Democrats see a wave building. They’ve identified paths to House and Senate majorities that seemed laughable not even a year ago courtesy of an unpopular president, a cost-of-living crisis and a prolonged conflict in Iran.
They also see a potential catastrophic problem in their campaign accounts.
Interviews with two dozen top Democratic and Republican campaign strategists, party officials and donor advisers described an electoral map, eight weeks before Election Day, as teetering between a district-by-district, state-by-state knife fight and a Democratic landslide. But even the most optimistic Democrats said it’s not clear they’ll have the cash to pull it off.
“The money has been slower than anyone anticipated. It’s not at all slow on the candidates’ side, which is maybe the bright spot, but the outside money is not what people expected,” said Bradley Beychok, co-founder of American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC that’s pledged to spend $50 million this cycle. “The money is a five-alarm fire, and the fire starts in September, when the spending gets going, and people are worried.”
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Mike Smith, who leads the flagship Democratic House super PAC, said, “We all wish that more people were stepping up and doing larger checks. And would that have a material effect on the battlefield? Yes.”
A major Democratic outside group made its own private plea to more than 300 donors and operatives last month. “The next four weeks will determine if we can take advantage of these opportunities, but it requires us to double down on resources now,” according to a copy of the memo, obtained by The Washington Sun.
Those concerns — Republicans swamping Democrats with cash and blunting their momentum this fall — only intensified last week, with the start of spending from Elon Musk and MAGA Inc., where President Donald Trump has $400 million stashed. And even though Democratic candidates have held their own in fundraising against GOP counterparts, Republicans hold a significant combined advantage across outside groups and party committees.
“You can be a shitty candidate and have a shitty campaign and bad environment, and still win by one instead of nine,” said Corry Bliss, a national GOP consultant who led the party’s premier super PAC in 2018. “Of course people are pissed off, but you only have to win by one in these red states,” and red-leaning districts, “so there’s some wiggle room,” he added.
For all the Democratic enthusiasm about expanding their map of targeted races, Republicans started the cycle by shaving down the size of an already shrunken map of competitive seats. The GOP’s historic mid-decade redistricting delivered them a cushion by potentially extracting additional seats from North Carolina, Florida and Texas. The Missouri Supreme Court did grant House Democrats a reprieve last week, denying a Republican effort to eliminate another Democratic incumbent there, though the state has appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.
Both parties agree on the result: The House battlefield is smaller, which will likely yield small margins even if there is a wave, while the Senate map is far larger than either expected last year.
“The president’s job approval is around 38 right now, and that doesn’t bode well for Republicans’ fortunes in the House or the Senate,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster. “In this environment, anything can happen.”
The Democratic case
More than a dozen Democratic strategists and operatives, many of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly, said this year’s political environment is stronger for their party than it was in 2018.
That belief alone is staggering: The 2018 election was Trump’s first midterm, and his party lost 41 House seats. It’s likely impossible for Democrats to flip that many districts this year given the map, but the party operatives say the backlash to the president is deeper and less ambivalent now than it was then.
Multiple strategists told The Sun that the party’s internal polling in recent months was the best they had ever seen.
“We continue to just get very, very bullish polling results, even out of districts the president won by 12, 13, 14 points,” said one senior Democratic operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s really striking.”
In Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, for instance, an internal HMP poll obtained by The Sun found that Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures was tied with Republican nominee Rhett Marques, 47% to 47%, despite the fact that Trump won the district by 14 points in 2024.
Another HMP survey obtained by The Sun found the Democratic nominee in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District, Pia Dandiya, leading Republican opponent Casey Askar 46% to 44%. Trump won the district by over 10 points.
Both polls were conducted during the last week of August among likely voters
The surveys are just two of the many internal polls HMP has released in recent months that Republicans dismiss as skewed nonsense but Democrats insist is a genuine reflection of their data.
Party officials say they’re especially heartened by a trend in their internal polling that shows better results in head-to-head matchups with named candidates than in generic ballot tests. They hope that’s proof that most of their candidates can transcend the party’s otherwise dismal image and help it reach further into GOP turf than the national generic ballot suggests is possible.
“We have a bunch of Trump plus 9 to 13 seats. Which of those are gonna come online?” said Smith, HMP’s president. “I think that’s a big unknown at this point, but we believe there will be many that do.”
The reason the environment is stronger for Democrats now than in 2018 is simple, Democrats say: Trump is less popular overall now than he was then, and voters are less impressed with his management of the economy.
Nationally, Trump’s approval stands at about 38% among adults, according to the Silver Bulletin; exit polls from the 2018 election found his approval rating was at 45% among those who voted.
HMP’s internal polls have found that in the 50 most competitive House districts — where on average Trump won by 5 to 6 points in 2024 —Trump’s approval numbers are underwater on average by 11 points. His statewide numbers are no better: One Democratic strategist familiar with the party’s internal data said the president’s approval is also underwater across Iowa, which has three competitive House races. Trump won the state by 13 points two years ago; he’s now down double digits, the strategist said.
“In 2018, voters didn’t like Trump’s tweets but they still liked him on the economy,” said Jesse Ferguson, a longtime Democratic strategist. “In 2026, they don’t like the tweets or the economy. They’re not sold on the Dem brand either — but we spent two years making the case against Republicans and it stuck.”
In interviews, top Democratic strategists characterized the map as on the verge of shifting from one contested primarily in purple states and districts to one fought mostly on very red terrain, including Senate races in Kansas and South Carolina.
House operatives touted positive polling in places like Texas 35th Congressional District, a district redrawn last year to be a safe Republican hold, and expressed deep confidence that Democratic nominee Jamie Ager would win North Carolina’s conservative-leaning 11th Congressional District, even after disgraced Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards was forced from the race. They outlined an extensive wish list of the districts they believed could emerge in the race’s final weeks, including Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, Ohio’s 10th and 15th Districts, Kentucky’s 6th District and South Carolina’s 1st District.
Except for North Carolina’s 11th District, each of those races is currently rated as likely or solidly Republican by the Cook Political Report.
But even as they say that they’ve laid the groundwork to push deep into Republican territory, party strategists say they aren’t about to start shifting party resources en masse outside their existing core battlefield.
The environment could shift belatedly in Trump’s favor, or a White House that aggressively masterminded a series of redistricting processes could deploy another roadblock for Democrats in the final weeks. And even after extensive efforts to correct their polling after misses in 2016 and 2020, Democrats still have some lingering doubts about their accuracy. The landscape is competitive enough that even a minor misjudgment about the environment could be costly, strategist say
“Some of this stuff comes back and it’s like, what am I to make of a survey showing a lead in a district that Donald Trump won by 15?” said the senior Democratic operative. “Those are real, but doesn’t it make you want to check your math twice?”
And even if their polling is correct at the moment, they worry that Republican-leaning voters will eventually return home to the GOP by Election Day, especially after an expected ad blitz depicting Democratic candidates as radical socialists.
“I think a lot of the paid media kicks off now, and that’s where you see vote movement, right?” said Will Van Nuys, the deputy executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “You see debates and a lot of more oppo and earned media hits. You see a lot more in terms of where money is going, right, and a lot of folks starting to say, ‘OK, are Republicans actually going to keep the House, or are they not?’”
Money remains the biggest stumbling block.
“Us winning a lot of races means winning a lot of races by very small margins,” Smith said. “If you’re putting in two, three, four, five million in outside money into one of those places, that can have the impact to sway an election, for sure.”
The Republican case
Republican strategists know they’ve got the wind in their face. But their path to a better-than-expected November improved over the last year, after banking easy pickups through mid-decade redistricting. To pull it off, more has to break their way: Swamping the other side in campaign spending through the fall; disqualifying Democratic candidates as too crazy; and amping base turnout across the country.
“I can easily paint a picture where this is a state-by-state, district-by-district fight. Or, I can see a picture where Republicans are about to get smoked,” said a national Republican consultant. “The difference between those two pictures is Republican turnout.”
Trump’s promise to return to the campaign trail may be a welcome strategy for some GOP members, particularly those in redder districts. Though others, including some swing seat incumbents, are putting some distance between themselves and the president, including by opting out of appearing at Trump’s midterms convention in Dallas this week.
“We do have an enthusiasm problem, and he’s the only one who can get people to vote, so we need him out there,” said a top Republican strategist who works on congressional races. “We have the money to then go talk to the middle.”
Even some Democrats privately acknowledge that a handful of their candidates will make their jobs harder.
Take Michigan’s 7th District, where a pair of moderate Democratic candidates split the primary vote and set up a win for William Lawrence, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement. Some Democrats fear Lawrence won’t be able to flip this evenly divided seat. The same is true in Colorado’s 8th District, where state Rep. Manny Rutinel dispatched a more moderate state legislator in his primary. There, too, Democrats privately complain about Rutinel’s progressive track record — he’s “got a lot of baggage,” said a Colorado Democratic strategist.
New Hampshire’s Senate race is also raising concerns for Democratic operatives, two of whom pointed to recent public polling that shows Rep. Chris Pappas trailing Republican John Sununu. The Michigan Senate race is also causing some heartburn for Democrats, as Abdul El-Sayed has stumbled into controversies.
Republicans say they’ve been preparing since the election cycle began to defy history and hold the House and Senate this year, pouring resources into an all-of-party effort to boost turnout that traditionally sags in midterm elections. Some of them suggested the public boasts from Democrats about expanding the map this fall are more a strategic effort to put Republicans on the defensive, rather than a sincere expression of where they think the election stands.
“There’s a lot more money, in a smaller playing field. That’s why they’re trying to draw us in,” said one senior GOP strategist, who thought Democrats would ultimately spend more defending an incumbent like Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York than in some of the reach districts they say they’re targeting.
In a statement, National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman Mike Marinella reiterated the party’s perceived advantages: “a more favorable map with historic fundraising, stronger candidates, and a commonsense agenda.” Democrats, he said, are meanwhile “saddled with a deeply unpopular agenda and radical socialist nominees hijacking the must-win districts they need to take the majority.”
Nonetheless, Republicans know they’re staring down a tough year. They see that gas is averaging $4.15 a gallon, while diesel climbs even higher. The generic ballot hovers just below a 6-point advantage for Democrats, just a point or two south of what one GOP pollster said would “not be survivable” for his party.
“If you go up to Democrats plus seven, eight, then you can add dozens more seats to the battlefield,” the person added. “I’m glad today isn’t Election Day.”
The battleground map — what is seen as competitive versus what is out of reach — is already showing signs of reshaping. Last week, CLF cut its first offensive target, canceling spending on behalf of state Sen. Peter Oberacker, who is challenging Rep. Josh Riley (D-New York).
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