Elections are scheduled to be held, in large part, on November 3, 2026, in the United States. In these midterm elections, scheduled to occur during Republican president Donald Trump's second term, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested to determine the 120th United States Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial U.S. gubernatorial elections, attorney general elections, and numerous state and local elections, will also be contested.
Prior to the elections, Trump called on Republican-led states to enact rare mid-decade redistricting to boost the party's chances of holding power ahead of historical losses for the incumbent party during midterm elections. The moves prompted reciprocal redistricting from Democratic-led states through measures such as California's Election Rigging Response Act. In April 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which enabled the creation of majority-minority districts were unconstitutional. The Trump administration has made repeated false claims of voter fraud.
Leading issues in the election include economic policy, particularly inflation, healthcare, and tariffs; corruption; foreign policy, including relations with American allies, the ongoing Iran war, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, along with proposed expansionism. Widespread opposition to rapid progress in artificial intelligence, including the construction of data centers emerged as an "unexpected issue" later in the election.
Background
In the 2024 United States presidential election, Republican nominee Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Key issues shaping the campaign included public concern for the post-pandemic recovery and rising inflation.
The 2026 elections will be the first federal elections since the 2016 presidential contest where ABC News, CNN, CBS News, NBC News, the Associated Press and Fox News will use one election survey, The Voter Poll by SSRS (formerly the National Election Pool), to measure voters' opinions and preferences. From 2018 to 2024, the former four news networks continued to use data from the National Election Pool while the Associated Press and Fox News relied on AP VoteCast.
The Republican Party performed worse than expected in the November 2025 general elections. Democratic candidates Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey won their gubernatorial races over their Republican opponents by larger than expected margins. Democrats performed strongly in the concurrent state legislative elections, winning a supermajority in the New Jersey General Assembly and expanding their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. In New York City, Democrat Zohran Mamdani, a self-identified democratic socialist, was elected mayor in a three-way race against Republican Curtis Sliwa and independent former governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as a moderate relative to Mamdani. The main theme of the elections was the United States affordability crisis.
2026 election developments and analysis Voters' views of Trump's presidency will likely be a factor in the election. During the 2025 off year elections, exit polls found that many voted in opposition to Trump or said that he was not a factor. Surveys released in late 2025 and early 2026 found that many viewed Trump's handling of the economy and immigration, two issues that propelled him to victory in the 2024 election, negatively. During elections held in his first term, Trump was on the minds of many who voted. In September 2026, Trump featured in a two-day midterm convention in Dallas to rally support and raise funds—historically, this type of event is reserved for presidential election years. Many Republicans on the ballot attended, but many also chose to forego the event, which RNC Chairman Joe Gruters dubbed a "Trump-a-Palooza."
The outbreak of the 2026 Iran war on February 28 introduced a further complicating factor, with rising gasoline prices and other economic challenges emerging as central electoral concerns. Analysts argued that gasoline prices represented the most direct channel through which the costs of the Iran war were transmitted to American voters, and that domestic electoral pressure from fuel costs was a primary political driver behind the Trump administration's push toward a ceasefire ahead of the November midterms. In response to the general unpopularity and economic concerns of the Iran war, several Republican candidates have distanced themselves from Trump and his approach to the war and have called for operations in Iran to end. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer compared the political environment in 2026 to the one in 2006, when dissatisfaction with George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq war led to many Democratic victories in the elections that year.
The nearly seven-month-old war in Iran became a political liability for some vulnerable Republican candidates ahead of the November midterms. In September 2026, two Republicans in tight Senate races — Mike Rogers of Michigan and Ashley Hinson of Iowa — called for a swift end to the conflict, distancing themselves from President Trump. Hinson, who had voted six times against measures to curb Trump's war powers, said Iowans "shouldn't have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran." Rogers, who had previously backed Trump's strikes, released a campaign ad urging that the war "end and end quickly." The shift came as Trump's approval rating fell to 32%, a career low, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, with Americans souring on both his handling of the economy and the war. Diesel prices reached record highs, a particular concern in Iowa, where agriculture plays an outsized role in the state's economy. Other Republicans also moved to distance themselves: Iowa Representatives Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks reversed their stances and voted to limit Trump's war powers, while Representative Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida warned that Trump's immigration crackdown had gone too far. Democrats characterized the moves as election-year repositioning.
The administration's immigration policies, including deportations by ICE due to strengthened funding via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, were also scrutinized. Polling found that Hispanics, which were considered a key reason for Trump's victory in the 2024 election, overwhelmingly disapproved of Trump and had largely swung back towards Democrats due to economic concerns and dissatisfaction of Trump's handling of immigration and deportation.
A month before the election, polling consistently found that Democratic candidates were leading key races for state governorships and those that would determine control of the Senate, with large swings towards Democratic candidates by independent voters. The New York Times highlighted how Kansas, a state that had not elected a Democratic Senator since the Second World War, had become a competitive battleground amid an unexpected surge of Democratic support deep in Republican territory. Democratic support came amidst multiple polls finding record-low approval ratings for Trump which some analysts considered was negatively impacting down-ballot races. Trump repeatedly told voters to pretend he was on the ballot to increase Republican enthusiasm which Democrats and some analysts considered a mistake owing to his low approval ratings.
Allegations of attempted election subversion
In January 2026, The Washington Post reported that the second Trump administration had undertaken several tactics, including mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts for partisan gain, prosecution of political opponents, and a push to change voting methods and rules, that were meant to undermine confidence in the midterm elections.
Trump floated the idea of canceling the elections, citing an expected loss in the elections and a distrust in democratic systems. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later stated that Trump was "speaking facetiously", and was "simply joking".
In February, Trump stated that the elections should be nationalized to prevent voter fraud. A day later, Steve Bannon said the federal government was planning to send ICE to patrol polling stations in an attempt to prevent a Democratic victory, vowing to "never again allow an election to be stolen". That month, the House of Representatives passed the SAVE America Act, an amended version of the previously proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. The bill, if approved by the Senate and signed into law by Trump, would have required voters to provide proof of citizenship in order to obtain or renew their voter registration. Voting rights activists alleged that such provisions would disenfranchise married women, racial minorities, low-income groups, and people who legally changed their name, among others. The bill ultimately died in the Senate that June, with four Republicans joining Democrats to block its inclusion.
On February 27, The Washington Post reported that several right-wing activists are working with the Trump administration to draft an executive order which, if signed, would effectively instate a national emergency and give Trump extended powers over the elections. Trump denied the existence of the executive order.
The Justice Department also demanded voter registration data from states, suing 23 states and the District of Columbia that declined to provide unredacted voter rolls; all of the sued states were led by Democrats or had been won by Joe Biden in 2020. In January 2026, U.S. District Judge David Carter dismissed the department's lawsuit against California, which had sought personal information including partial Social Security numbers for roughly 23 million registered voters, ruling that the demands violated privacy laws and writing that federal centralization of the data would have a "chilling effect" on voter registration; a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit against Oregon later that month.
The department appealed the California ruling to the Ninth Circuit. In June 2026, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles publicly accused the state of blocking a voter roll audit and said they were conducting election fraud investigations while ballots from the state's June primary were still being counted.
In March, Stateline reported that legislation to "restrict immigration enforcement or the presence of federal forces" near polling places and other election sites has been offered or announced in California, Connecticut, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington. The same month, the Associated Press reported that several Democratic-led states including New Mexico and Virginia are taking steps to counter potential tactics to intimidate voters. In May, Ned Lamont, the governor of Connecticut, signed into law a bill that restricts immigration enforcement at locations including schools and places of worship. The legislation also prohibits law enforcement from wearing facial coverings or personal disguises.
In January 2026, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Fulton County, Georgia, election center, seizing approximately 600 boxes of ballots and other records from the 2020 presidential election, an action election law experts described as unprecedented federal intervention in locally administered elections. Federal investigations of the 2020 election subsequently expanded to several states: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence procured voting machines in Puerto Rico for examination in February, federal officials subpoenaed records of the partisan review of Maricopa County, Arizona's 2020 results in March, the Justice Department demanded ballots cast in Wayne County, Michigan, in April, and FBI agents questioned former poll workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in May.