Republicans have surged in recent US elections, but Democrats have reason to be optimistic for 2026.

This article is based on a presentation by the author at the Electoral Regulation Forum.

In the November 5 U.S. presidential election, Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the electoral college by 312 votes to 226, winning the seven key states of Nevada (six electoral votes), Wisconsin (ten), Arizona (11) and Michigan. (15), Georgia (16), North Carolina (16) and Pennsylvania (19).

Trump also won the national popular vote by 49.848.3% over Harris, becoming the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004. (Republicans won the presidency but not the popular vote in 2000 and 2016.) In crude terms vote, Trump beat Harris by 77.3 million votes to 75.0 million.

Turnout in this election was 63.9% of eligible voters, up from 66.4% in 2020. Turnout in the 2020 presidential election was the highest since 1900.

Although it was a clear victory for Trump, a 1.5% victory in the popular vote is not a landslide victory. The electoral college system tends to give large margins to the winner, because states award their electoral votes on a winner-takes-all basis. In 2008 and 2012, Democrat Barack Obama won more electoral votes than Trump in 2024 (365 in 2008, 332 in 2012).

If all states and their electoral votes are sorted from most Democratic to most Republican, the tipping point state is the state that decides the winner out of the 270 electoral votes needed to achieve a majority in the Electoral College.

In this election, the decisive state was Pennsylvania, which Trump won by 1.7%. There was only a 0.2% difference between the national popular vote and Trump's Pennsylvania margin.

In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in the electoral college by 306 votes to 232. Biden also won the popular vote with 51,346.8%, a margin of 4.5% (81.3 million votes to 74, 2 million).

However, in this election the tipping point state (Wisconsin) voted for Biden by only 0.6%, so there was a 3.9% difference between the popular vote and the tipping point state. toggle. Uniformly speaking, if Trump had lost the popular vote by less than 3.9% in 2020, he would still have won the presidency.

This is the main reason for Democrats' optimism: All they need is a near tie in the popular vote to win the electoral college (and the presidency) in the next presidential election if there is an even swing , not a four-point victory.

The primary cause of this narrowing Republican Electoral College advantage is that Hispanics have largely shifted toward Trump. However, five of the seven key states have relatively few Hispanics relative to the overall population (Arizona and Nevada are the exceptions). Trump's outsized gains among Hispanics meant swings in his favor were smaller in states with fewer Hispanics, which included most key states.

After the 2016 US election, I wrote that Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College by 306 votes to 232, despite losing the popular vote by 2.1%. This happened because non-college-educated whites largely turned to Trump in the 2012 election.

The swing in favor of Trump among Hispanics in this election can be explained by the decrease in racial polarization but by the increase in educational polarization in the United States. Hispanics once voted for Democratic candidates on the basis of their race, but they are now increasingly voting for Trump like non-college-educated whites.

Trump participates in a roundtable with Latin American leaders in Florida in October. Lynne Sladky/AP A narrow Republican majority in the House

The United States House of Representatives has 435 members elected from districts divided by population. The entire House is elected every two years.

Republicans won the House by 220 seats to Democrats' 215, a net gain of two seats for Democrats since the 2022 midterm elections. This narrow majority occurred despite Republicans winning the vote popular in the House with 2.7%, the same margin as in 2022.

Democrats appear to have a more efficiently distributed vote than in the past. For example, in 2016, Republicans won a majority of 241,194 votes in the House with a popular vote of 1.1%.

This is the narrowest margin for either party in the House since 1930. Additionally, in the United States, people serving in the presidential administration cannot also serve in Congress. Trump has selected two House Republicans for his administration, and they will have to resign if confirmed by the Senate.

In the United States, a special election (the same as a byelection) will be required to replace these House members (in addition to Republican Matt Gaetz, who resigned his House seat when Trump nominated him attorney general, but later withdrew from his position). consideration). Until these three seats are filled in a special election, Republicans will only have a majority of 217,215 votes.

During the 2023-24 House term, there has been a lot of chaos due to the slim Republican majority. It took 15 rounds for Republican Kevin McCarthy to be elected president in January 2023. After his ouster in October 2023, it took Republican Mike Johnson 22 days to become president. With an even narrower Republican margin in the new House, more chaos is likely.

There are two senators from each of the 50 states. Senators serve a six-year term, with a third elected every two years. Before the 2024 elections, Democrats and their independent allies held a majority of 5,149 in the Senate, but they were defending 23 of the 33 contested seats, including three in states that Trump easily won: Ohio, Montana and West Virginia.

Republicans won those three seats, plus one in Pennsylvania, for a majority of 5,347 in the Senate. But Democrats held on to their seats in four of the five swing states that also held Senate elections. If Democrats had lost the Senate elections in every state Trump won, Republicans would have had a majority of 5,743 votes in the Senate.

The Senate is solely responsible for confirming nominations to the presidential cabinet and judges. So Trump is unlikely to have any problems with these appointments over the next two years. However, the slim Republican majority in the House could make it difficult to pass partisan legislation.

Democrats should succeed in 2026

In the November 2026 midterm elections, all House seats and a third of Senate seats will be up for grabs again.

Trump was never popular during his first term, helping Democrats take control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. elections, it should be easier for Democrats to take control of the House than it was in 2018.

Republicans will also defend 21 of the 34 Senate seats up for grabs in 2026. The big problem for Democrats in the Senate is that the two-senator-per-state rule favors Republicans because they perform well in rural and low-population states . .

Among the seats Republicans will defend in 2026, one is in Maine, which Harris won with 7%, and another in North Carolina (Trump with 3%). The rest are in states Trump won by a margin of at least ten points.

Even if Democrats won the Senate seats in Maine and North Carolina and did not lose any of the seats they currently hold, Republicans would still hold a majority of 5,149 in the Senate after 2026. To take control of the Senate, Democrats should win states like Alaska (Trump by Trump). 13), Iowa (Trump by 13), Ohio (Trump by 11) or Texas (Trump by 14).

Left-wing parties around the world have lost ground over the past decade among voters without a college education, but have gained ground among those with a college education.

However, college-educated people are more likely to vote, especially in low-turnout elections like the midterms. Under Obama's presidency (2009-2017), Democrats were routed in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

But they performed much better in the 2022 midterm elections, narrowly losing the House and gaining a Senate seat. This performance occurred despite Biden's ratings being worse than Obama's. The main explanation was that Democratic-aligned voters were more likely to vote than Republican-aligned voters. The June 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade was seen as a huge motivator for Democrats.

Trump is sure to anger Democrats with many of his decisions. And midterm elections have generally been poor for the party of sitting presidents. If Democrats enjoy higher voter turnout and Trump is unpopular, they could comfortably defeat Republicans in 2026. If that happens, Republican Senate seats that seem safe may not be safe.

Despite the six-point shift in the national popular vote margin between the 2020 and 2024 elections, Democrats outperformed Biden's 2020 margins by an average of 3.5% in federal and state special elections held in 2023 and 2024 This was due to the fact that these elections had very low turnout and Democratic advantages with very engaged voters.

In December 2017, Democrats won a Senate seat in Alabama in a special election during Trump's first term, although Trump had carried Alabama by more than 25 points in his three presidential elections.

The closest of the three House seats to hold special elections in 2025 is New York's 21st District, which Republicans won with 24%. Democrats are unlikely to pick up any of these seats despite their advantages in a special election.

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