WASHINGTON—With the 2026 election campaign finally nearing its end—although it’ll likely extend after Nov. 3 due to battles over vote counts and GOP allegations of fraud—there is only one certainty that can be concluded as voters go to the polls: The turnout against MAGA Republicans has to be so huge and overwhelming that it will be impossible for Trump and his backers to mess with the results.
Without that turnout, the battle for control of Congress could be extremely close. There are many races where the poll numbers between the two major-party hopefuls are within the margins of error, and the polls have been shown to be unreliable in the past.
That’s pushed President Donald Trump and his $400 million MAGA Inc. election war chest onto the campaign trail. Trump’s been careful in his appearances, with screened crowds and events happening only in deep-red areas, but his underwater popularity and unpopular agenda—an endless war on Iran, rising inflation at home, and disregard for voters’ pain—are a drag on the GOP.
Republicans hold 218 of the 435 U.S. House seats, plus one GOP-leaning independent. If they lose only two, they will surrender their majority. Party leaders already concede they’ll lose the House this fall, and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a down-the-line Trumpite, is mumbling about a post-congressional career.
The GOP holds 53 Senate seats to 45 for the Democrats, plus two Democratic-leaning independents. One GOP seat, party leaders concede, is already gone, in purple North Carolina, to popular former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The rest of the Senate’s contested races are murkier.
Senate
There are Senate tossups in blue state Maine, held by GOP Sen. Susan Collins, the last Republican lawmaker from New England; in purple states Michigan, Ohio, and Minnesota; and in red states Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, and Iowa. Including North Carolina, pro-worker forces need a net gain of four Senate seats to retake control.
Maine, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, and now Alaska are the headline Senate races. Minnesota and Michigan are open Democratic-held seats. Republicans control the rest.
Maine
In Maine, the question is whether Collins can preserve enough of her independent image, despite her pro-Trump voting record—including for Trump’s anti-abortion Supreme Court justices—to squeak through again. But the Democrats have their own problems.
Their original nominee, anti-establishment candidate Graham Platner, had to drop out after credible allegations arose of his past sexual misconduct. The replacement, state legislator Troy Jackson, got a late start and is being outspent by Collins and GOP campaign finance committees.
The Democratic National Committee and its Senate arm have also reportedly warned Jackson that unless he follows their consultant-written scripts, they’ll cut him off. The race is a dead heat; Jackson leads but within the margin of error.
Collins has a lifetime 49% AFL-CIO voting score, best of all 53 Republicans—but trailing every Democrat and both independents, including her Maine colleague, Angus King (97%).
Ohio
Former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), who was second in senatorial pro-worker support only to Bernie Sanders, is running to return to the Upper Chamber. Brown narrowly lost to Republican Bernie Moreno during a Trump romp in Ohio. Brown faces incumbent Sen. Jon Husted, the former lieutenant governor appointed to fill out the term of JD Vance, who is now Trump’s VP.
Brown has high name recognition, strong union support, and a heated issue in Ohio on his side—big data centers, which Husted backs. The data centers provide hundreds of construction jobs but few permanent ones. They also use so much power and water that they drive up utility bills. The GOP has poured in tons of money for Husted, in what analysts forecast will be the second most-expensive Senate race in U.S. history. Again, Brown leads, narrowly.
Texas
Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D) is on the verge of becoming the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in the Lone Star State since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Besides his own talents as a campaigner, former seminarian Talarico has one big factor going for him: The GOP nominee is ultra-right and scandal-scarred state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Paxton knocked off pro-corporate Republican incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the primary. The wounds haven’t healed, and Paxton is so far to the right that he makes Trump look moderate. Republicans are defecting in droves or sitting at home. Cornyn, meanwhile, has been voting against Trump during his final days in the Senate.
Michigan
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan U.S. Senate Democratic nomination, running on a progressive platform of Medicare For All, workers’ rights, and similar issues, including skepticism of big data centers. El-Sayed is the former Wayne County (Detroit) Health Commissioner.
Playing on prejudice and fear in Michigan’s Jewish community, the toxic right-wing campaign finance committee AIPAC poured in millions of dollars for Rep. Haley Stevens in the primary because El-Sayed opposes Israel’s war against Palestine. AIPAC didn’t succeed in the primary, but it’s now working to elect Trumpite former Rep. Mike Rogers in the general election on Nov. 3. Recent polls give El-Sayed a 2.5% lead.
Alaska
In Alaska, GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, loyal to the MAGA agenda even when it hurts his state, trails Democrat Mary Peltola, the party’s only recent statewide winner, by 2%. When 49-year GOP Rep. Don Young died several years ago, Peltola won Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat but later lost it by a narrow margin in the thinly-populated state in the 2024 Trump landslide there.
Nebraska
In deep-red Nebraska, incumbent GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts has a five-point lead over independent Dan Osborn, a former president of Bakery, Confectionery ,and Tobacco Workers Local 50G at the Kellogg’s cereals plant in Omaha. Osborn came close to winning Nebraska’s other U.S. Senate seat two years ago.
Osborn strikes a simultaneously centrist and populist tone, saying he’s not afraid to defy both major parties. He campaigns “against Pete Ricketts’s billionaire cash” and argues both parties have “failed to cut waste and balance the budget.” He also pledges to “end corporate welfare” and “vote against spending we can’t afford.”
BCTGM President Anthony Shelton calls Osborn “a true trade unionist.” Osborn helped lead a strike that got rid of two-tier wages at Kellogg’s. “His working families-centered platform strikes a chord with Nebraska voters. He is fighting to keep factories open in Nebraska. He is calling for commonsense solutions to unfair trade deals and economic policy that leaves workers behind. And he understands America’s success lies in in the people that work hard each and every day,” says Shelton.
Iowa, Kansas, Illinois
The other close calls are in GOP-held Senate seats in Iowa and Kansas. In Iowa, GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson has an average 4.4% lead over Democratic war veteran Josh Turek for an open seat. In Kansas, where the GOP pumped in late money for Sen. Roger Marshall, he holds a seven-percentage point lead over Adam Hamilton, pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the country. Hamilton has been gaining ground, and money.
One other notable U.S. Senate race, though it isn’t close, is in Illinois. Instead, it’s a demonstration of coattails and that old Chicago term, clout.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) was the key backer, in campaign finance funds and on the stump, of his lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, for an open Democratic-held Senate seat. Stratton campaigned hard several years ago for labor’s successful bid to write the right to organize into the state constitution. She won the party primary, despite being vastly outspent by a candidate pushed by financial interests, and is a shoo-in as Illinois’s second African-American woman U.S. Senator.
Pritzker, who is said to have an eye on a White House run in 2028, is coasting to re-election to a third four-year gubernatorial term, campaigning for other Democrats nationwide.
U.S. House
Maps of winnable seats shift state by state almost weekly. Though the GOP now concedes it will lose the House majority, the party succeeded in one of its key goals: Eliminating majority-minority congressional districts, especially those Black lawmakers hold. Chalk that up to Trump, too, with a big assist from Texas and Florida and from the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Facing the prospect early in the year of losing the majority, Trump urged Republican-run states to break with law and tradition and redistrict their congressional maps in time for this fall’s balloting. Texas and Florida eagerly complied.
Racist redistricting
Lone Star State maps were redrawn by Republicans in hopes of eliminating five Black or Latino Democratic lawmakers, replacing four with districts drawn for white Republicans. The fifth race threw two Black Democrats together, and Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, author of two impeachment resolutions against Trump, lost. The Texas delegation is now 24-13 GOP, with one vacancy.
Florida has eight Democrats in its 28-member delegation, in a state that now is 30% Democratic by registration, 41.5% Republican, 24.5% unaffiliated, and 3.7% with minor parties. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’s remap cut Democratic districts to four. The casualties were Black and Jewish.
Other redistricting, blessed by the justices, eliminated a Black-held district in Louisiana, followed by others in North Carolina, Alabama, and the majority-Black district—out of nine statewide—centered on Memphis, Tenn. The city was cut into thirds and its Black voters redistributed into rural and MAGA-dominated white districts. The sole Democrat, Rep. Steve Cohen, a longtime liberal and civil rights crusader, was forced to retire.
Voters resist the GOP map war
California voters successfully retaliated against Texas, in a referendum on a new map which displaced five of the nine GOP lawmakers there, out of a total of 52, and endangered at least one other, David Valadao, one of the two remaining Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
Virginians tried to counter Florida, voting to change their delegation from 6-5 Democratic to 9-1 Democratic with a tossup district, but the GOP majority on the state Supreme Court invalidated that referendum result.
The Utah State Supreme Court, however, gave state voters—and Democrats—a win. A remap referendum unified Salt Lake City, a blue dot in one of the nation’s reddest states, into one district. The GOP state legislature then split it up, but the justices sided with the voters.
The House will see several more Democratic Socialist lawmakers, from New York City, Denver, and Philadelphia. A Bethlehem, Pa.-area district features a tight race between Democrat Bob Brooks, president of the state Fire Fighters Association, and incumbent Republican Ryan McKenzie, whose lifetime AFL-CIO voting score is 8%.
Governors
The GOP has a 26-24 gubernatorial edge. Faces may change, but the partisan lineup may not. Key races to watch include:
Iowa
The Iowa race between State Auditor Rob Sand—running a “not blue, not red” non-partisan campaign—and business owner Zach Lamb, the Trumpite GOP nominee, gives Sand an average edge of 3.5%. Iowa hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in two decades.
Oregon
In blue state Oregon, Gov. Tina Kotek, the former state pro-worker Labor Commissioner, finds herself in an unexpectedly close race against GOP State Sen. Christine Drazan, whose campaign platform is filled with law-and-order code words. The race has see-sawed back and fort,h and the two are in a statistical tie in the latest polls.
Ohio
On the other hand, Dr. Amy Acton, the Ohio health commissioner and a relatively non-partisan Democrat, is in a tight race against multibillionaire and carpetbagger Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trumpite who briefly was co-director of the president’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk. The average of all polls gives Acton a 2.1% lead. The latest gives Ramaswamy a 2% lead. Both are within the margin of error.
Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, after months of turmoil, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (D) narrowly leads MAGA GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany, a business owner. Each is trying to hang a late-breaking issue—approval or prevention of data centers—around the other’s neck.
Voter anger
Voters are angry about the economy, and the latest inflation numbers will make it worse. That’s bad news for the ruling congressional Republicans and Trump.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the consumer price index rose 0.6% in September alone, on top of a 0.4% hike in August. Overall inflation rose 3.7% in the last 12 months.
What’s even worse for the GOP: Gasoline prices rose 34% over the last 12 months—thanks to oil cutoffs due to Trump’s war on Iran, which closed the vital Strait of Hormuz. Fuel oil rose by 74%, and soaring diesel prices are crushing farmers and truckers.
All these numbers are even worse than they were in August. Air fares rose 1.2% in September and 22.4% over the 12 months. Rising cost of jet fuel played a part in that increase.
One undeniable reality when it comes to polls is that Trump is underwater, with his popularity ratings ranging between -14 points and -33 points. Another: So is the Republican Party as a whole. The generic ballot—“Would you vote for a Democrat or a Republican for Congress?”—gives Democrats leads of between seven and 13 percentage points, even though neither party is all that popular with the voters. As a result, the political map is both expanding and contracting.
Races once thought winnable for one party or the other, especially for the GOP, have drifted away. In North Carolina’s Senate race, former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s lead is so large that the GOP has pulled the TV plug on its own former national chair, Michael Whatley.
Ditto in Georgia. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has a healthy lead and a winning campaign theme—linking Trump corruption to inflation. Other candidates nationwide have adopted it.
The GOP had to divert dollars it had planned for Georgia and North Carolina to Kansas, Nebraska, and Alaska, reliably “red” states whose senators landed in political hot water.
Progress vs. reaction
The phone bankers at AFL-CIO headquarters in D.C., acting on a list of target races, have at least one unusual addition: Kansas’s 1st Congressional District, where Democrat Lauren Reinhold, a former local union leader while working at the Social Security Administration, faces incumbent Republican Rep. Tracey Mann.
Reinhold, who also worked at the National Labor Relations Board, planned to continue her 25-year career in federal service until DOGE chainsawed its way through her colleagues at Social Security. So she got out, and is now one of a growing number of unionists seeking U.S. House seats.
Kansas’s 1st District is almost entirely rural, except for a part of the Kansas City suburbs. The GOP-dominated legislature split them off from the city in an effort to divide voters of color and weaken Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids, the only Democrat and the only African-American lawmaker from the Great Plains states of the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, and Oklahoma.
Labor-backed candidates once considered sure winners—such as Peggy Flanagan for senator in Minnesota—are in tight fights.
Despite California’s blue tilt, a referendum imposing a one-year surtax on millionaires and billionaires appears to be losing. Corporate interests are pouring in dollars against it, but National Nurses United is for it.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, is campaigning for Democratic Socialist nominees. The latest is in Florida, where he stumped for State Rep. Angie Nixon, who faces Sen. Ashley Moody, appointed to fill out the last years of Sen. Marco Rubio’s term. Nixon trails in recent polling.
Except Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, Democratic Socialists did well in the primaries, even where candidates backed by the Democratic Party leadership vastly outspent them. Nixon in Florida is the prime example. She was outspent 16-1.
But Democratic Socialists won in New York state congressional races, in a Philadelphia congressional race—the winner, who’s unopposed in the fall, is state Rep. Chris Rabb—and in a Denver congressional district. Milat Kiros, who beat 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, supports Medicare For All, abolishing ICE, and federally mandated rent control.
The general election may be another matter, and it depends on which side is more successful in turning out its base. That’s where Trump is a factor, too. He’s trying to hang the DSA and its stands around every Democratic candidate in the country.
Which of course brings us back, finally to the president and his MAGA voting base. A substantial chunk of them—estimates range up to 27%—are disgusted and/or disillusioned with their leader. He promised no more endless wars, and got us into one with Iran. He promised to bring down inflation and the price of groceries, and inflation overall has gone up.
And, going back to his first term, Trump promised to “clean out the swamp” of what he called corruption in the nation’s capital. He only deepened the swamp. Most MAGA voters, like the rest of us, are seeing their paychecks shrink while inflation increases. They’ve watched as their president made more than $2 billion from outside enterprises and cryptocurrency scams while forcing firms such as CBS into payoffs and pursuing crusades against supposed political enemies.
Which leaves the two biggest questions: How many people can the labor and people’s movements turn out? And, how many disgusted and disillusioned MAGA voters will stay home?
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