Who's Favored to Win Congress In 2026? | May

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Hey, everybody. It's Friday, and let's wind down the week and see the status of the generic congressional ballot. This is going to give us a good idea of who's going to control Congress, especially in the US House. Now, it's no secret that right now it's shaping up to be a pretty blue leaning year. But, things could change, especially with a lot of congressional maps being redrawn. So, we'll take a stroll through a few different sources. Let's see what we've got. We'll start here on Real Clear Politics. This goes up through May 5th, and right now the Democrats are ahead by 5.3%.

[00:00:27]That's 48.9 to 43.6.

[00:00:30]And it basically asks the question, which party do you want to control Congress? On the left, we've got the pollsters, then the sample dates, then the sample size, and whether they were likely voters, registered voters, adults, etc. And some of these polls here are pretty brutal for the Republicans. Just one of them has it at a tie. That's Harvard Harris. But, we've got three of them out here that are double digits for the Dems. And that includes this Emerson poll here with 1,000 likely voters. So, just based on this, if the election were held right now, I think there's no question the Dems would win the House. It could be a 10, 15 seat or more majority. Things are not looking good right now for the party in power. It's kind of typical for midterms, but there's a lot of reasons voters are uneasy right now. It doesn't mean it'd be an endorsement of the Dems.

[00:01:10]Their popularity is also in the toilet, but they're not in power right now, so everything's going to pretty much be taken out on the GOP. Now, let's go down here and take a look at the timeline.

[00:01:19]So, given that the Dems are the out party, again, I would expect them to pretty much be in the lead here. And that was basically the case. Bit of a huge spike right here last April. But, then the Dems opened up a consistent lead, and it's kind of widened up here over the past 6 months. So, before we were looking at maybe a two or three point lead, now we're into the five to six point range. My rough estimate is each percentage point is about five seats in the House. But, there's no way Republicans are going to stand a chance with these kinds of numbers. Yes, polls can be wrong, and yes, Republicans could come back and get it together and get more enthused. But, to close a gap of five plus points, that seems most likely out of range. Now, for some other sources, here's a Hub. Here, the Dems are up six points. Generally a similar path here. The lead keeps widening here for the Dems. So, this is pretty much how it goes now. Politics nowadays seems to be that both sides are either enjoying how they're in power or about to retake power. If one side holds on to total control for 40 years, they should view that as a victory. Here we've got Decision Desk. This is about a 5.3% advantage for the Dems. But here you can actually narrow it down to a key voting block. How about independents only? Here the Dems are up by more than 12%. Right now it looks like the GOP is just trying to minimize its losses and they're going to have to get that independent gap way lower than 12% if they want to have any shot at maybe keeping the house to a single digit majority for the Dems. Now, for a little bit of comparison, let's go back to '24. This was a presidential year, it was higher turnout. But here at the end it was pretty much a dead even.

[00:02:43]Republicans were shown in the polling to only be ahead by 3/10 of a percent. They actually won by 2.7. So, you might think of that as some of that hidden Trump vote. We go down and take a look at the graph. Here for a while Republicans were in the lead and it did go back and forth for a while. Then kind of on the home stretch the Dems were the ones in the lead until the very, very end. That's where the Republicans pulled ahead.

[00:03:02]That's why you've got to wait until the final couple of weeks. Five or six months out could hold up through the election, but that's just too long to really have a lot of confidence. Now, in the last midterm in '22, that was supposed to be a big red wave and it kind of didn't really happen. I think most of that is because of the Supreme Court decision on abortion. But here Republicans were shown to be up by two and a half. They ended up winning by 2.8. So, the polling there pretty close.

[00:03:24]We go out here and take a look at this graph. Here for a long time Republicans had a pretty consistent lead. Then again, late into the summer of '22 after that Supreme Court decision, Dems started getting more motivated and it was kind of a question. But at the very end Republicans did get it together and they held on. They weren't able to flip the house back that year, but I think their underperformance cost them clearly more seats in the house, maybe a couple of Senate seats, but certainly some more governor seats. Now, here's the last blue wave, 2018 during Trump's first term. Look at this. Dems were ahead by 7.3 in the aggregate. They overperformed a little bit at 8.4. Now, some of these polls were great, some of them not so much. Look at this one from Rasmussen.

[00:04:01]They had Republicans up one. Now, they're known to have a GOP bias in their polling, but also look at CNN.

[00:04:06]They had the Dems way over at plus 13.

[00:04:09]If you go down here and look at this graph, this one fairly consistent the entire time. After Trump got in there, Dems were clearly motivated. They maintained that all the way through November. The 7.3% advantage is higher than what we're looking at right now.

[00:04:21]But, the maps are a little bit different. Some of the coalitions also might be different. But, with the way things are going with gas prices, the Iran war, plus the lingering sting of inflation, maybe health care, that could depress some Republican vote, independents could break to the left, and clearly as we've seen in special elections, Dems are eager to turn out and regain some sort of control. Again, we've seen their popularity really, really low, but it all comes down to what happens in elections. And ever since 2004, they've by far had much more success. So, let's see where people are putting their money. Here's what we've got on Polymarket. So, the Dems are favored now at 83% to win the House, Republicans at 19. That narrowed up just a little bit recently. I think that's probably because of the Florida congressional map how it was redrawn.

[00:05:02]And there's some questions about some of the other maps as well, especially after the recent Supreme Court decision. But, if Republicans have a bad enough night, the Senate could also be in jeopardy.

[00:05:11]That's more of an uphill climb for the Dems, but here's what we've got on Polymarket. It's pretty much a coin flip, 51 for the Republicans, 48 for the Dems. You could see Republicans had a commanding lead here up until March, and that's when we started to get some actual primary data. So, Dems becoming more bullish at recapturing the Senate.

[00:05:26]They've got to flip four seats, it's not easy to do, but it's not out of reach anymore. So, that's the state of the generic congressional ballot. As we've been saying for a long time now, Dems look poised to make some nice gains. The depth of those gains is really the only question at this point. Is it going to be so big that the Senate flips? Is something going to happen with Trump where he actually reignites voters? Are they going to do that convention? He's got to get his base to turn out if he wants to have any chance at minimizing the losses. But this is what we've got for politics. Republicans likely to lose control. Dems going to come back in.

[00:05:54]Then they're going to blow it and the cycle keeps happening. So that's it. Let me know in the comments what do you think about the state of the US House and the generic congressional ballot. Is there any chance Republicans hold the House now after more redistricting? How many seats could the Dems win? Could it be 15, 20, maybe 25 or more? And what about the Senate? Let me know what you think down below. On your way out, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.

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[00:06:16]Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.