The Path to a Democratic Majority

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

In a recent article in The New York Times, they talked about Chuck Schumer's path to a Senate majority in 2026, an already rocky proposition given how tough the map is, and how Schumer was "thinking outside the box" and "looking for political lottery tickets" in 2026 in hopes of securing a majority (or at least making his fight in 2028 easier).  One of the states that Schumer highlighted in the conversation was Mississippi, where Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) is up in 2026.  I thought this was so odd (and unlikely) that I wanted to talk about what a Democratic Senate majority next year (which, to be fair, would be about as unlikely as it felt at this time in 2005, so it's not totally out of the question) would look like.

Though I'll talk in a minute about how I think that Schumer is incorrect about Mississippi, Schumer is 100% accurate about "thinking outside the box" and "looking for political lottery tickets."  In 2026, provided there are no unexpected vacancies or party switches (which there were in 2001, 2009, 2009 again, & 2017 this century, so don't totally discount that as an option), the Democrats would need to flip four US Senate seats in order to take the majority.  This is a gargantuan task.  Assuming that they hold all of their current US Senate seats (which will not be a walk-in-the-park given two Trump 2024 states, Michigan & Georgia, will be up next year), they'd still need four more seats.

The problem there is the map only really allows for two obvious pickup opportunities: Maine & North Carolina (Democrats badly dropped the ball in 2026 already by not getting Mandela Barnes & Bob Casey elected).  Despite some people thinking Sen. Susan Collins is invincible, I'd still put her at a tossup at this point (though DSCC recruitment for her seat has been pathetic), but she's in a seat that Kamala Harris won by 7-points last year, and unlike 2008 & 2020, there's no presidential election on the ballot to help her.  I have said this a few times, but in retrospect, I think the only point in her career Susan Collins would've lost was in 2018 (when she wasn't on the ballot).  2026 is, like 2018, a Trump midterm, and I think she's in a tough spot, which may be why she hasn't officially announced her reelection yet.  Though the DSCC doesn't have a quality candidate at this date, I do wonder if we'll have a late entry similar to Colorado in 2014 (Cory Gardner didn't get into the race until the tail end), and someone like Janet Mills or Chellie Pingree will be talked into pursuing this as a career capper moment, winning Collins' seat.

Maine is the only Harris state currently held by a Senate Republican across any cycle, but the Democrats have a clear path to a second seat as well-in North Carolina, which Harris only lost by 3-points.  Sen. Thom Tillis is pursuing a third term, and is likely to face a tough race.  One key "were they successful" metric for Kirsten Gillibrand at the DSCC is whether or not she gets Roy Cooper, the former two-term governor of the Tarheel State, into this race, and while he is apparently 50/50 on going for it...I still wager he runs, and wins the seat.  In a world where we get freshmen senators like Janet Mills & Roy Cooper (which will deservedly invite "why is DC so old?" thought pieces given they're both already eligible for Medicare), the Democrats would still be two seats short, and there'd be no obvious Harris seat to pickup.

Pickups, though, do happen as midterms can make unusual things reality.  Looking at the 2018 & 2022 midterms, admittedly, there's not a lot of evidence of this.  While there were incumbents like Phil Bredesen in Tennessee where the Democrats outran the previous POTUS race by double digits, not a single seat flipped in a state that was further apart than 10-points the previous presidential cycle (though Democrats did hold seats in Montana & West Virginia that fit this description in 2018).  You have to go back to 2010, when Republicans flipped three states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, & Illinois) that had gone for Barack Obama by double digits in 2008.  Looking at the previous cycle, Montana would also fit this bill, going for Bush by 21-points in 2004 but then flipping to Jon Tester the following cycle.

So there's evidence of this, but not a lot of recent history.  It's worth noting that these were anomalies-WI/PA/IL all went back to Obama in 2012, and John McCain (barely) won Montana in 2008, so don't think that we can't have seats that might flip in states that are otherwise red.  But when you look at these states, they're ones with more elasticity than Mississippi, a state that does occasionally appear closer than, say, Idaho or Arkansas (other hard-red states), but that's only because it's so racially-polarized.  I've said this before, but if white voters in Mississippi were as blue as, say, white voters in Iowa or Indiana, it'd be a solid blue state.  But white voters in the South are much less malleable in the 21st Century, so if we're looking for a third and fourth seat, we're looking at states that are either swingier...or in the midwest/Great Plains region of the country with a less polarized white electorate.

That really leaves you with five states that make sense: Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, & Alaska.  Texas & Alaska were warming to the Democrats in 2020 (a much better year for the party) as Biden got within 5-points of winning there in 2020, and got exactly 10-points away in Alaska.  Both have also shown Democrats some hope in recent years-Alaska elected (statewide) Rep. Mary Peltola in 2022 (twice), while Beto O'Rourke came awfully close to flipping the Texas Senate seat blue in 2024.  Biden also got within 10-points of Iowa & Ohio, though these seem to be slipping further from the Democrats, and their best candidates (Auditor Rob Sand and Sen. Sherrod Brown) seem more interested in gubernatorial bids.  And then there's Kansas, which has drifted slightly bluer (and has a Democratic governor, albeit one too old to be seriously considering a Senate race, though she's younger than Janet Mills), but its biggest draw is the growing, college-educated Kansas City suburbs which is turning the state intriguingly pink.

These are the five states that I think a Democratic majority would be built within.  There's a possibility that an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats (like Dan Osborn in Nebraska) might sneak into the conversation, but if Schumer gets his lottery tickets, it'll be in those states.  Other states, like Mississippi, feel like a silly pipe dream.  A more plausible conversation would be if Gov. John Bel Edwards ran in Louisiana (he has reportedly met with Sen Schumer), but we've been to this dance a thousand times (not just the aforementioned Bredesen, but also everyone from Larry Hogan to Evan Bayh to Linda Lingle to Steve Bullock)...governor's races aren't the same as Senate races (also the problem with running Andy Beshear) if the state is super red, even with a quality candidate like Edwards.  Schumer's wrong to think that all lottery tickets are created equally.  If the Democrats win a Senate majority in 2026, it'd be built on either a very diverse state finally living up to that potential (Texas), a pink state finally giving us a random Mark Kirk or Heidi Heitkamp-style one-termer (Kansas & Alaska), or an ancestrally purple state having enough of the Trump tariffs and wanting to send a message (even if they still don't want to send a Democrat to the White House).