LoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyWith primary elections in the key 2026 battleground states largely complete, Democrats have emerged with several open paths to take the majority in the US Senate.
The basic contours of the national map remain uphill for Democrats. They currently hold 47 seats in the Senate, meaning they need to flip four Republican seats and hold their current ones, including in Michigan and Georgia, which President Donald Trump won in 2024.
But presiding over an unpopular Iran war that has dragged on for six months and resulted in high gas and grocery prices, Trump’s approval rating is now consistently below 40 percent, a historically perilous level. A Reuters/Ipsos poll has shown his approval nearing 30 percent.
The last time a Republican president was presiding over an unpopular war and spiking gas prices with less than 40 percent approval—George W. Bush in 2006—Democrats picked up six seats and took control of the Senate.
As a result, political strategists tell Inner Loop, there are now several states in play for Democrats beyond the four-state path of Alaska, North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine envisioned by Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer at the start of the year.
The picture for Democratic pickups remains perhaps brightest in Alaska and North Carolina, two states where Democrats have candidates that have previously won statewide elections and are polling ahead of their Republican opponents.
In conservative-leaning Alaska, former representative Mary Peltola is leading incumbent Dan S. Sullivan by more than 5 percentage points in the state’s nonpartisan primary, according to incomplete results, suggesting Democratic voters are highly engaged in that race.
In an added annoyance for Republicans, a retired teacher named Dan J. Sullivan won a spot on the general-election ballot Tuesday—a development that could split the GOP vote if Alaskans get the two Sullivans mixed up.
If the midterms are decided as much by turnout as other political factors, a similar turnout in the general election could give Peltola an edge in a race the nonpartisan Cook Political Report recently moved from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.”
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, former Democratic governor Roy Cooper, who has never lost an election, is running as a tough-on-crime moderate against Trump-endorsed candidate Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chairman.
Cooper has consistently led in the North Carolina Senate race, sometimes by as much as double digits. One early August poll had Cooper some 13 points ahead.
Democratic strategists also see former senator Sherrod Brown as a good prospect to flip a seat in Ohio, an agriculture-heavy state that is reliably Republican but was, not long ago, the swing state of swing states and has been hit hard by rising costs and discontent over data centers.
This month, the Senate Republican campaign arm warned in a memo to top AI labs that voter opposition toward data centers is sinking incumbent senator Jon Husted.
Brown spent millions of dollars on an ad campaign this summer painting Husted as the “face of data centers in Ohio.” Brown has pulled ahead in August polling in a race the Cook Political Report rates as a toss-up.
If Democrats can win those three battleground states and hold their current seat in Michigan—there is some worry about the nominee Abdul El-Sayed after a bruising primary, although he is back ahead in some polls—the party would need just one more pickup.
Senate Democratic leaders have been quietly optimistic about their prospects in traditionally red Texas, where Republicans nominated Ken Paxton, the state’s beleaguered attorney general, to run against James Talarico.
Talarico has turned out to be a charismatic politician and prolific fundraiser, raking in $69 million in campaign contributions compared with Paxton’s $9 million, according to the most recent FEC filings.
While WIRED previously reported that Elon Musk’s America PAC is expected to pour some of its projected $100 million to $200 million spend into the Texas race, Democrats see momentum with Talarico.
An Emerson College poll at the start of August had Paxton ahead by a single percentage point in what should be a ruby-red Texas, while a YouGov poll around the same time had Talarico three points ahead.
If not in Texas, Democrats also have a possible route through Maine, although Schumer’s plan is in worse shape there after the original nominee, Graham Platner, was accused of rape—a claim he’s denied—and dropped out.
Democrats moved to quickly coalesce around Troy Jackson, who faces longtime incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins. Some party leaders are worried whether liberal voters will back Jackson after the messy primary. As in Michigan, though, Trump’s trade policies could bolster Democrats, given how tightly integrated the border states’ economies are with Canada’s.
This is an edition of Hugo Lowell’s Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
