5 House Seats MOST LIKELY to Flip to Democrats in 2026

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Hello everybody and welcome back to another video. In today's video we'll be going over the five seats that are most likely to flip to the Democratic Party in the upcoming midterm elections. This is the first video of this two-part series as you might have already predicted, the other video we'll be making for this part of the series is of course the five best Republican targets for 2026. Now, before I get into the video, one brief disclaimer is that we are not counting redistricting [clears throat] because that's quite frankly not as fun. There are obviously a number of seats, especially in California and Utah, where Democrats are virtually guaranteed a flip because of redistricting, but those districts are not interesting to talk about because I can just say in five seconds the lines changed, it went from a seat that was voting Republican by 20 to voting Democrat by 20 five. So, obviously that is not necessarily that does not make for good content to the extent that you know, even I can even make this interesting. That's just I'm just, you know, I'm kidding. Obviously this is interesting, but with that being said, let's talk about it. So, here's the map. These are the five seats that I think are the most likely to go to the Democratic Party that went Republican in 2024. We can make an argument about a couple of seats being here and we don't, you know, we can argue about the rankings of these seats and what they're going to look like in 2026, but I think to me the most the most obvious one that that that should really flip to the Democratic Party is Nebraska's second district.

[00:01:22]Now, this is a district that was won by Kamala Harris. It's one of three districts I believe nationally that were won by Harris in 2024 that elected a Republican on the same ballot.

[00:01:33]Obviously the other the other two districts that, you know, are in that situation are Pennsylvania's first, which is right over here, which is a very narrow Harris district by like just a couple thousand votes, and then New York's 17th, which was a Harris district by I think two or three points.

[00:01:47]So, a little bit less marginal than Pennsylvania's um excuse me, than than Pennsylvania's first district. I do believe that Nebraska's second was the bluest out of all these. I think Harris won by three or four. So, uh it's definitely bluer than Brian Fitzpatrick's seat in Pennsylvania. It's probably a little bit bluer than Mike Lawler's seat up in New York. So, with that being said, we're going to start here. Um and obviously, this was a race that was very close in 2024 to begin with. Um Don Bacon outran Trump by about five and a half to six points, and this was a bit of an upset. He was down in most public polling, often by margins outside the margin of error, and Tony Vargas was seen as running a good campaign um after having nearly beaten Bacon in 2022. So, um all of that kind of led us to be in the situation where Bacon was viewed as being in a race worth watching, but was viewed as a pretty clear underdog. Um and he ultimately won by about two points. And he was bolstered by the fact that Trump lost the seat by four instead of nine, which a lot of people, including myself to be honest, expected.

[00:02:46]Trump held up reasonably well in Omaha this year, or 2024 rather. Um and uh that was what allowed Bacon to win because his because the amount of ticket splits he was getting didn't go up. It was just that Trump did better in the seat than he did in 2020 by a couple of points, and that was uh basically the margin there. So, really, um this is a seat Democrats, in like the race for governor, uh and as well as Dan Osborn's Senate race should win by a more if not a lot more than Kamala Harris did in 2024. And the bigger fish to fry here is uh Bacon and the fact that Don Bacon was the incumbent for many cycles, and he's now no longer the incumbent cuz he's retiring.

[00:03:24]Bacon was one of the best performers in the House of Representatives. He was consistently putting up very strong numbers, as you can see here on the split ticket wins above replacement database. It kind of just shows how well a candidate does. The only year where he did worse than he than the average Republican candidate would have done per this model is 2016. That was against a Democratic incumbent, Brad Ashford. Um and in 2020 and in 2022, he put up performances that were pretty, you know, clearly above average. So, no more bacon means Republicans don't really have the candidate anymore. This is a race where I think the candidates are both kind of mediocre on both sides.

[00:03:59]Neither of them are particularly electorally impressive. In fact, the Democrat, I don't think he's ever won an election before. Um the other the Republican candidate is is a member of the Omaha City Council. So, um this is just a race that I I think is going to kind of uh just come down to how it it votes the top of the ticket. And I would expect that given the behavior of the district in the past decade, that would benefit Democrats this time. So, that seat should flip. If Democrats don't flip Nebraska's 2nd District, they've done something horribly wrong. This is one of the first targets aside from redistricting that should go off the board. Um we're going to now go over to uh Arizona's 6th District, which is a little harder to discuss and I think is quietly getting pretty uh pretty difficult for Republicans. Um in 2024, it was about a 2 and 1/2 point margin between Juan Ciscomani and Kristen Engel. Um as we can see right here, and this is a race the Democrats really could have won in 2022 with just a couple thousand votes. The margin was a little bit bigger for the GOP in 2024, uh over 10,000 votes between Ciscomani and Engel. As you can see here, the district is mostly concentrated in Tucson, Pima County, where Democrats, uh you know, they're going to win it no matter what, but Engel, she, you know, she won by 19,000 votes. Had she, you know, gotten to 55% of the vote, that would have been enough to win the district. And um you know, even if she didn't do any better in in the more Republican rural and suburban parts of the seat, this seat, I just think fundamentally, it's pretty good for the Democratic Party. I mean, Kamala Harris only lost it very marginally. Uh Juan Ciscomani is a decent incumbent, and he's running for re-election, which is good for Republicans, but he's not uh you know, he he it's not like he's outrunning Trump by eight every time. He outran Trump by, I think, a point and a half.

[00:05:33]And uh in 2022, he won only very narrowly. The other thing is that if we believe the polling data even just to a a a certain extent, the group that Republicans have lost the most support with is uh Hispanic voters. and uh this district obviously is has a substantial Hispanic population especially in Pima County and a a you know a 10-point swing among Hispanic voters would probably be enough to make Ciscomani lose re-election. The other thing here is that this is a seat that I broadly bias left-trending. Um it's right like the area that's growing the most is this Pima County portion which the suburbs of Tucson are getting bigger. I think just long-term that benefits Democrats. Um then the other thing is Democrats in 2024 lost Arizona by about 5% at the top of the ticket with Harris. Uh Katie Hobbs, I'm not sure if she's going to win re-election but I think if she does lose it'll she'll go down by less than five. I think thusly she will probably carry the district uh in the race for governor.

[00:06:27]Now to be fair to uh Juan Ciscomani, right like you know he did win a district that voted for Mark Kelly by a couple of points back in 2022. Um but I I think Mark Kelly uh was winning a lot of ticket splitters that year because Blake Masters ran such a bad campaign and Kelly was actually quite popular. So um you know the the the the the seat I is it'll be close. I think it'll be probably within five but uh Democrats this is another target they should be winning. Now next we're going to go to we're going to go out to the Midwest once again as you can see there's kind of a Midwestern theme here with Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin. We're going to go to Iowa which uh has arguably three pick up opportunities for Democrats. They're all varying degrees of difficulty but I think the easiest one for them is probably the first district. Now the first district is uh you know home to one of the weakest Republican incumbents in the House. So I think just in terms of um of like pure electability and it's Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Now in 2014 Miller-Meeks that was her only performance where she did better than anticipated. She did about half a point better than the average Republican but aside from that she usually does a lot worse and in 2024 this was especially apparent when she lost um you know she did 11 points worse than the average Republican should have done, right? This is a seat that voted for Trump by I think eight points or maybe even nine points and she won by uh two tenths of a percentage point. She, you know, uh uh received tens of thousands of of of votes fewer than Donald Trump and by the way, this was a race that you know, for example, was not expected to be all that close until mid-September and I think had the Democrats recognized it was going to be close, they would have, you know, given just any more money to you know, their candidate in you know, given more funding to Christina Bohannan. I think the seat would have flipped in 2024. That was the year where Trump was carrying the district by a lot. I think this year Republicans just have a number of issues in Iowa. First of all, the special elections have been like uniquely bad for them there. They've already lost two seats in the state legislature as I've mentioned in the past.

[00:08:19]There does seem to be a bit of a Democratic turnout advantage in Iowa that is just very just very very strong for the party given the special elections. Obviously, midterm elections are higher turnout, but you know, still worth noting.

[00:08:31]Also, at the top of the ticket, I don't you know, I I don't know if Democrats are going to win the governorship with Rob Sand. I don't know if they're going to win the Senate race.

[00:08:38]Obviously, they're not favorites to win the Senate race. Um the governor's race is more of a toss-up though. I think that one would be really interesting to watch. Um but the point is that right like almost certainly the Democrats running running for the Senate and governor are going to do better than Kamala Harris who lost by 13 points statewide. I think the margins are going to be in single digits and Rob Sand might even win the race for governor. I mean, who knows? You know, we would the polling's really good for him right now.

[00:09:01]So, um regardless, we don't have to have that debate yet. The point is that the top of the ticket will be just a lot better for Democrats than 2020 24 was and they were they were within a thousand votes of winning in 2024. I mean, literally this is race was just unbelievably close if you take a look at the results we got here.

[00:09:17]Um Miller-Meeks just very narrowly eked it out over um Christina Bohannan who as you can see was within, you know, what like 800 She lost by 799 votes, right? Uh that should be enough to flip in 2024. Um the only thing I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I doing better when they're in competitive races. A good example of this is Tom Kean who really changed the way his campaign was run between 2020 and 20 Excuse me, it was Tom Malinowski, not Tom Kean, who changed the way that his campaign was run between 2020 and 2022. As you can see in 2020, he ran about 7% behind what he should have done in 2022. He closed the gap when he when he recognized, you know, he kind of had like on our like the term we can use is he had to lock in, right? And he did that. So, Mariannette Miller Meeks might lock in and that might benefit her, but I think on a more serious note, she should be favored to lose at this point. Um on a similar note, the Republicans have another weak incumbent in Wisconsin's 3rd District with uh Derrick Van Orden and sorry, I'm I'm typing with one hand, so typos are very common here. Um but Derrick Van Orden in 2024 did about a full 7 and 1/2% worse than he should have done per this per split ticket's calculations, right?

[00:10:33]And this is a deep the Trump won by nearly double digits and he won by 2.8%, right? This was a district that is right trending where Democrats didn't really invest until the 11th hour. This should have been a high single digit, low double digit seat for the incumbent Republican. Instead, it was very close. And the other thing here is that again, Kamala Harris did pretty poorly statewide in Wisconsin. I think Democrats might not win the governorship this year. We'll see how that goes with their primary, but um I I think at worst they'll, you know, run even with Harris if not on average probably do a little bit better. And again, in midterms the electorate the electorates in these very white working-class districts tend to be a lot better for Democrats, right? A good a good example of this is 2022 versus 2024 in in the 8th District of Pennsylvania, which is kind of the Scranton district that's been, you know, pretty GOP favorable in the Trump era. The electorate there by most calculations in 2022 is about a full five points bluer than it was in 2024. So, that type of benefit, you know, stretching across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota that benefits Democrats in House races and that's part of why they did pretty well in the Midwest in 2022. Um is because that electorate would be just is just usually quite solid for them. So, I think this seat it's a little bit trickier for Democrats than, you know, Nebraska 2 or Iowa 1, but um this is one Democrats should be winning if they wanted to retake the House, which I I I I you know, something that I think is very within the realm of possibility. The last one, this one is in Pennsylvania.

[00:12:00]This is another kind of Rust Belt working-class state, but the district itself is very different. It's actually kind of a more affluent suburban district. Um this seat, the 10th, is in the Harrisburg-Dauphin County area and it's been one that Democrats been knocking on the door for a little bit here. Again, we have another kind of weaker GOP incumbent uh that only narrowly won in 2024, just kind of the common trend here of Democrats just kind of picking off the low-hanging fruit from last time they didn't quite get. Uh we had a bit of 5,000 vote margin between Scott Perry and and uh and uh Janelle Stelson. To be fair to the Democratic Party, this was one that they did target uh and this was one that they did hope to win. There were some polls that showed Janelle Stelson carrying the district, but uh ultimately she lost by about a point and here Democrats should really uh just I think by raw national environment should should should just be doing, you know, enough to flip it, right? If the district was about you know, was was like 0.3% to the right of the country to the to the left of the country in 2024, that alone is enough to kind of say it should be going to the Democrats in 2026, right? Uh the other thing is that Pennsylvania of all the Rust Belt states had kind of a mini red wave uh in in the fact that both Trump won the state by over a point and the fact that the Democrats did lose a Senate seat here, right? Like they won the Senate seats in Wisconsin and Michigan and you know, even in Ohio, Sherrod Brown kind of held down the fort in the sense that he was able to get uh you know, still some split you you know, some ticket splitters there. Bob Casey had I think the worst performance out of any Democrat um relative to expectations because, you know, he outright lost to Dave McCormick in 2024. So, um all of that makes me think that Perry on his own should lose. The other thing here is just that look, 2026 Democrats have kind of this advantage where uh Josh Shapiro is probably going to win by a good amount and that's going to really boost Democrats across the state and that might boost Democratic turnout kind of asymmetrically and in that can help them in the urban areas, but I think that'll be more of a thing in Philly and Pittsburgh anyways than it will in Harrisburg cuz the seat is just a little bit more uh even-keeled in terms of the turnout. Um you know, just in terms of kind of what is um is going to happen in the district itself, it's a bit more left-trending, more suburban. It It again, it isn't like these right-trending working-class seats out in in in Wisconsin or Iowa. It's kind of more similar to Nebraska's second in the sense that it's moved and moving towards Democrats and I would bet that the next Democrat to win a presidential election, if it's in 2028 especially, will probably carry the district even though Kamala Harris nearly lost it. So, um those are the five seats. Um you know, there there there's there's there's varying levels of difficulty here, but I I feel pretty good about that ranking. We're going to go Nebraska's second at the one, Arizona's sixth at the two, uh Iowa's uh first at the three, Wisconsin's uh third at the four, and Pennsylvania's 10th at the five. These are five seats Democrats should be winning and uh their best pickup opportunities aside from redistricting. Uh stay tuned for the Republican version next and again, as always, let me know if you disagree.

[00:14:49]If you think you want to make the case for any of these Republican incumbents, I'd be happy to hear you out in the comment section.