Democracy's Last Stand

The next two years may be decisive

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a rally in Arizona (Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0)

Democrats are likely to retake the House in 2026, although they probably won’t be able to win back the Senate. Winning the House will give Democrats a chance to check the Trump administration, but it won’t be enough to preserve American democracy unless Americans take steps to slow the administration’s abuses of power now.

Midterm elections rarely go well for the party that holds the presidency in the US. Public opinion moves in the opposite direction policy does; voters tend to lose their enthusiasm for the party in power as the reality of their choices sets in. The party out of power gained seats in the House of Representatives in 20 of the 22 midterm elections going back through the 1938 midterms. The only exceptions were in 1998 after the unpopular impeachment of President Clinton and in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks. Senate results vary more widely since they depend to a large extent on which seats are up for election in a particular cycle, but out-party Senate candidates generally do better than they would in another year. The out-party advantage is likely to be pronounced in 2026 since Democrats are more popular in recent years among the higher-propensity voters who are most likely to turn out for midterm elections.

Trump is already fairly unpopular in spite of having won a convincing victory just a few months ago. Trump won in 2024 mainly because voters were unhappy about the economy and sick of Democrats—it was a broad backlash against incumbent parties around the world—rather than because they were enthusiastic about returning him to office. Trump’s net approval is almost 20 points lower than any other president at this point in his term; the only president who was less popular at this point was Trump himself in 2017. Trump’s approval rating is likely to keep falling both because presidents generally become less popular as the terms go on and because much of what he’s doing—from threatening to impose high tariffs on US allies, to berating Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, to giving Elon Musk authority to fire federal employees en masse—is extremely unpopular with voters.

All that means Democrats are very likely to retake the House in 2026. Over the last five midterm elections, the party that didn’t hold the presidency picked up an average of more than 30 seats in the House. Democrats picked up 41 seats in the House in the midterms during Trump’s last term and need just a few seats to win the House back in 2026. Democrats are already having some of the same success in special elections that they had before that election in 2018 and recently won a Pennsylvania state senate seat in a district Trump won by 17 points last year. Democrats are a long shot to win back the Senate because Republicans are defending only one seat in a state Kamala Harris won—in Maine, where longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins is running for reelection—but will have to defend a number of seats in states Trump won. Since it will be a favorable national environment for Democrats, they’ll probably pick up 1-2 Senate seats, but probably not the 4 seats they’d need to regain control of the Senate. Metaculus currently gives Democrats a 81% chance of retaking the House, but just a 20% chance of retaking the Senate.

The stakes are high. The 2026 midterms will be Americans’ first chance to vote on the direction of the federal government since Donald Trump’s election in 2024. The Trump administration, enabled by a compliant Republican Congress, is moving at breakneck speed to undermine and intimidate independent institutions like universities, law firms, and media companies—which have so far mostly capitulated—without apparent concern he’ll pay a significant price for breaking laws and violating norms. The administration has also rendered Venezuelan migrants without due process to a forced-labor concentration camp in El Salvador on the basis of vague allegations of terrorism. Others are being deported or detained for having expressed opinions the administration finds objectionable. And on and on—there are too many extraordinary abuses to easily list here. Trump meanwhile insists he’s “not joking” about remaining in office for another term even though he’s prohibited from running for the presidency again by the plain language of the 22nd Amendment. The Polity Project, which assesses how democratic countries are, says that the US is already “at the cusp of autocracy.” Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky, who studies democratic decline, said the Trump administration has been “more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.”

Democrats are likely to win back the House in 2026. But the longer we wait to fight back, the harder and more dangerous resisting will become. The Democratic Party is probably the best vehicle we have for fighting the Trump administration, but it won’t do it on its own. Civic institutions and politicians—not only Republicans and but also most Democrats—won’t find the courage to organize and really push back against the abuse of power unless a broad popular movement demands they do so. That movement will need a more compelling vision for fixing American society than simply restoring the political order that already failed us. It will also need to engage in nonviolent protests, boycotts, and strikes—actions that impose real costs on those in power—to slow the Trump administration and demonstrate the strength of the opposition. If we wait until 2026 to take action, it may be too late.

My Forecast

• Democrats have a 80% chance of winning a majority in the House

• Democrats have a 70% chance of gaining at least one seat in the Senate

• Democrats have a 14% chance of gaining control of the Senate

You can see my predictions and add your own on Fatebook here.

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