Ballots have been mailed to Washington residents, and the 2026 midterm elections will take place on Nov. 3.
Between critical contests across the country, prominent gubernatorial races and divisive ballot initiatives, there will be plenty to watch on Election Day. All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 Senate seats are up for a vote. Democrats need a net gain of four seats in the House and four seats in the Senate to overturn the Republican majorities in both.
UW News spoke with James Long and Mark Smith, professors of political science at the University of Washington, about midterm election trends, what they’re watching statewide and nationally, and more.
What will you be watching most closely in Washington state and/or nationally?
James Long: On the state level, the congressional race for District 3 is very competitive. Incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, won the district by about 4 points in 2024, flipping it from Republican to Democrat control. This year, she is running against a Republican candidate, state senator John Braun. While all congressional races have a certain degree of localism and variation in candidate quality with respect to what matters in close races, should Gluesenkamp Perez hold onto the seat — and by a healthy margin — that could be a bellwether for how Democrats expect to perform in close House races nationwide. Similarly, if Braun flips the district back to Republican control, it could suggest that Republican losses across the country may not be as bad as many expect.
There are three statewide ballot initiatives in Washington, all of which are controversial and speak to some current “culture war” divisions between the left and the right. I don’t have a sense of which of these initiatives will succeed or fail — polling on them is notoriously difficult. Voters may change their minds due to exposure to a variety of ads. They may also decide by reverting to how they view national conversations around parents’ involvement in educational curriculum, trans athletes in K-12 schools, and greater taxation of the wealthy in terms of whether and how they vote on these measures.
Mark Smith: In Washington, I’m particularly interested in the three ballot initiatives, especially repealing the millionaire’s tax. The state legislature is counting on the revenue from this tax in 2028. If the tax is repealed, the legislature will need to make major changes in their projected budget, with downstream effects for the UW.
Nationally, I’m closely watching the competitive Senate and governor’s races in Ohio, partly because that’s where I’m from, but also because Ohio tells the tale of the changing geography of American politics. Ohio used to be considered a bellwether state, and it was the tipping-point state as recently as 2004. If John Kerry won Ohio, which he lost by only 2.1%, he would have been elected president. Since then, Ohio has trended strongly red. If Democrats win the Senate and governor’s races there, and polls have them favored in both, that would be a noteworthy result. If Democrats can win Senate seats in other red states such as Kansas, Iowa, Alaska and Texas, that would also grab my attention.
What are the factors likely to impact voter behavior in these midterms?
JL: For Congressional races nationwide, this election really seems to be a referendum on Donald Trump and Republican control of Congress. It’s been a period of single party control across the executive and legislative branches, so it’s not unusual for the incumbent president and party to be the main focal point in a midterm election. Moreover, Trump’s and the Republicans’ policies are deeply unpopular with the American people, including the war with Iran, tariffs and the inability to tackle affordability.
MS: At the risk of sounding pedantic, it’s highly variable from person to person. Who people vote for, and whether they vote at all, is driven by a complicated combination of factors. Still, we can parse out some systematic effects that apply more generally. One of them is the dropoff in voter turnout of about 20% between presidential and midterm years. Twenty years ago, the kinds of people who always vote in midterm years were disproportionately voting Republican. Now they are disproportionately voting Democratic. Another way of saying that — based on the off-year elections in 2025 and the polling we have this year — is there will be more people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 and don’t vote in 2026. That’s opposed to people who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and will stay home in 2026.
What patterns tend to emerge historically in midterm elections, and do you predict those patterns will hold this year?
MS: Since the time of World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of about 26 seats in the House and four seats in the Senate. But now regional polarization and gerrymandering have reduced the number of competitive House races, so it’s unlikely that Democrats will reach that average of 26 seats. But they only need to gain four to take the majority of the House. In the Senate, curiously, they need the same net gain of four seats to reach a majority. Current polling and prediction markets indicate that Democrats are likely to get there for both the House and Senate — though it’s somewhat less likely with the Senate. The fact that Republican PACs and committees are redirecting money toward states and districts they would normally win handily suggests that they fear a blue wave.
JL: It’s not just about whether there is a “blue wave” in Congress, which many observers are predicting. The margin of that seat gain and the margins of victory within districts also helps measure the depth of pro-Democratic Party support, or anti-Republican sentiment, which I believe will inform candidates from both parties who are thinking of running in the 2028 presidential cycle.
What issues currently appear to be most important to voters?
JL: Affordability, affordability, affordability. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrats were unpopular in 2024 because inflation had not declined enough according to voters. Two years later, inflation is now growing at a higher rate than it was when Trump took office. A host of other policies, such as oil prices resulting from the U.S. attack on Iran and Trump’s tariffs, have hit the pocketbooks of every American, including those in rural areas who supported Trump and Republicans in 2024.
It’s not so much that the Democrats have provided an alternative set of policies that voters find popular as it is that Trump and the Republicans are the focal point and it’s a brand whose stock has been declining of late.
Moreover, candidates like Jon Ossoff — who is running for Senate reelection in Georgia and is a 2028 presidential candidate contender — have gained popularity by tying the affordability crisis to Trump and those in his orbit. While everyday Americans have seen wages flatten and costs rise, Trump, his family and his allies have grown enormously wealthy at the same time.
MS: One good source of data is the Gallup organization, which regularly asks Americans, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” As of a week ago, the answers in order were the government/poor leadership (30%), high cost of living/inflation (13%), economy in general (11%), immigration (10%) and war in the Middle East (7%). The first three of those and the fifth clearly favor Democrats, with the fourth — immigration — hard to discern without more information. You don’t want to be the party in power when the government is perceived to be performing poorly and high prices are making even the essentials unaffordable for many people.
There have been worries about election security as President Donald Trump has expressed his desire to exert more control. How serious are these potential threats?
MS: He lost in the courts on his biggest chance to exert more control, through restricting voting by mail. Some version of that proposal could come back, because the Supreme Court did not foreclose it entirely, but not in 2026. Anyone who lived through Jan. 6, however, would be foolish to say, “It can’t happen here.”
There has been speculation about President Trump sending federal law enforcement agents to polling places, or asserting widespread fraud and confiscating ballots or polling equipment after the election is held. Such an outcome becomes more likely if the election overall, or in certain important places, is very close. However, I would not rule it out even for a wave election. He could also take other, harder-to-predict actions to affect the results.
JL: I think explicit threats, and Trump has historically and in this cycle made them, should always be taken seriously. Whether or not they are successful is another matter. Trump and some Republican allies have attempted measures to restrict voting, suppress turnout, control mail-in ballots, and more, but have mostly been stopped so far by the courts, and the strategies don’t seem to be working. It mostly seems half-baked, but so did the “fake elector” scheme in 2020 that led to the Jan. 6 riot, so protecting electoral integrity always requires eternal vigilance.
No doubt should Trump and the Republicans receive a “shellacking” — as President Barack Obama famously admitted when the Democrats suffered heavy losses in Congress in 2010 — he will call the result “rigged” and likely spread misinformation about the election’s integrity. He appears ready to contest results, as in the Alaska senate race. He has learned this is a costless way to avoid admitting defeat and it remains popular among his MAGA base. That said, evidence of any vote tampering should be investigated and, if it comes to it, adjudicated by the relevant judicial authority.
For more information, contact Lauren Kirschman at lkirsc@uw.edu.