The Senate: Our Best Guess on the Toss-ups as Labor Day Nears

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Republicans probably retain a slight edge in the Senate, but that assessment has gotten harder to defend over the course of the summer.

— Read on for our best guesses on our five Senate Toss-up races.

Where the race for the Senate stands

Back in April 2025, we wrote the following:

“Our bottom line assessment of the battle for Congress is that Democrats should win the House, and Republicans should win the Senate … One way to track 2025 and 2026 is whether either of these assessments look like they are in danger of being upended—does the race for the House seem like more of a true Toss-up in fall 2026, or does the Senate majority seem to be in doubt?”

As Labor Day looms, the Senate is much closer to being a Toss-up than the House is. President Trump’s weakness, exacerbated by the ripple effects of his decision to attack Iran, means that his approval rating is likely underwater not only in the classic swing states, but also in many if not all of the key red states hosting important Senate races this year.

Last week, we moved the Texas Senate race to Toss-up, giving us five Toss-ups in the Senate. Our overall Senate ratings are here:

Map 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings

We think these races are all still properly categorized as Toss-ups, but right before Labor Day is also a good time for a temperature check on them. So here’s our best guess on the key Senate races. When and if we feel firmer about these guesses, we’ll push these races out of Toss-up (and we’ll push them all before the election, whether we have a confident opinion or not):

Michigan: Progressive Abdul El-Sayed (D) just cannot bring himself to completely distance himself from left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, meaning that every Piker utterance splashes onto El-Sayed. It may be that the race is all Piker, all the time, all the way until November—and then El-Sayed still wins because of the broader environment. Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) still has to contend with sharing the same party as an unpopular president whose trade war with Canada may be particularly salient in Michigan. After a Fox News poll taken shortly after the primary gave Democrats some heartburn—it had Rogers up 51%-47%—subsequent polls have been better for El-Sayed. Best guess: El-Sayed

Maine: The Pine Tree State went from the national frontburner to the backburner, in part (we think) because El-Sayed replaced the departed Graham Platner as the embodiment of the progressive zeitgeist in the Democratic Party. Former state Senate President Troy Jackson (D) subbed in for Platner in the race against Sen. Susan Collins (R). Collins faces the same challenges presented by sharing a party with Trump as other Republicans in blue, purple, and even some red states and districts (and the Canadian tariff fight is also important in Maine). But she can also point to ways in which she’s distanced herself from Trump, including on trade, in a state that still splits tickets. Polling is both sparse and close, with Jackson holding tiny leads in the public polls from outlets we recognize (the University of New Hampshire from mid-July and Fox News in early August). We’d like something more definitive before picking against Collins. Best guess: Collins

Alaska: The top-four primary went well for former Rep. Mary Peltola (D), as she and two other minor Democrats combined for a little over 51% of the first-round vote. Additionally, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) will have to share the top-four, ranked-choice ballot with the “other” Dan Sullivan as well as another Republican, Gerald Heikes. Peltola will be the only Democrat on the ballot. While the real Sullivan and Peltola should get almost all the votes in the general election, the small number of voters who vote for one of the other two candidates may not consistently fill out the rest of their ballots, “ballot exhaustion” that could hurt Sullivan in a final ranked-choice vote allocation. Peltola and another minor Democrat received about the same 51%ish share of the first-round vote in 2024, but she still lost in November, so the first round isn’t necessarily predictive of the final vote. However, turnout is going to grow less from August to November in a midterm year than in a presidential year. For instance, the number of votes cast for House in November 2024 was about triple that of those cast in August. Back in 2022, the November vote was only about 140% of the August vote. That year’s concurrent special election to fill the vacant House seat probably drove some additional turnout in August, but the change from August to November won’t be as stark this year as it was in 2024. Best guess: Peltola

Ohio: The National Republican Senatorial Committee put out an unusual distress call in the Ohio Senate race, arguing that the explosive data center issue was hurting appointed Sen. Jon Husted (R) and that those who want to build data centers will be hurt if former incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) rides the issue to victory. Ohio (along with Iowa) are two of the places where we worry the most about polling overstating Democrats, but Brown has generally led and Republicans are acting concerned about the race, as NBC News’s Henry Gomez summed up in a recent report. Best guess: Brown

Texas: Air support may be starting to arrive for embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), where a supportive Super PAC just announced, per Politico, a $15 million ad campaign featuring both a positive ad for Paxton and a negative one against state Rep. James Talarico (D). The negative spot tries to tie Talarico to China as opposed to going after Talarico for past “woke” comments, another batch of which emerged Tuesday in a CNN report (Talarico talked of “dismantling” capitalism and said other things he and his campaign now acknowledge as “cringey”). National Republicans are still hoping the White House’s well-heeled Super PAC will handle the heavy lifting in expensive Texas, per Semafor. We’d still just ultimately rather be the Republican in Texas, as weak as Paxton is. Best guess: Paxton

Other races: Iowa’s Senate race could arguably be a Toss-up too, but it reminds us a bit of Texas, only with a stronger GOP candidate in Rep. Ashley Hinson. North Carolina is likely bound to be closer than what current polls indicate, but Gov. Roy Cooper (D) still seems OK in his open-seat race. We haven’t regretted moving Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-GA) reelection bid to Likely Democratic. New Hampshire is a bit of a wild card—we’re curious to see what kind of protest vote there is against Rep. Chris Pappas (D) in his primary next week—but ultimately it’s hard to see Democrats losing a Senate race there in this political environment, so long as Pappas is nominated. Kansas and Nebraska, the latter featuring independent Dan Osborn in lieu of a Democrat, linger as Likely Republican sleepers. We could see other Republican-held states, like Mississippi and South Carolina, being single-digit races, but we can’t see Democrats actually winning any of those currently Safe Republican races.

So where does this leave us? Ultimately, we still see a slight Republican edge in the Senate—our guesses above suggest a 50-50 tie with Vice President Vance breaking ties in favor of Republicans. The key question is whether things stabilize for Republicans and the red state races move back in the GOP’s favor—which perhaps could happen if Democrats are on a bit of a polling sugar high, as Republican operative Patrick Ruffini suggested in a recent, widely-shared analysis—or whether there’s no gain for Republicans and perhaps even more of a decline.

We’ve thought Republicans have been favored in the Senate the whole cycle. We still, narrowly, feel that way, but that position is harder to defend now than it has been at any point in the cycle.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.