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Less than two months before the primary season opens, it seems that both parties have a general sense of the Senate map.
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Conversations with about two dozen strategists, lobbyists, donors, and rank-and-file Hill staffers reveal the current lay of the land: Democrats see an incredibly narrow path back to the majority, one that will require the kind of luck that has been in short supply for the party of late.
Republicans, meanwhile, see a more favorable map that will likely result in them retaining Senate control, although the latest polling and voter registration trends are certainly making party leaders skittish.
For the GOP, the biggest wild card is the leader of their own party, as Donald Trump has a history of backing the less-electable horse in pivotal primaries. Strategists are hoping Trump will do better this cycle at maintaining his neutrality, or at least avoid elevating the kind of candidates who are so toxic they hurt Republicans in other races.
While the Senate map remains in Republicans’ favor, non-presidential elections are famously tough to predict, and there is a political lifetime between now and November. Just the events of the last few weeks—the military seizure of Venezuela’s autocratic leader, Trump’s threats to Denmark over Greenland, a mounting national anti-ICE backlash—suggest any prediction about the midterms made in January of 2026 are slightly better than pure bunk.
First, let’s dissect the Democrats’ map. In a recent strategy memo, Senate Democrats’ campaign arm firstly and optimistically assumes the party will hold Michigan and New Hampshire, where Democratic incumbents are choosing not to seek another term, and Georgia, where Sen. Jon Ossoff is. (To recap: the current trio of Democratic Senators previously won those seats with an average of 52% of the vote.
That holds the status quo. To move Democrats back to holding the Senate’s gavels, Democrats’ official playbook is to pursue flips in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio. Six years ago, Republicans won those first three seats with 54%, 51%, and 49%. The fourth, Ohio, is going to be a special election to fill the remainder of Vice President J.D. Vance’s term; he won in 2022 with 53% of the vote.
Put candidly, the Democrats’ plan for those four states is ambitious—but the trends are on their side. Special elections since November 2024 have delivered a slate of wins for Democrats, who have outperformed expectations and historical trajectories.
Then there are seats in Iowa and Texas that are viewed as more dreamy pick-up opportunities for Democrats. More on that below.
Some of the Democrats’ open doors are thanks to Trump’s fickle nature. For instance, in North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis would have been on a glidepath to re-election. But Tillis ran afoul of Trump during the President’s first tour of Washington for such sins as working with Democrats on reforming immigration policy and defending Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 elections, and opposing Trump’s effort to tap emergency budget powers to bypass Congress and build the border wall. But the final blow came last summer when Tillis voted against Trump’s mega-spending package, the One Big Beautiful Bill. The next day, Tillis announced he would not seek a third term.
It’s a similar situation in Texas, Maine, and Louisiana, where Trump is bedeviling party leaders by his decision to not endorse the incumbents viewed as best positioned to keep their seats red.
That said, the map is decidedly in Republicans’ favor. Just holding GOP seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio is the whole ballgame. Republicans are thirstily looking for some flips of their own, like New Hampshire, where former Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and former Sen. John E. Sununu of New Hampshire are both running for an open seat. In Georgia, it’s a smorgasbord of GOP talent. And in Michigan, a Never-Trumper-turned-convert in former Rep. Mike Rogers is primed to face whoever emerges from a three-way primary that will serve as a litmus test for the Democrats.
Oh, that’s right. Primaries! None of these nominees are officially set. That doesn’t start happening until March. The first major test will come in Texas, where everything—including risk—is always bigger.
Let’s take a tour of the 10 states where control of the Upper Chamber will be decided.
Texas
Sen. John Cornyn, a former member of GOP Leadership and a guiding voice for pragmatic conservatives on the Hill, faces a real challenge to even win his party’s nomination for another six-year term when his state holds its primary on March 3. Emerson College’s polling this month shows Cornyn locked in a tight primary against Attorney General Ken Paxton, with Rep. Wesley Hunt running about 10 points behind both. Still, the plurality of voters there remain undecided. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has told reporters that Trump would not be making an endorsement in that race, although it’s far from assured that the President will keep his end of the bargain. Trump is fond of Paxton’s pluck and Hunt’s ambition. Some strategists worry that Texas Republicans may be about to trade away a reliably Republican seat if Paxton or Hunt emerge as the nominees.
The Democratic primary is also competitive, featuring feisty rising star Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico, who has drawn national attention for his blending of Christian faith with a pragmatic policy raft. Trump absolutely loathes Crockett, who might bait the President to intervene in the GOP primary.
North Carolina
A sneaky and pricey addition to the map this year, North Carolina’s Senate race is the one that Republicans feel least confident defending. Michael Whatley, who served for 17 months as Trump’s hand-picked chairman of the Republican National Committee, had been expected to coast into the seat being vacated by Tillis. The reasoning was sound: the last Democrat to win a Senate seat in North Carolina was elected in 2008.
But Democrats landed a major recruiting win with former Gov. Roy Cooper, who ran ahead of Hillary Clinton by 4 points in 2016 and by 6 points over Joe Biden four years later. Every single poll has shown Cooper besting Whatley. But holding the seat is a top priority for Thune and Senate Republicans’ campaign arm. The fact that Whatley is one of Trump’s favorites is lost on no one, as is the fact that Democrats have won the state’s presidential vote just twice since LBJ.
Ohio
Oh, Ohio. The one-time swing state has sided with the presidential winner every time except for 1944, 1960, and 2020. But its status as a bellwether is far from its heyday. Sen. Jon Husted is seeking to defend the seat he inherited when J.D. Vance won the vice presidency in 2024. In picking Husted, Gov. Mike DeWine cleared some potential strife inside the state GOP he controls and set in motion what should have been a fairly easy hold.
But former Sen. Sherrod Brown had other thoughts. Brown, who lost his seat in 2024, is the lone Ohio Democrat who has proven to be able to win statewide since the 2006 wave election, Brown has a machine in the state. And without Trump at the top of the ticket driving turnout, there’s a good shot that the 73-year-old fixture in Ohio politics can come back to Washington.
Louisiana
Louisiana should be an easy hold for Republicans, but who occupies the seat has become a moving target now that Trump decided to mess with Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-nomination. The President’s unexpected endorsement of Rep. Julia Letlow—before she even joined the race, mind you—added a complication for Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in his impeachment over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol yet set aside his own reservations as a doctor over the nomination of an anti-vaxxer to be the nation’s health secretary. Not even that concession—which has dogged Cassidy ever since—was enough to satiate Trump’s mounting obsession with revenge.
Thune had desperately hoped Trump would stay out of Louisiana. Just this month, Thune popped down to the state to stand with Cassidy and make stops to boost his standing. After all, Cassidy chairs the Senate health and education committee and is already playing a crucial role in steering Senate Republicans’ agenda. Poking Cassidy out of spite is a very Trumpian move but not one that leaves Democrats eyeing the race with any seriousness. After all, the last time Louisiana voters sent a first-term Democrat to the Senate was 1996.
Georgia
This is the race that keeps Democrats up at night. Jon Ossoff is far-and-away this cycle’s biggest fundraiser, hauling in $54 million for the cycle and showing no signs of slowing. Still, this is Georgia, a state that has voted for a Democratic White House contender just twice since Jimmy Carter’s days.
Trump is the big unknown here. He has yet to make an endorsement and his record in Georgia is mixed at best. (He delivered NFL player Herschel Walker the Senate nomination in 2022 but failed to kill Gov. Brian Kemp’s re-nomination that same primary.) This year, it’s Reps. Mike Collins and Buddy Carter hoping to trade in their House seats for the next prize, while former football coach Derek Dooley is looking to trade his headset for a members’ pin. Polling suggests Collins is the favorite to emerge as Ossoff’s foil after the May 19 primary, but Trump’s inclinations to make every race about him could foul this for the GOP.
Iowa
This is one of two states—Texas being the other—that could come into play if Democrats get luckier than lucky. Sen. Joni Ernst, a member of the GOP Leadership and a savvy pol, decided not to seek a third term and seemed ready to cede the seat to Rep. Ashley Hinson, a former newscaster who is running with Trump’s endorsement and the backing of the Senate Republicans’ establishment. It is widely seen as a hold for the Republicans, but the GOP has seen other safe seats get dicey if treated with indifference. (Senate Republicans just last cycle had to send an eleventh-hour rescue mission to Nebraska.)
The June 2 primary will sort out which Democrat will face Hinson. Former state Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls seems to be the favorite in the race but some Democrats in Washington are still watching Josh Turek, a moderate Democrat who played on the U.S. team at the Summer Paralympics four times, winning medals in wheelchair basketball in 2012, 2026, and 2020.
Maine
Susan Collins might just be the shrewdest incumbent Republican on this year’s map. Seeking her sixth term representing a state that voted against Trump all three times he appeared on the ballot—a distinction she holds alone among Republicans in the Senate—she has figured out how to give just enough to Democrats while not alienating her fellow Republicans. To be sure, Democrats often find her Lucy-and-the-football routine exhausting, as she suggests she might tank some Trump priorities before falling in line, but they also see her as a potential ally. Last year, for instance, she proposed an amendment to get money for rural hospitals included in Trump’s massive domestic policy bill. When that failed, she got it shoehorned in through another mechanism. The move helped her standing with Maine’s left, even as she voted for a bill they hated.
Complicating matters, though, is the Democratic primary, slated for June 9. Gov. Janet Mills is looking to become the oldest freshman Senator in history at age 79, while oyster farmer Graham Platner has attracted plenty of attention—not all of it positive. The primary could become a proxy fight between the party’s establishment, which recruited Mills heavily and believes she would be a viable Collins slayer, while progressives have embraced Platner despite a digital trail of problematic breadcrumbs.
Michigan
This is going to be a tricky one for Democrats hoping to hold their own turf. Sen. Gary Peters’ retirement has set in motion a three-way primary among the Democrats, and it’s one of the most dynamic contests in the still-forming map. Rep. Haley Stevens is a favorite of the establishment and a moderate technocrat, although in private meetings party leaders are starting to hedge their bets and expressing an openness to state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who has carefully positioned herself as a compromise between Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed, a public health official who is the progressive wing’s favorite.
Whoever emerges from the Democratic rubble after the Aug. 4 primary is likely to face Mike Rogers, the former Congressman who came within 20,000 votes of winning a Senate seat in 2024. Rogers, who had pointed criticism for Trump after Jan. 6 but found his way back into good standing and an endorsement, is a tough campaigner and national security hawk who is the GOP’s prime pick-up vessel.
Alaska
Again, this was not a race on the GOP list of problem children a year ago. Sen. Dan Sullivan was expected to coast to another term in a state that only occasionally likes to flirt with Democrats’ agenda. But former Rep. Mary Petola, the first Democrat to win statewide since 2008, is looking to get back to Washington. Democrats took a second look at the race and are seeing it as part of their core strategy to make it back to the majority.
Alaska is a unique campaign environment, for sure, and the primary is not until Aug. 18. That’s a lifetime in politics these days, and Democrats are hoping the sulfur of Washington is enough to sour voters on Sullivan.
New Hampshire
The Granite State remains one of the last truly purple ones on the map, so much so that Democrats aren’t really trying to challenge popular Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s bid for re-election. Yet it’s a different story with the Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s retirement. Rep. Chris Pappas is the party’s favorite there and could make history as the first openly gay man elected to the Senate.
Republicans, though, could find themselves in yet another pickle of Trump’s brine. Most of the GOP establishment has lined up behind former Sen. John E. Sununu, whose father and brother both have been Governor of the state and who has a reputation in Washington as a sharp operator who understands how real power is wielded. Sununu has a clear lead in polling but Trump holds his family in contempt; on the eve of New Hampshire’s primary in 2016, Sununu published a scathing op-ed in The Union-Leader under the headline Donald Trump is a Loser. Meanwhile, Scott Brown is still in the mix. Brown, who represented Massachusetts in the Senate and unsuccessfully ran against Shaheen in 2014 to represent New Hampshire, remains a popular figure on the conservative flank of the GOP. He served as an Ambassador during Trump’s first term and could be a major factor in this race if Trump wades into it. Still, Trump has likely not forgotten that Brown was critical of Trump’s actions around Jan. 6, saying “his presidency was diminished” by them. Once again, the majority in the Senate might hinge on what grievances Trump nurses or forgives.
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