From “Keeping It Classy: A Revised Model for Forecasting Seat Swing in Midterm Senate Elections” by Alan I. Abramowitz at centerforpolitics.org:

A class-conscious Senate forecasting model

The U.S. Senate was not intended to be a democratic body. Prior to the adoption of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, Senators were chosen by state legislatures rather than voters. Even after the advent of direct popular election, differences in state populations ensured that states with small populations were vastly overrepresented in the upper chamber—an advantage that has increased substantially over time. Today, a senator from California, the most populous state, represents more than 65 times as many people as a senator from Wyoming, the least populous state. And, of course, residents of the District of Columbia, with a larger population than Wyoming or Vermont, have no representation in the Senate.

Enormous differences in state populations have important political consequences for modern Senate elections because of two recent trends affecting these contests. First, over time, the average state presidential vote margin has become increasingly Republican relative to the national popular vote margin because the least populous states are now more Republican than the most populous states in presidential elections. At the same time, the relationship between presidential and Senate election outcomes has become much stronger over time. As a result of these two trends, Senate elections have had an increasing Republican bias in recent years.

Note: Eras are defined as Eisenhower 1952-1958, Kennedy/Johnson 1960-1966, Nixon/Ford 1968-1974, Carter 1976-1978, Reagan-Bush1 1980-1990, Clinton 1992-1998, Bush2 2000-2006, Obama 2008-14, Trump/Biden 2016-24.

Source: Data compiled by Gary Jacobson and author

Figure 1 displays the trend in the average Democratic state vote margin compared with the national vote margin in presidential elections since the 1950s. During the Eisenhower presidential era, which covers the 1952 through 1958 elections, there was no difference between the average state Democratic margin and the national Democratic margin. During that era, there was no Republican bias in Senate elections. In every presidential era since then, however, there has been a Republican advantage due to greater Republican strength in less populous states. Moreover, that advantage has increased over time so that in the Obama and Trump-Biden eras, which include the 2008-2024 elections, the average state Democratic vote margin has been more than 6 points more Republican than the national Democratic vote margin.

The growing Republican advantage seen in Figure 1 has become much more important in recent years due to a second major trend in American politics—the increasing nationalization of congressional elections. The outcomes of both Senate and House elections are now much more closely connected to the outcomes of presidential elections. The trend for Senate elections is very clear in Figure 2. This figure displays the trend in the percentage of Senate outcomes that were consistent with the outcome of the presidential election in the state in the same year, or in the case of midterm elections, the outcome in the previous presidential election.

More here.

After reading the transcript (I could not bring myself to watch it live) of President Trump’s keynote address for his party’s Midterm Convention, I have a slightly different take than most observers, and shared it at New York:

To understand Donald Trump’s stem-winding speech on the first night of the Midterm Republican Convention that nobody but him wanted to hold, you need to appreciate that the president really does believe the stuff he says about his accomplishments.

He’s not just trying to sell America on his dizzying narrative of national greatness totally destroyed (before his arrival) then restored and improved then totally destroyed again and, most recently, restored again to unimaginable heights. He’s sold on it himself. The president looks in gilded mirrors all day and sees a world-historical figure who should be basking in the grateful adulation of his subjects. Instead, his job-approval ratings are chronically terrible (which he knows, for all the talk about fake polls) and despite all he’s done to tilt the playing field via money and gerrymandering, his party is probably cruising for a bruising in November. So he went to Dallas and surrounded himself with people as grateful and excited as everyone should be, and treated himself and his superfans to another recitation of his unparalleled success story.

He could have probably wrapped up and sat down after these initial comments about the choice Americans face in the midterms:

“The choice in this election is very, very simple. Democrats are asking you to vote for their failed far-left agenda. It’s never worked, that destroyed your finances and delivered you four years of disaster, bedlam, and death under sleepy Joe Biden. And I’m asking you to let us finish the job we began with the greatest two years in the history of the presidency. This has been the most successful two years financially and every other way in the history of the presidency. And together we will turn a two-year comeback into a 250-year lead.”

To state the obvious, it is impossible to imagine any previous president daring to say such words out loud, no matter how intensely the narcissistic fires burned in his heart. Nor is it plausible that someone in the White House speechwriting shop did not observe the unsettling similarities of “250-year lead” to “Thousand-Year Reich” and other totalitarian claims of a leader representing a permanent change in a nation’s destiny. But only if you accept that Trump means what he says does his overall approach in Dallas begin to make sense.

His rambling bragfest ranged across lies and exaggerations so customary that they barely register anymore. There’s “no crime” now. Tariffs have raised “trillions” of dollars. Overnight, “now we pay the lowest prices in the entire world for prescription drugs.” Grocery prices have been brought “way down, way, way down.” “We’re winning” the war with Iran.

But his brilliant success across the whole range of human endeavor can only be fully comprehended as compared to the incredible depravity of the opposition. So the president deployed another battery of lies and exaggerations about the opposition party, who have, he says (making this up out of whole cloth) a “manifesto” that includes vows to “abolish the police,” “abolish prisons, abolish the United States Supreme Court, abolish the United States senators.” The “Dumocrats” also “want to abolish oil and gas” and “take away health care for our veterans.” Because no Trump speech is complete without a bit of overt racism, he also claimed Democrats “wanna steal your money for reparations” and “give it to the people that hate our country.” One of “their top congressional candidates” says he “hates family households” and “wants to destroy the American way of life.”

The lies and exaggerations about himself and the opposition go on and on and on, but nestled in the midst of it is one new proposal, or rather a fresh variation on a very old Trump impulse:

“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like in, in history, we’ve never had anything like what’s happening, but because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

At a time when many Republicans (not to mention bond markets) are fretting about deficits and debt, here’s Trump with a giveaway proposal that would cost upward of a trillion dollars. Now the president famously loves giving taxpayer dollars directly to Americans so long as they understand he’s responsible for their good fortune. But the proximity to the election makes this contingent offer of free cash look unpleasantly like a bribe to voters, only costing a lot more than the half-pints of whiskey legendarily awarded to voters in rotten boroughs back in the day.

But I think there’s something else going on that is less a matter of corruption than of human nature. As he so abundantly shows in this and every other recent speech, the president is exasperated by his lack of popularity. And as his regularly mocking references to “affordability” concerns (made again in this speech, where he once again calls the issue “fake”) illustrate, he is sincerely baffled, perhaps even angered, by the ingratitude of Americans who fail to understand their incredible luck in living under his beneficent rule.

Historian and Clinton White House adviser Sidney Blumenthal recently argued that Trump’s real midterm message is one of “unrequited love.” He’s onto something. Trump’s $5,000 offer comes across like the action of a frustrated dad whose surly teenage children only approach him with their hands out. “You want money? Okay, here’s money!” says Dad, opening his wallet sadly and tossing bills at his ungrateful kids. Trump wants, and clearly thinks he deserves, love and respect from all Americans. But if he has to buy their loyalty to remain head of the household, he will. After all, the very perpetuation of the American family is at stake.

In “The Left Needs More Working-Class Leaders,” Jake Triola writes at Jacobin: “Two factions of the American left that ought to be allies remain estranged. In their new report entitled The Left’s Coalition Crisis, Joan C. Williams, author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, and Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working Class Politics, argue that a “massive divide” between working-class people and college-educated liberals is undermining the majority the Left needs to govern. And it’s playing out now across the country: as liberals double down on an obsession with defending democracy, Democratic candidates more attuned to the needs of working Americans are winning on a platformcentered on day-to-day tangibles like rent, wages, and safety…Williams and Abbott’s report, which can be real in full here, dissects the results of a poll the authors conducted earlier this year and lays out the contrasting political priorities of respondents based on their backgrounds. From there, they offer insight into how the language and moral posturing (“Do the Work,” “Check Your Privilege”) of the middle class repeatedly fails to strike a chord with working-class perspectives. One of their findings is that college-educated liberals lack what the authors call “class competence”: the ability to speak persuasively to working-class values. And with the class divide as sharp as it is today, it’s not a skill that can be faked. Williams and Abbott’s prescription is more practical: listen to what working-class people say they want, drop the moralizing vocabulary, and cede real influence over the progressive agenda to working people.” More here.

From “Sherrod Brown bets again on working-class voters” by Harry Leigh at spectrumnews1.com: “WASHINGTON, D.C. — Out of office but back on the campaign trail, former Sen. Sherrod Brown is maintaining his decades-long focus on the working-class, betting voters will give him a different answer than they did two years ago, when Brown lost to Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno…Brown spent his entire career building a political brand around the working class and workers’ rights. In his four previous Senate campaigns, Brown’s “dignity of work” message helped him secure the endorsements of dozens of labor unions…Unions represented 11.6% of Ohio’s workforce in 2025, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the power of endorsements has not necessarily aligned with the voting behavior of union rank-and-file…Historically, union members have tended to align with the Democratic Party. In recent elections, union members have still favored Democrats, but by a much smaller margin. For example, Barack Obama won 66% of Ohio’s union vote in 2012, according to exit polls, while Kamala Harris won 51% of Ohio’s union vote in 2024…That smaller margin of union support contributed to Brown’s 2024 loss to Moreno. That year, 55% of union members voted for Brown, according to exit polls.” More here.

An excerpt from “Trump’s Midterm Convention Will Yield a Bounce All Right—for Democrats” by Michael Tomasky at The New Republic: “A president at 35 percent in the polls presiding over $4.15 a gallon gas and thinking he’s doing something neat by trying to change New Mexico’s name (“Oh, hell, no,” blared a headline in the Albuquerque Journal) will now go before the nation for two nights spewing lie after lie about the economy. Pass the popcorn…Here’s the thing about economic lies. There are many things in the political arena you can shade or obfuscate. You can hide your falsehood in a thicket of complexity. You can play on people’s fears and prejudices. But you start telling people that the skyrocketing cost of everything isn’t happening? They will see right through that. So Trump can lie about, say, what’s going on with Iran, or what he’s allegedly doing behind the scenes vis-à-vis Russia-Ukraine, or what ICE is getting up to, and some people will believe him. Or if they don’t quite believe him, they have a difficult time proving that he’s lying…But people know that economic lies are lies because they live the economy every day of their lives. You can’t tell people who just shelled out $8 a pound to grill the kids some burgers on Labor Day that affordability is a Democrat hoax. So I feel pretty confident in saying not only that Trump won’t get a bounce from this convention. Indeed, if there is a bounce, it will be for the Democrats generally and for James Talarico specifically (the convention will take place in Dallas, the idea being in part to shore up corrupt Ken Paxton’s low-energy Senate campaign).” More here.

Federal Judge Nancy Gertner shares some insights from her interview by Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect: “Robert Kuttner: Which of the possible strategies that the Trump administration is likely to pursue to undermine the election are you most concerned about? Much of the remedy boils down to what the courts will do, whether the courts will act in a timely fashion, and whether the Supreme Court will do its usual slow roll…Nancy Gertner: To overgeneralize somewhat, there are three buckets here. One is what they’re doing in advance of the elections, the other would be what they were doing after the elections, and the third would be what they do during the elections. What I most worry about is what they do during the election…For instance, suppose they send in ICE to intimidate voters, or the FBI to seize ballots; or suppose they try and harass election officials, like they did in some red counties last time. In principle, you have federal district judges standing by to issue injunctions, but they might not be able to act in time…There are rules within each election jurisdiction about what people can or can’t do near the polling place. Assuming an ICE agent tries to pull someone out of line or otherwise tries to intimidate voters, arguably there are rules in each of the states. Local DAs can even arrest and bring charges against federal officials. To be sure, as Hennepin County [Minnesota] has shown, it is not easy to do, and it will require a district attorney with some guts…The best protection may be an overwhelming Democratic vote. The model, you might say, is Hungary. The repudiation of Orbán was so total that he stood down.” More here.

At New York, I offer some thoughts on why the desire for fresh party leadership is not confined to any faction.

The Beltway media love to frame every intraparty Democratic discussion as a “struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party” between ideological factions. That’s evident in an Axios piece looking ahead to a post-midterm scenario in which Hakeem Jeffries seeks to consolidate his power as House Speaker and sees Democrats in disarray:

“House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) faces mounting behind-the-scenes frustration from progressive lawmakers and candidates that’s likely to burst into public view after the midterm elections.

“Why it matters: Unless Democrats win a big enough House majority in November to govern without the progressive wing, a Speaker Jeffries would have to contend with the left flank’s demands.

“An influx of Democratic Socialists of America-aligned members in January will compound latent distrust of Jeffries that’s festering in some corners of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”

The most immediate problem with this lefties-versus-Jeffries framing is that there aren’t going to be remotely enough DSA or Congressional Progressive Caucus members to topple Jeffries unless they are willing to vote against him after he’s won a House Democratic Caucus vote, and there’s zero indication that sort of heretical play is in the cards. But the broader problem with the Axios take and so many others like it is the presumption that ideology is the sole reason anyone would prefer to enter the final two years of the Trump era with new Democratic leadership. Take it from this card-carrying centrist: There are plenty of Democrats who want leadership changes just as badly.

Are many progressives annoyed with Jeffries going out of his way to say he is not a fan of Medicare for All and is a fan of Israel? Sure. But as Axios’s own account makes clear, progressives are reflecting unhappiness with the status-quo orientation of their congressional leadership that goes well beyond their own ideological ranks: “A senior Progressive Caucus member told Axios they ‘consistently hear from constituents how displeased they are with the Democratic leadership, including Leader Jeffries.’” It’s very safe to say such sentiment also extends to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. And it’s not ideology or even party identification that most shapes such views. It’s not the “liberal party base” that’s unhappiest. It’s those who are alienated from the political establishment, especially young people and independents, two categories that include a disproportionate number of swing voters.

A late July 2026 CNN-SSRS survey testing the favorability of a variety of political leaders found, unsurprisingly, that sizable portions of the electorate had never heard of Jeffries or Schumer or had no opinion of either man. But their favorability ratings were especially low among 18-to-34-year-old voters (9 percent for Jeffries, 8 percent for Schumer) and independents (11 percent for Jeffries, 9 percent for Schumer). More generally, the current leaders just aren’t popular throughout the electorate, and ideology does not appear to be the problem. A June 2026 survey by Verasight showed an assortment of progressive and more moderate Democratic leaders with overall favorability ratings over 40 percent: Barack Obama (54 percent), Bernie Sanders (45 percent), Zohran Mamdani (44 percent), Pete Buttigieg (43 percent), Jon Ossoff (42 percent), and Kamala Harris (41 percent). Jeffries was at 36 percent, and Schumer was at 30 percent.

Even though they are constantly in the news articulating Democratic positions and messaging and attacking (and being attacked by) Trump, the current congressional leaders are mostly leaving a meh impression, a bad impression, or no impression at all on voters. This could be toxic in an era when public confidence in both major political parties is low and the president of the United States is counting on Americans believing the two parties are so equally offensive that his many outrages and failures are no worse than the alternative on offer.

For purposes of the midterms, perhaps the Democrats’ pallid leadership is acceptable since such elections are invariably referenda on the president’s record and agenda. But on November 4, a comparative election cycle will begin, and suddenly, it will matter a great deal what voters think of Democratic as well as Republican politicians. Eventually, a presidential nominee will emerge to define the Democratic Party for the 2028 election. But what the unhappiness with Jeffries and Schumer shows is that the party should worry less about the ideology of its candidates or preconceived notions of “electability” and a lot more about the existential necessity of standing relentlessly for change.

Democrats rightly wonder why anyone can believe right now, as so many voters do, that the two major parties are basically the same. It’s not because they think that, on an ideological scale extending from the far left to the far right, the parties are in the same place. It’s because they think both parties are interested in perpetuating their own wealth, their own power, and the interest and advocacy groups that keep them in power.

It has almost become irrelevant whether this growing conviction is accurate. So long as it persists, any political party that wants to survive long term needs to promote itself, relentlessly and credibly, as a change agent. That doesn’t exclusively mean “moving left” or hurling thunderbolts at capitalist oligarchs. It can also mean “moving to the center” and cracking down on government inefficiency (the real kind that squanders opportunities to do good, not the phony “fraud” Republicans claim in order to cut safety net programs or the phony “waste” people like Elon Musk use as an excuse to wantonly punish competent and dedicated public employees).

Right now, Democrats stand for the restoration of government as it existed before Trump’s shocking return to power in 2024. They need to reflect on exactly how much anger and alienation it took for the electorate to give Trump power once again. Progressives and centrists can and should be able to agree there’s no going back. Providing new and innovative leadership, in Congress now and in the White House soon, must be job one after the midterms. As Ben Rhodes said recently in a New York Times op-ed: “It’s not just about optics or political positioning: Only new faces can make voters believe change is possible.” Amen to that.

Anne Kim explains “What You Need to Know About Election Threats This Fall. Be prepared. Don’t panic. Vote early in person” at Washington Monthly:

“Here’s how crazy things have gotten in America.

The most significant threat to our elections this fall isn’t Russian interference or terrorism. It’s our own federal government.

As a candidate, Donald Trump made his lies about a stolen election the focus of his campaign. As president, Trump has made election denialism a cornerstone of his presidency. And in recent weeks, he’s accelerated his efforts to subvert November’s elections.

On Monday, Trump instructed the Department of Homeland Security to “surge” investigations into voter fraud in crucial swing states, including Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and California, according to CNN. He’s also pursued aggressive efforts to restrict mail-in voting, which could potentially disenfranchise millionswhile sowing further chaos. Trump has moreover threatened to arrest election officers suspected of wrongdoing and to send ICE agents to the polls. He hasn’t let the unlawfulness of these actions stop him (nor has the Supreme Court stepped into pump the brakes).

Yet there’s no need to panic, argues Beau Tremitiere of the nonprofit Protect Democracy. “We have never seen the scope and scale of mobilization that civil society is currently engaged in to take this threat on,” he says. “Folks are not going to be caught off guard because they see what’s coming.”

I interviewed Beau for the latest episode of the Monthly podcast, which you can watch in this preview in Substack. He offered a wealth of advice about what citizens can do this fall to safeguard the right to vote. Here are his top three tips:

• Vote early in person. Given the potential for disruption at polling places, and the uncertainties around mail-in ballots, the safest way to ensure that your vote is counted this fall is to vote early and in person. If you must vote absentee, use a dropbox, not a mailbox, so the U.S. Postal Service never touches your ballot. Be sure to check your voter registration early as well so you can fix any problems (and ensure that you haven’t been mistakenly purged).

• Encourage your friends and neighbors to vote. Help people get to the polls. Remember that the administration’s chief strategy is to suppress the vote through fear and intimidation. Stand with those who may feel hesitant to vote in person. Offer rides and reassurance.

• Record and report. “One of the most valuable things we’ve seen happen throughout civil society is people taking advantage of technology and using peaceful and safe filming as a means of accountability,” Beau says. Bear witness on camera to what you see, but resist the urge to use provocative language in the hopes of going viral. Share what you see with nonprofit voter protection organizations and election lawyers so they can use your recordings as evidence in future litigation…”

More here.

Some revelations from “Poll: Working-class voters prefer progressives, moderate Republicans” by Zamoine Perez at Public News Service: at “Working-class Virginians are still up for grabs in this year’s midterm elections, according to a new poll from Politico…More than half of voters believe politicians are just trying to get their votes when they campaign on helping the working class. Both political parties struggle with Americans who identify as working-class, with 38% saying Democrats best represent them compared to 32% saying Republicans do…Kayla Mock, secretary-treasurer of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, said the results show politicians have a lot of work to do to make working-class voters feel visible…”They don’t feel heard. They don’t feel listened to by candidates. They feel talked at by politicians but not heard and then they certainly don’t feel politicians are taking action to actually address their issues,” Mock explained. “It’s a lot of talk with no substance.”…The results come as Republicans work to solidify inroads the party made with working-class voters in 2024, particularly Black and Latino voters, while establishment and progressive Democrats struggle over which political direction the party should go in appealing to voters…Despite the lack of trust of politicians, the poll noted progressive Democrats and moderate Republicans received the highest marks of trust to represent working-class voters, at 21% and 18%, respectively…Mock pointed out the results were not surprising, as both camps tend to have consistent economic messaging to the working-class voting bloc…”You see a lot of young progressive Democrats starting to win talking about those economic issues. I think moderate Republicans are also talking about those issues in a very different way. You have these not radical Republicans who are focusing more on economic and not social issues,” Mock observed…Only one in four Americans who identify as working-class believe politicians genuinely want to help them.”

One of  five charts from “Voters Define ‘Working Class’ by Workforce Participation, Economic Situation, and Job Type — Not Education” at Data for Progress:

From “Everyone wants to win working-class voters. But have they realized many are women?” by Chabeli Carrazana at The 19th: “It’s a group that is more diverse now than it’s ever been. Gone are the days when the only image of a working-class voter was a blue-collar White man who works in a factory and drives a truck, though that is still who politicians often pander to…Political messaging that speaks to the everyday needs of the diversifying working class could recapture the interest of the group, which has long been disillusioned by political candidates who don’t actually understand them…Definitions of what makes a working-class voter differ depending on who you ask. If it’s education — those who have less than a bachelor’s degree — then nearly half of the working class is women; in parts of the country, most of them are also people of color, said Valerie Wilson, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute who has studied working-class people. If working-class voters are those working low-wage jobs, then they are already majority women, who occupy two-thirds of the 40 lowest-paid occupations…Trump indeed has not delivered on many of his economic promises. His second term has been dominated by war in Iran and aggressive tariff policies that have driven up prices rather than balanced trade, as he promised. That has eroded Trump’s advantage with his strongest working class supporters, White people, who now disapprove of his handling of the economy…The evidence is in the gender pay gap: After years of shrinking, the gap actually widened over the past two years for the first time since the 1960s. ” More here.

From “Republicans are attacking unions at exactly the wrong time” by Andrew Mangan at Daily Kos: “The GOP seems to think that attacking labor unions is a winning strategy ahead of this year’s midterm elections, but new data shows that even fewer Americans are likely to be on their side…Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce escalating investigationsinto many major unions, including the American Federation of Teachers and United Auto Workers, over claims that union dues are illegally being used to directly support Democratic candidates and causes…But this fight is heating up at a bad time for the GOP, with Americans’ approval of labor unions now near an all-time high…Seventy-one percent of Americans approve of unions, according to new Gallup data. That matches the level of support seen in 2022, though before that, approval hadn’t hit 71% since May 1965…More impressive, though, may be the firm’s finding that 47% of Americans now want labor unions to have more influence in the United States—an all-time high since Gallup first asked the question in 1999. And the share that wants unions to have less influence has hit a new low of 23%…The second Trump administration has also laid waste to the federal workforce, much of which is unionized, by firing thousands of civil servants, persuading them to resign, or eroding their workplace protections. As a result, the administration has often found itself being sued by unions, such as the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 820,000 U.S. government workers…Despite all of that, union membership in the nation actually grew last year. A February analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that 16.5 million U.S. workers were represented by a union in 2025, marking the highest level in 16 years. This follows many years of declining union membership among both public- and private-sector employees.” More here.

Among its many significant meanings, Labor Day is traditionally regarded as the kickoff point for general elections. It’s not a bad time to take a look at where the two parties will be post-midterms depending on different outcomes, as I explained at New York:

On Labor Day, we’re now less than two months out from the 2026 midterm elections, and in some ways, the outcome is even more uncertain than usual. The basic rules of how votes are cast and counted are still up in the air thanks to Donald Trump’s last-minute effort to give the U.S. Postal Service the power to decide who is entitled to vote.

But election forecasters are still hard at work, and we do have a good idea of how the post-midterms partisan power configuration might affect the remainder of Trump’s second term. Some very small variations in the House and Senate results could have a very big impact on Washington. Here’s a look at the three basic scenarios.

Scenario No. 1: Republican Sweep

Republicans holding the House would be pretty remarkable since midterms almost always produce losses in the chamber for the party holding the White House and the GOP has only a two-seat cushion. In addition, the president’s job-approval ratings are chronically low, which has on every single occasion in living memory produced significant House losses. The only reason Mike Johnson has a realistic chance of remaining Speaker is that the battleground of competitive races is smaller than usual, reducing Democratic flip opportunities. On top of that, Republicans have an unusually abundant number of flip targets of their own due to the Trump-orchestrated wave of partisan gerrymanders that began in the summer of 2025. It also doesn’t hurt that the GOP has a big national money advantage.

Republicans holding the Senate is much less far-fetched given the GOP’s three-seat margin in the upper chamber, enhanced by Vice President J.D. Vance’s tie-breaking vote, and a very favorable landscape with a lot of safely red seats. All in all, Silver Bulletin’s election-forecast model suggests there is a 16.9 percent possibility of a Republican sweep; DDHQ rates it at a significantly higher but still uphill 30 percent.

If Republicans do manage to hold on to their trifecta control of Washington, they would preserve the use of party-line budget-reconciliation bills, like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 or the ICE funding boost of 2026, through Trump’s last two years in office. Furthermore, there’s no question Trump would treat it as a massive landslide mandate (no matter how fragile House or Senate majorities might be) to further impose his will on the country.

This depressing result might well spur congressional Democrats to clean house in leadership positions going forward. It would also inspire a fresh “struggle for the soul of the party” between progressives and centrists, as each side would blame the other for yet another setback after such high midterms hopes.

Scenario No. 2: Republican Senate, Democratic House

This is the postelection scenario most experts envisioned at the beginning of the midterms cycle based on the GOP’s big Senate landscape advantages and the historical precedent of House losses for the president’s party. It would be a power configuration familiar to Trump and quite a few members of Congress since it’s where the 2018 midterms left the two parties. Republicans would preserve the power to confirm Trump’s executive and judicial appointees but would lose the trifecta that makes party-line budget reconciliation bills possible. In other words, bipartisan compromises would become more essential to getting anything done in Congress, which might, perversely, lead Trump to grab even more power from the legislative branch before his presidential career ends.

Depending on how close Democrats come to flipping the Senate, Chuck Schumer could be in some trouble as party leader; he might even decide to step down. Meanwhile, House Democrats would have a robust agenda of hearings and investigations of Trump and his political and business partners and would probably at some point have an internal debate over the advisability of impeachment proceedings against the president or his hirelings given the high likelihood of a Senate acquittal.

Scenario No. 3: Democratic Sweep

The prospect of Democrats retaking both congressional chambers started to look more and more possible over the last year as Republican Senate seats in unlikely places like Alaska, Iowa, and Texas (and perhaps even Kansas and Nebraska) came into play. Right now, Silver Bulletin’s forecast gives Democrats a 50.6 percent chance of winning the Senate and a 50.1 percent chance of a sweep. If Senate control is truly up for grabs, Republicans may offer a safe reelection and massive financial support to John Fetterman to switch parties and keep them in charge.

Trump has never faced a Congress in which both chambers are controlled by Democrats. This would be a constant irritant in his final years as president, threatening both constant hearings and investigations and making every confirmation vote excruciating. During his last two State of the Union addresses, he’d still have Vance as the pro forma president of the Senate standing behind him and cheering every line, but the audience would be filled with many determined enemies and his loyal minority. Trump might even recapture his old mojo as an “outsider” before he leaves the White House for good. But he’d surely prefer the current solidly sycophantic Congress.

Theoretically, Democrats could flip the Senate while Republicans hang on to the House, but that’s very unlikely (Silver Bulletin gives this scenario a 0.4 percent chance of occurring). The sort of national breeze that could make a Democratic Senate possible would almost surely push the House into Democratic hands as well. But the other three scenarios will likely remain on the table, perhaps until all votes have been counted and even Trump accepts the results.

 

“For only the second time in a quarter century, a majority of Republicans — 52% — approve of labor unions, according to a new Gallup poll.

At New York I waded into the multiple issues involving the U.S. Postal Service’s handling of mail ballots, which is an issue Democrats need to understand.

As the name suggests, “voting by mail” requires some cooperation from the U.S. Postal Service. And the New York Times reports that there are some disturbing signs USPS may not be entirely up to the job in this year’s midterm elections, even if Donald Trump’s vast plans for making it a choke point over mail ballots don’t come to fruition:

“The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.

“The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state …

“The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024.”

The problem appears to be a generic snail-mail issue rather than anything specifically related to ballots:

“As part of a 10-year-plan established in 2021 to shore up the Postal Service’s finances through structural changes, the agency set up regional distribution centers to process mail and increased the delivery standards for first-class mail, from three days to five.

“The Postal Service further slowed down mail in 2024 when it implemented a centralized system that postmarks mail when it reaches regional centers, not when it first enters the mail stream. The delay has particularly affected mail voting, especially in states that rely on postmarks to determine if a ballot is valid.”

Whatever problems USPS would otherwise have in getting ballots to voters and then back to election officials pales in comparison to Trump’s scheme for placing this ever-struggling quasi-public entity at the center of a new system of voter-eligibility determinations. In a much-ridiculed March 2026 executive order, which asserted some previously unknown presidential authority to run elections, Trump ordered USPS to refuse to deliver mail ballots that aren’t pre-vetted by immigration authorities to prevent noncitizen voting, as NPR explained at the time:

“It instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to ‘compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State.’

“The order then ‘requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots,’ according to a White House fact sheet.”

Being in no position to roll their eyes at this instruction, USPS officials began putting together a regulatory framework for its new election administration task, as Democratic-governed states and voter advocates sued to stop the scheme. In June, a Massachusetts federal district judge put a hold on implementation of Trump’s orders. Then on August 11 the U.S. Supreme Court raised many eyebrows by setting aside the judge’s hold on the highly technical grounds that USPS plans weren’t final enough to be reviewed by the judiciary. Since then, the Postal Service’s rules (including a requirement for use of a very particular kind of envelope for conveyance of mail ballots) were indeed made final, and the same Massachusetts judge imposed another hold on its implementation.

Now, voting-rights advocates are wondering if the Supreme Court can find another excuse for letting Trump’s plans go ahead. If they do, the result could be chaos and mass disenfranchisement, Democracy Docket argued:

“If states don’t submit redesigned mail ballot envelopes for USPS pre-approval and hand over the name and address of every voter who might use a mail ballot, then the mail carriers won’t deliver them. That could shut off the ballot-casting method used by nearly 47 million voters in 2024, or roughly 30% of the electorate.

“The impact would likely fall harder on older and more Democratic voters. A Pew Research Center study found that 44% of Democratic candidates’ voters cast ballots by mail or absentee in 2024, compared with 26% of Republican candidates’ voters. Trump, a frequent mail voter himself, has repeatedly blamed mail votes for his 2020 electoral loss.”

It’s hard to imagine the Supreme Court fully okaying these plans, but it’s possible the conservative majority will accept claims that USPS is just regulating envelopes rather than the ballots they contain or the voters who cast them. At this late date, though, anything other than a flat Supreme Court quashing of Trump’s executive order is likely to sow chaos in state midterm-election plans, which may be the administration’s real object.

If nothing else, avoiding the prospect of a total upheaval of the imminent elections could desensitize Trump critics to the less gargantuan but still significant threat of many thousands of mail ballots being tossed due to slow mail delivery. Trump’s Republicans need every little advantage they can get in November. Snail mail could provide another one.

Listen to any presidential campaign speech over the last half-century. Everything the candidate is proposing will benefit “the middle class” or “the working class” or will pump up “small business.” And won’t voters please consider that children are our future?

There’s no universally agreed-upon definition of lower, working, middle, upper-middle or upper class. And that suits politicians just fine: They want as many voters as possible to think the policies they’re promoting will benefit them.

In 2026 America, that means promising the world to the “working class,” if a new poll from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center is any guide.