Why Dems are suddenly confident about 2026
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Democrats have a rare bright spot in their party's existential crisis: 2026, at least to them, looks pretty good.
Why it matters: The party is full of angst over how to retake the White House and win back the voters they lost to President Trump over the past decade. But they feel increasingly sanguine about taking back the House next year.
Here's the five-part theory of the case for why Dems are optimistic about 2026, as laid out by more than a dozen of their top campaign staffers.
- The "big, beautiful bill" is polling terribly.
- Cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are expected to make the "big, beautiful bill" even more unpopular.
- Prices are still high despite Trump promising to bring them down. Economic approval had long been one of Trump's consistent political strengths and now is not.
- Trump's deportations are getting blowback after going well beyond violent criminals and gang members. Polls show Republicans losing their advantage on one of their key issues in the 2024 election.
- Democratic enthusiasm. A recent CNN poll found that 72% Democrats and Democratic-aligned voters are extremely motivated to vote in the midterm elections compared to just 50% of Republicans and Republican-aligned voters.
Between the lines: Some Democrats are worried that victories in 2026 will stop the party from reckoning with its deeper issues and unpopularity.
- The party needs to change and victories will give party leaders excuses not to, they argue.
Zoom in: In 2026, Democrats only need to win a handful of seats to take back the House majority. They also just successfully recruited former Gov. Roy Cooper to run for Senate in North Carolina, as Axios first reported.
- Democrats believe they're getting the right kinds of candidates in the House: people with little connection to D.C. who can run against both parties.
- Midterms often favor the party out of power and Democrats have increasingly done better with college-educated voters who also tend to vote more often in non-presidential elections.
Zoom out: The Democratic Party is facing headwinds of historic unpopularity that will make it harder to win back the House.
- The Wall Street Journal recently found that only 33% of voters have a favorable view of Democrats and 63% have an unfavorable view — the highest percentage in the Journal's polling back to 1990. Other polls also look bad.
- Many of the cuts to Medicaid do not go into effect until 2027, so voters may not feel their effects by the midterms.
- Republicans in Ohio and Texas also might draw new congressional maps to help them win a few extra seats.
