP streak of this Senate class appears to be Kansas, where Republican Roger Marshall is up for a second term and where Democrats haven’t won since 1932.
Montana and Ohio, where Republicans Steve Daines and Jon Husted are on the ballot, have seen Democratic Senate victories as recently as 2018. But those states aren’t encouraging for Democrats considering the incumbents in those races, Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown, respectively, were regarded as great candidates and just lost reelection last fall in contests that weren’t even nailbiters in the end. And Democrats have won in West Virginia as recently as 2018 but don’t have anyone who can recreate Joe Manchin III’s success from almost a decade ago.
So why would Democrats have any chance of winning the Senate majority in 2026? Because streaks are made to be broken. Like in a football game, when an announcer points out that the kicker hasn’t missed a field goal in years, right before the kicker shanks it. There’s no permanence in politics.
More seriously, it will take an extraordinary set of circumstances for Democrats to flip the Senate — a combination of national and race-specific dynamics — because under a normal political environment, Republicans should hold and potentially expand their majority.
So how could Democrats pull this off?
The best evidence is probably Alabama. Doug Jones won a special election there in 2017, even though Democrats hadn’t won a Senate race in the Yellowhammer State in 25 years, not since Richard Shelby won reelection as a Democrat in 1992. With Trump in the White House and, most importantly, Republicans nominating Roy Moore, with his significant baggage, Jones broke the streak.
Something similar could happen this cycle in Texas, where Democrats haven’t won since Lloyd Bentsen was reelected in 1988. Democrats need a national political environment in which Democratic turnout is high, independents revolt against the first half of Trump’s second term, and GOP turnout is depressed, as well as state Attorney General Ken Paxton defeating Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary. Paxton doesn’t have the same salacious baggage as Moore, but Texas isn’t as Republican as Alabama.
Democrats may also need to hope for flawed GOP nominees in Louisiana and Kentucky, but they might have to rely more heavily on national dynamics there. Despite their electoral success in 2024, Republicans have a history of finding new ways to lose winnable races.
For now, Democrats’ challenge is recruiting quality candidates before it’s clear whether Republicans will have a flawed nominee or whether the political winds are blowing against the GOP. Democrats have to convince people to put their lives, jobs and families on hold to enter races that look like extreme long shots right now.
Such a risk could result in a 20-point loss or it could pay off with an upset victory, because, again, nothing is permanent in politics.
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