The out-of-power party tends to win the mid-terms. It is not unusual that Trump and the Republicans lost in 2016 and that we look to lose in 2026.
Nevertheless, we have reasons to be hopeful.
First, even the pundits give us the edge in Senate races. We look to pick-up Michigan and maybe also New Hampshire. The Democrats look to have the inside track in North Carolina, but that race is tightening.
A lot of races are “within the margin of error;” but if we keep our net loses to a minimum, we’ll keep the Senate.
On the other hand, it’s entirely possible we, net, break-even or even, net, make a gain. And this is entirely in our hand. If we GOTV, “get out the vote,” we’ll do fine. We don’t even need enthusiasm. All we need is a sense of duty.
As Johnny Rico put it in Starship Trooper, “A citizen accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic.”
Second, we’re down - but not by a whole lot - in the generic congressional ballot. If he can move this deficit from minus 5 to minus 3, we might make up our loses in seats elsewhere in the country, with our gains in states where we re-drew the lines.
Realclearpolitics has a deep dive in polling prior to midterm elections and the outcomes in recent midterm elections.
In 2010 (the year of the Tea Party), we picked up 63 seats, and in 2018 (the first Trump backlash) they pick up 41 seats. In those years the margins in the generic congressional ballot were 9.5 and 7.3 points in favor of the winning side.
In two other recent midterm, we pickup about ten seats each, and had margins favoring us of about 3 points.
If we lose the House but keep the Senate, they’ll gain subpoena power and they’ll probably impeach Trump one or more times. They’ll also have Trump over a barrel when it comes to budget matters. (Those really awful deficits of Trump’s first term were from the second years of that term, when the Democrats controlled the House.) But, we’ll still be able to get our nominees through the Senate.
If we lose both the House and the Senate, Trump will not only be a lame duck, but the Democrats will hold up all nominees for the possibility of winning the Presidential race in 2028 (the way Mitch McConnell did with Obama’s nominees).
Just like Obama and Clinton..the President will veto and EO everything, just like they did.