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With 40 days until the 2026 midterm elections, Republicans are already feeling the pressure.
Nearly every poll seems to bring more bad news for Republican candidates, even in typically comfortably red seats. One of the clearest signs of how the party feels is how they talk (or don’t talk) about President Donald Trump and his record.
As my colleague Andrew Prokop reports, some Republicans are slowly and tentatively beginning to distance themselves from Trump and his most unpopular policies, including the Iran war and mass deportations.
In Florida, Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who won with more than 60% of the vote in 2024, released an ad targeting Trump directly, criticizing him for going “too far” in immigration enforcement. In Iowa, hit hard by soaring diesel prices, two Republican incumbents voted in favor of a resolution to end the war with Iran.
Whether these modest gestures matter is another question, especially after nearly a decade of the Republican Party’s unquestioned loyalty to Trump. But they reflect an environment in which, even by usual midterm standards, where the president’s party almost always loses ground, the situation for Republicans looks increasingly dire.
Senate battle
With things looking worse for Republicans, Democrats are beginning to focus on a real chance of expanding the Senate and taking back the upper chamber, which once looked like an uphill battle.
Over the past two months, more Senate races have faltered or otherwise moved to the left, according to election forecasters like the Cook Political Report.
That includes open Senate seats in Iowa and Texas (currently held by Republicans), both of which Cook now believes are worth fighting for. Incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall is on the ballot in Kansas, a state that has shifted from likely to Republican. Even South Carolina has moved away from solid Republican territory, although that remains a slim chance for Democrats. (In the New Hampshire Senate race, Democrats are defending the open seat currently held by retired Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, but have also shifted from leaning Democratic to swinging.)
Texas, in particular, is going to be a prize for Democrats. Polls consistently show Democratic state Rep. James Talarico leading Republican Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general who defeated incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in the primary.
A surprise possibility emerged in Kansas, where Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor, gave Marshall a tough race. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that Marshall, the doctor, sued hundreds of patients for medical debt, sometimes leading to their arrests; one of the patients later appeared in a Hamilton campaign ad.
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