Democrats’ Tricky Path to Winning Back the Senate

In the shadow of Donald Trump’s victory last November was another development that seemed to receive less much attention at the time: Republicans flipped four Senate seats, giving them a majority. They entered the 119th Congress with 53 seats to Democrats’ 47, an even larger margin than when Trump won the first time (52–48). They also retained their House majority, albeit a historically small margin.

Given the razor-thin House margin and Democrats’ growing turnout advantage in non-presidential elections, conventional wisdom suggests that they will win back the lower chamber in next year’s midterms. The Senate, however, is likely to be a different story. Democrats have long had a structural disadvantage there, and it has been further complicated by recent developments in Americans’ voting patterns. For instance, fewer states than ever are electing senators from both parties. Voters have also become less likely to split their tickets between presidential and Senate races.

Taken to an extreme, this adds up to a serious math problem for Democrats. In 2024, Trump won 31 states to Harris’s just 19. If every state’s Senate seats reflected their presidential vote, Republicans would have a whopping 62 seats—enough to break the legislative filibuster—to Democrats’ 38. Of course, it’s not that bad for Democrats (yet). But this illustrates the uphill battle they face to win back the majority, and it’s not readily apparent when that success will come.

2026 Midterms

Heading into next year’s midterm election, Democrats should have some important factors working in their favor. As mentioned, they are expected to enjoy a turnout advantage over Republicans, and they will likely benefit from the traditional midterm penalty incurred by the president’s party. They are also defending fewer seats (13) than the Republicans are (22). In theory, this means Democrats should be well positioned to go on the offensive and regain some lost ground in the Senate.

However, it’s unlikely they can win back the chamber in just one cycle. For starters, the number of potentially competitive Republican seats stands at just three, according to the Cook Political Report. Moreover, none of the three incumbents who hold those seats are expected to be easy to knock off:

• Susan Collins of Maine has long been Senate Democrats’ white whale. Maine is one of the few states where voters are still open to splitting their ticket between the Senate and presidential races. Even though Democrats have carried the state in every presidential election since 1988, Collins has held this seat since 1996, winning some impressive races in the process. In 2020, she was the lone Senate candidate to win while her party’s presidential nominee lost their state.¹ It’s possible that a favorable midterm environment for Democrats next year could help them finally dislodge her, but their track record offers reason to be skeptical.

• After JD Vance assumed the vice presidency, Ohio’s Republican governor tapped his lieutenant, Jon Husted, to take Vance’s place in the Senate. Incumbents who were not elected by the voters of their state can sometimes be vulnerable.² But Ohio’s rightward drift over the past two decades makes Husted a heavy favorite at the outset to retain this seat. For Democrats to oust him, the national midterm environment would need to be extremely favorable.

• Democrats’ best chance of flipping a GOP-controlled Senate seat may be in North Carolina, where two-term Senator Thom Tillis is running for re-election. Tillis was first elected in 2014, a historically favorable midterm year for the GOP in which he defeated a Democratic incumbent by 1.5 points and with 48.8 percent of the vote. In 2020, he won a second term by 1.8 points and with an even smaller 48.7 percent—and he was aided by a late-breaking scandal involving his Democratic opponent. Still, though Tillis may not be as strong candidate as Collins, Democrats have not won a federal race in North Carolina since 2008, a sign of their lingering struggles in this putatively competitive state.

Meanwhile, Democrats are also defending four potentially competitive seats of their own, including two that are considered true toss-ups: Georgia and Michigan. Trump flipped both states back last year, and in contrast to the Republicans’ seats, Democrats do not have structural advantages in either of these states.

In Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff has only served one term in a seat that Democrats had previously not won since 1996. Though Ossoff is decently popular, he may face a challenge from two-term Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who is popular in his own right and historically a strong fundraiser. One early, GOP-sponsored poll indicated Kemp would be favored to win that match-up (though it’s important to stress that this is not only an early and partisan poll but also still entirely speculative). Republicans have also had plenty of recent success in federal races in Georgia. In addition to their domination at the presidential level, they won Ossoff’s seat within just the last decade.

Michigan may be just as vulnerable for Democrats. Two-term Senator Gary Peters decided not to seek re-election, leaving the seat open. Though Republicans have not won a Senate race in Michigan since 1994, Trump’s wins there in 2016 and 2024 are a sign that this seat could very much be in play for them, especially if they avoid the pitfalls associated with nominating extreme candidates again.

In addition to Georgia and Michigan, Democrats are defending two more seats that may be competitive. This includes an open seat in Minnesota, where Harris won by just 4.2 points, and New Hampshire, where she won by an even smaller 2.8 points. However, these will likely be tougher lifts for Republicans. They have not won a Senate race in Minnesota since 2002, and in New Hampshire, their eventual nominee will face a tough challenge against incumbent Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who has held the seat since 2008 and survived some very difficult cycles for Democrats.

Even so, Republicans don’t need to win Minnesota or New Hampshire. They don’t even really need Georgia or Michigan, either of which would simply pad their already sizable majority. The Democrats, by contrast, have more work to do. Their best-case scenario likely entails successfully defending all of their seats while flipping North Carolina and Maine. This would still leave them two seats short of a majority—and even if they won Ohio and brought their total to 50, Republicans would still have the tie-breaking vote—but it would at least get the ball rolling heading into the next cycle.

2028 and 2030

Even if Democrats net one or even two seats in 2026, the Senate landscapes in each of the two subsequent cycles remain daunting. In Democrats’ ideal world, Americans will have become fatigued by Trump and MAGA by the end of his second term and be ready for change in 2028. If they win the presidency, they might also have a chance of flipping the Senate. But the terrain is still rocky.

Democrats that cycle are defending four seats in states that Trump won—Arizona (Mark Kelly), Georgia (Raphael Warnock), Nevada (Catherine Cortez Masto), and Pennsylvania (John Fetterman)—as well as one in New Hampshire (Maggie Hassan), which Harris carried very narrowly. All five incumbents have experience winning tough races, as they previously secured their seats in the 2022 midterm election. However, presidential cycles are becoming less friendly for Democrats than midterm cycles, meaning 2028 may present these candidates with a different set of challenges.

Meanwhile, there are just two obvious opportunities for them to flip Republican seats: Wisconsin (Ron Johnson) and North Carolina (Ted Budd). And, as is the case in 2026, taking these seats is easier said than done. Though Johnson, who has never been very popular in the Badger State, has long been a top target for Democrats, he’s managed to survive every challenge. And if Republicans carry Wisconsin in the Electoral College, he may succeed again. Budd is a more of a newcomer—he first won his seat in 2022, and thus doesn’t have nearly as tight a grip on it. However, the same headwinds facing Democrats against Tillis next year are likely to exist in this race as well.

This demonstrates the high-wire act Democrats must perform to win back the Senate by 2028. Not only will they need to successfully defend at least nine of their own seats over the next two cycles, but they’ll have to win pretty much every vulnerable GOP seat as well. If they do this, they can expect to have anywhere from 50 to 52 seats by 2029—but even 50 seats won’t cut it if they lose the presidency in 2028.

The importance of earning a majority by then can’t be understated. A Democratic Senate would be positioned to either help a new president of their party pass his or her agenda or significantly curtail the ambitions of a new Republican president.

But even more noteworthy: this could be the only window for the foreseeable future in which Democrats are able to take control of the Senate. The 2030 midterm Senate landscape currently looks to be the least friendly of the next three cycles. This class of senators will be the same one that was on the ballot last year, when Democrats lost four seats. As things stand right now, there is just one Republican-held seat that might be in play for Democrats: Pennsylvania (Dave McCormick). Conversely, at least four Democratic-controlled seats will likely be up for grabs again: Arizona (Gallego), Michigan (Slotkin), Nevada (Rosen), and Wisconsin (Baldwin), all states that Trump carried in 2024.

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If there’s one, overarching takeaway from all this, it’s that Democrats’ woes in rural America are seriously inhibiting their ability to consistently compete for the Senate. Consider some of the states where they have won seats in just the past two decades: Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and West Virginia. All have substantial rural populations, and all are now nearly or entirely out of reach for the party.

Politics is often cyclical, and parties that are out of power eventually find their way back into it. That said, Democrats also haven’t hit rock bottom yet in the Senate and are clearly at risk of falling further. They’ll have a chance to not only stem their slide but start back on the path to competing for a Senate majority next year, but there’s a lot of work to be done in the meantime.

1. It wasn’t close, either: she won by 8.6 points while Biden carried Maine by 9.1.

2. Anyone remember Kelly Loeffler or Martha McSally?