— Several defeated senators are currently running or considering runs for Senate in 2026.
— In the postwar era, about 220 sitting senators have lost their seats in general elections or primaries, and most do not try to reenter electoral politics.
— Still, almost 30 defeated senators have tried to return to the chamber, although only six have been successful since 1946.
— In Iowa, Democrats continued to rack up special election overperformances by flipping a Trump-won state Senate seat that is based in Sioux City.
— Democrats have broken the GOP’s supermajority in the state Senate, although Republicans still hold comfortable majorities in both chambers of the legislature.
— A judge threw out Utah’s current House map, a GOP gerrymander, ruling that it does not fit with the guidelines set by a 2018 voter-approved state ballot issue.
— A fairer map of Utah would probably have one blue seat and three red ones, instead of four red ones, though Utah Republicans may try to delay a new map’s implementation.
— The recent mid-decade redistricting developments have prompted a debate about proportionality and representation in the House.
— There are several states across the country where either party lacks representation in the House even as its candidates routinely take a sizable minority share of the vote in statewide elections.
— Redistricting could yield more equitable House delegations in those states, although in many cases, it is hard to get a party’s share of the vote exactly in line with its seat count.
— In Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D) entrance into the 2026 Senate race against appointed Sen. Jon Husted (R) has prompted us to move the race from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.
— The “presidential lean” of a state can, over time, help us quantify its political trajectory.
— Much of the Heartland and Midwest has come to lean more to the GOP over the past two decades, though the Sun Belt has gotten more Democratic.
— By our “leans” metric, Donald Trump held up especially well in several swing states in 2020, even as he lost the presidency that year.
— Florida was the only state that was at its most Democratic in 2004, the earliest year that we consider, and its most Republican last year, showing a clear trend toward Republicans over two decades.
— In Nebraska, Dan Osborn, an independent candidate who held Sen. Deb Fischer (R) to a single-digit win last year, announced he’d challenge Sen. Pete Ricketts (R).
— Though Ricketts should be more formidable than Fischer, Osborn is still a credible challenger, so we are moving the race from Safe Republican to Likely Republican.
— We are also rating an imminent special election in TN-7 as Likely Republican. Republicans are still clearly favored to hold it but the dynamics of recent low-turnout special elections could make it more competitive than one might otherwise think.
— There will be a trio of special elections in some deep blue districts later this year. While Democrats are heavy favorites to retain them all, AZ-7 could represent an opportunity to see if the GOP’s recent gains with Latinos are sticking.
— The “presidential lean” of a state can, over time, tell us something about how it is trending.
— Though 2004 and 2024 produced similar topline national results, there has been some significant change in how individual states vote relative to the country.
— By this measure, Kamala Harris held up relatively well in Sun Belt Toss-up states, while it has been several cycles since the Rust Belt Toss-ups were at their most Democratic.
— In New York City, state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani pulled off an upset in the Democratic primary for mayor, defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
— One of the things that probably worked against Cuomo was the fact that some of his key constituencies are less likely to be registered to vote in Democratic primaries.
— Turnout in Virginia’s primary last week was slightly higher than what 2021’s primary saw, though there were some important locality-level changes.
— In winning the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D) won most of the state’s congressional districts.
— The close Democratic primary for Attorney General helped illustrate how primary turnout patterns differ from that of general elections.
— We are making four rating changes this week—one in the Senate and three in the House—with two races getting better for Democrats and two getting better for Republicans.
— The Iowa Senate race moves onto the periphery of the competitive board this week. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) was in the news recently for comments on health care, although the bigger reason for the switch is that she drew a potentially credible Democratic challenger.
— The most notable House change is moving ME-2, the most Republican district held by a Democrat, to Toss-up, and we are also making a couple of other changes to open seats where talented incumbent House members are running for the Senate.
Dear Readers: Today, we are leading off with some observations from Omaha’s recent mayoral election. The city makes up the better part of Nebraska’s 2nd District, a rare Kamala Harris-won but GOP-held district that is perpetually high on both parties’ House wish lists. Then, we will look at recent turnout patterns in New Jersey and Virginia, which will each host closely-watched gubernatorial contests in November.
— The Editors
— While 2026 will feature three dozen gubernatorial contests, two states, New Jersey and Virginia, will elect governors in open-seat races this year.
— We are starting out both 2025 contests, which are in states that backed Kamala Harris by nearly 6 points apiece, as Leans Democratic.
— In New Jersey, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D, NJ-11) is a tenuous favorite for the Democratic nomination amidst a crowded field, while 2021 GOP nominee Jack Ciattarelli is a stronger favorite on his side.
— Neither Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R-VA) nor former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D, VA-7) have primary competition, so Virginia’s race is in general election mode earlier than usual.
Notes on the State of Politics: New Hampshire Senate and Change in Virginia
— In presidential elections since 2016, only 28 of the 435 current House districts have backed nominees of different parties.
— In next year’s House elections, districts that have been Electoral College bellwethers since 2016 could play a large role in determining whether Democrats can recapture the majority.
— Still, Republicans have some potential offensive targets in districts that have been national popular vote bellwethers.
— While House Democrats find themselves in a similar overall situation now as they did in 2017, the general contours of the House battlefield are different.
— In North Carolina and Georgia, Kamala Harris gained in some fast-growing suburban counties, but it was not enough to cancel out the drift to Donald Trump elsewhere in those states.
— Arizona was Trump’s strongest of the presidential Toss-up states in part because its border counties continued to shift strongly in his direction.
— Trump carried Nevada because he was the best-performing Republican in Clark County (Las Vegas) in decades, although Washoe County (Reno) narrowly stuck with Harris.
— Before the 2024 election, the Crystal Ball isolated several key counties in Toss-up states. We are circling back to see what the results in those counties said about the overall election.
— Several Democratic-trending suburban and touristy counties in the Industrial North continued to move left, although just not by the margins that Kamala Harris would have needed.
— In Pennsylvania, Donald Trump’s notable gains in the Scranton area played into his strong 2024 showing in the state.
— Sticking to the Industrial North generally, and in 2026 news, Sen. Gary Peters’s (D-MI) retirement opens up a Senate seat in Michigan for the second time in as many cycles.
— Though she still lost it by less than a percentage point, Wisconsin was Kamala Harris’s best state out of the 7 that we rated as Toss-ups during the election.
— In the traditionally red WOW counties around Milwaukee, Harris gained votes, but fewer than she would have liked.
— Though it is still a Democratic bastion, Donald Trump saw some of his biggest vote gains in Milwaukee County.
— Much of Trump’s margin in the state came from doing just a little bit better across the board in 2024 than he did in 2020.
— In the northeastern part of the state, Harris held up relatively well in the BOW counties, and several cities in that region will be worth watching going forward.
— Kamala Harris carried Virginia by close to 6 points this month. This was worse than Joe Biden’s 10-point showing in the state, although it was slightly better than Hillary Clinton’s performance, even as the latter had a Virginian (Sen. Tim Kaine) on her ticket.
— Much of the state’s movement to Donald Trump can be attributed to a pronounced rightward shift in heavily Democratic Northern Virginia.
— Though she lost ground overall, Harris held on to some of Joe Biden’s 2020 gains in many of the state’s more marginal localities.
— Though it was not a Toss-up state, in some ways, such as its internal swing and voting rhythms, Virginia was in sync with the nation as a whole.
— Split outcomes between presidential and Senate results saw a resurgence in 2024, as at least four Donald Trump-won states sent Democrats to the Senate.
— Republicans still took the majority in the Senate because while Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) performed notably better than Kamala Harris, they did not do so by enough to hold their seats.
— Across most key Senate races, Senate Democrats ran better than Harris in rural parts of their states but were comparatively weak in some suburban counties.
— In one of Harris’s best states, Maryland, former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) stood out as Republicans’ top overperformer, although Harris’s 26-point margin in the state was too much for him to overcome.
— In North Carolina, Kamala Harris seems likely to gain in suburban Cabarrus County but may have to watch rural counties like Wilson.
— While it is not the most likely case, two Georgia counties that have trended in the opposite direction, Fayette and Sumter, could both conceivably flip.
— While Phoenix’s Maricopa County dominates Arizona, raw vote margins in a trio of its other large counties have proved predictive.
— In Nevada, Las Vegas and Reno predominate.
— While the 7 Toss-up states on our current Electoral College map will have outsized importance nationally, each of those states has several key counties that we will be watching.
— In this article, we’ll be isolating a few counties from the “Blue Wall” states that could tell the tale of the 2024 election.
— In Wisconsin, Ozaukee County is the bluest of the “WOW” counties while Door County has been a great bellwether in recent cycles.
— To win back Michigan, Donald Trump would probably like to flip back Saginaw County and keep the Cherry Coast red.
— In Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris may be poised to narrow Trump’s margin in Cumberland County, although we are curious how she’ll fare in Joe Biden’s native Lackawanna County.
— On Monday, Rep. Angie Craig (D, MN-2) became the first House Democrat from a marginal district to call for President Joe Biden to drop his reelection effort.
— With Biden intent on continuing his campaign, we thought it would be worth examining how his current polling could impact the House playing field.
— If the national popular vote were tied, we would expect Donald Trump to carry 10 additional House seats, compared to his 2020 result.
— If Trump won the popular vote by closer to three points, about where national polling suggests he is now, he could be positioned to flip about two-dozen previously Biden-won districts.
— It is possible that, even though the practice has been on the decline for some time, ticket-splitting may make something of a comeback in 2024.
