Democrats are favoured to win the House and have a narrower edge for the Senate in the 3 November midterms, according to forecasts published on 14 October, with six states, from Maine to Alaska, likely to decide control.
The United States holds its midterm elections on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, with all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 Senate seats and 39 governorships at stake, according to Wikipedia’s page on the elections. Republicans control the Senate, where they gained a majority in 2024, and Donald Trump is the president.
The forecasters see an edge for the Democrats. Decision Desk HQ gives them a 77% chance of winning the House with a projected 235 seats, and a 56% chance of winning the Senate with a projected 51 seats, as of 14 October, according to a search summary of its forecast page, which could not be loaded directly. The same summary reports that other forecasters estimate an 83% chance of a Democratic House and that prediction markets give Democrats about 90%, while for the Senate it gives 60% and 62 to 64%.
Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin forecast, updated on 14 October, says that Democrats remain strong favourites to retake the House. The percentages for each chamber are behind a paywall, so they cannot be reported here. The site does publish the polling averages in the key Senate races: Democrats lead in Maine by 2.6 points, Texas by 2.8, Ohio by 3.7, Iowa by 1.5, Michigan by 3.3 and Alaska by 3.4, and even in Kansas the Democratic candidate leads by 1.2 points.
Those six states are described as the likely tipping points for control of the chamber, and the Decision Desk HQ summary names the same six as toss-ups. A lead of one to four points in a polling average is small compared with the error in a typical poll, so the numbers do not mean that the Democrats will win those races. The Silver Bulletin model uses 40,000 simulations and models the House, Senate and governors’ races together.
The Decision Desk HQ summary gives the odds of the combinations: a 59% chance that Democrats win both chambers, 17% for a Democratic House with a Republican Senate, 14% for Republicans winning both and 9% for independents deciding the Senate. These are model outputs, and they depend on the polls staying where they are for three weeks.
The political environment is shaped by the president’s standing. Wikipedia says the article notes record low approval ratings for Trump, citing a Reuters/Ipsos poll that found a career-low 32% by September 2026. The page lists the economy and inflation, the war with Iran, abortion rights, AI data centres, foreign policy and corruption among the main issues.
The map has been redrawn in several states. Ohio and Utah have new districts ordered by courts, Missouri, North Carolina and Texas redrew their maps in the middle of the cycle, and California adopted a new map through Proposition 50, according to the page. It counts 16 Democratic incumbents in districts that Trump won and eight Republican incumbents in districts that Kamala Harris won.
Special elections for the Senate will be held in Florida, to replace Marco Rubio, and in Ohio, to replace JD Vance, and Maine is the only Republican-held seat in a state that Harris won, according to the page. Democrats are defending Georgia and Michigan, two seats in states that Trump won. A Fox News forecast reported by The Hill also predicts a Democratic House, according to its headline, though that article could not be read.
Forecasts are not results. Polls can miss, turnout in midterms is difficult to predict, and many races are close, so Delima News will report the results when counting ends after the polls close on 3 November.
Image: The US Capitol in Washington (file photo). Photo: Martin Falbisoner / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
