Republican lawmakers grow alarmed over signs of 2026 election wipeout

GOP lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned over signs the 2026 midterm elections could be a wipeout for Republicans that could cost them control of the House and shave down their Senate majority by two or three seats.

Republican senators say the off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia and other parts of the country on Nov. 4 served as a wake-up call and warn that President Trump and Republican leaders in Congress need to address voters’ concerns about the slowing economy and persistently high prices.

Republicans acknowledge that rising health insurance premiums, the issue Democrats want to put front-and-center in the election year, along with health care costs, more generally, are a major problem for their party.

There’s growing anxiety in the Senate and House GOP conferences that Trump’s sinking approval rating will create a headwind in swing states and districts.

But GOP lawmakers say they still have time to improve their party’s image before next November.

They argue Democrats’ failure to come up with effective solutions to rein in health care costs and the rising power of far-left Democratic candidates gives them a chance to cling onto power in Washington.

“If we are where we are today in the beginning of the second quarter [of 2026], then I think we’re in for a really rough time in November,” warned retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who represents a Senate battleground state Democrats are targeting next year.  

“We have plenty of time to address it. There’s a lot of positive things that we’re doing here, that the administration is doing. But if you mess with health care … if we don’t get health care policy right, if we don’t get some of the cost policies right, we’re going to have major headwinds next year,” he said.

Most concerning for GOP lawmakers is Trump’s approval rating, which has sunk to 41.9 percent in the most recent polling average compiled by Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). The president’s disapproval rating has climbed to 55.7 percent.

Another disquieting sign is that Democrats now have their biggest lead of the election cycle on the generic ballot for Congress. The latest DDHQ average shows Democrats beating Republicans 46.8 percent to 41.4 percent on the generic ballot.

One Republican senator who attended a recent GOP conference meeting at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters said concerns about the approaching election year are “high.”

“The numbers are terrible,” the lawmaker said. “Not necessarily for any individual incumbent senator, although some of them aren’t very good. But you saw what happened a couple weeks ago [on Nov. 4]: Republicans didn’t win anything anywhere.”

In Virginia, for example, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) won the gubernatorial race by 15 points and Democrats picked up more than a dozen seats in the House of Delegates, including some that were not seen as pickup opportunities.

“There are a lot of warning signs blinking,” the lawmaker added. “We’re increasingly on defense on the Senate side. … I think there’s a lot of concern.”

Republicans have a favorable battleground map and a cushion of a three-seat majority on the Senate side, but some GOP lawmakers are already predicting their party will lose control of the House.

“This was not an unexpected development,” a senior Republican senator said of the tough polling numbers for Republicans, noting the party in power — especially when in control of the White House and Congress — historically does poorly in midterm elections.

“Look at the 2018 midterm: We lost 41 seats in the House. The Speaker can only lose three this time,” the senator said, referring to Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) 219-213 majority.

“I would expect to lose the House; I’m just trying to be objective,” the senator added.  

The redistricting math is becoming more complicated for Republicans, who expected to enjoy some gains from new maps the party passed across the country. Republicans, on paper, were expected to gain at least nine pickup opportunities in the House: five in Texas, one in North Carolina, one in Missouri and two in Ohio.

A federal judge panel last week struck down the GOP-favored map in the Lone Star State, but Texas quickly appealed to the Supreme Court. 

Justice Samuel Alito granted a stay on the federal judge panel’s ruling, leaving the new Republican-leaning map in place, at least temporarily, as the high court weighs the broader case around the Texas House maps. The ping-pong of events underscores how volatile the redistricting battle has become in recent weeks.

Democrats are projected to gain up to six new blue-leaning seats: five in California and one in Utah. 

“The conventional wisdom was Democrats were screwed, and we were going to be in a hole of anywhere from 10 to 17 seats because of redistricting. That was back in the middle of July. Looking where we are now, that’s absolutely not the case,” a Democratic strategist said.

Strategists in both parties caution it’s too early to know with certainty what the net results of redistricting will be next year, given that efforts to redraw congressional lines are ongoing and the courts will have a major say on the final maps.

A big uncertainty for the House’s future control is whether Democrats are able to dramatically expand the field of competitive races.

Republican strategists argue the battleground map will be fairly small compared to past midterm election cycles, while House Democrats believe there will be as many as 60 competitive races.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris won in only three House districts now held by Republican incumbents: Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, Pennsylvania’s 1st District, and New York’s 17th District.

Rep. Don Bacon (R) is retiring in Nebraska’s 2nd District, creating a promising opportunity for Democrats.

Democrats, meanwhile, need to defend 13 Democratic-held districts Trump won in last year’s election.

“The map is very, very tiny and, fundamentally, we have the advantage by looking at the battlefield,” a Republican strategist said. “We firmly believe we’re on offense. Back in the 2018 cycle, there were 25 Republicans in [Hillary] Clinton-won districts and 12 Democrats in Trump-won districts. The fundamentals of the map is completely flipped.”

Republican strategists say Democratic efforts to retake the House will be complicated by the rise of left-leaning candidates in key districts such as California’s 22nd District and Colorado’s 8th District, where progressive insurgents are threatening to topple more mainstream candidates favored by the Democratic Party establishment.

Republicans are counting Maine’s 2nd Congressional District as an “automatic pickup” because of the retirement of Democratic centrist Rep. Jared Golden.

The Republican strategist said the recent slump in Trump’s approval rating and the increase of the Democrats’ lead in generic ballot polls is a reaction to the 43-day government shutdown that will dissipate over the next several months.

The good news for Democrats is that the rise of far-left candidates is matched by the rising enthusiasm of the party’s base voters.

“There’s enormous new energy. I saw it in my town halls where I’ve had five times as many people come this year as last year, and last year was an election year,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who’s up for reelection next year.

On the Senate side, Republicans privately acknowledge Democrats have a good shot of picking up three GOP-held Senate seats, given how the midterm election environment is shaping up: Tillis’s North Carolina seat, Sen. Susan Collin’s seat in Maine, and first-term Sen. Jon Husted’s seat in Ohio.

Trump won Ohio by more than 11 percentage points in 2024, but Husted faces a tough race against former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), who served three terms in the Senate. There are questions about whether Husted, a lesser-known incumbent, can turn out Republican votes without Trump at the top of the ticket.

Republicans now control a 53-47 Senate majority. A loss of three seats would result in a 50-50 Senate in 2027, but Republicans would retain control by virtue of Vice President Vance holding the tiebreaking vote.

For Democrats to win back the Senate majority, they would need to pick up a seat in the next tier of competitive races.

This tier includes contests in Iowa, where Sen. Joni Ernst (R) is retiring, and Texas, where Sen. John Cornyn (R) faces a tough primary challenge from conservative firebrand Ken Paxton, the scandal-marred state attorney general.

A third Democratic target is Alaska, where Democrats are trying to persuade former Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola (D), who narrowly lost her House seat to Rep. Nick Begich (R) in 2024, to challenge Sen. Dan Sullivan (R).

Republicans have their own Senate pickup opportunities in Georgia, where Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) is a top Republican target and will have to defend his 14 votes against a House-passed bill to fund the government and end the longest shutdown in American history.

Republicans like their chances of winning retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters’s seat in Michigan and have rallied behind former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who lost against Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in 2024.

Democrats face a messy primary in the Great Lakes State, where Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) faces a competitive race against progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Mallory McMorrow, another progressive who is a frequent guest on MS NOW and has a strong online fundraising base.