On the last day before the 2026 midterm elections, President Donald Trump gave a speech before the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a site of considerable scandal in his second term. He joked it should be renamed after him and spent considerable time discussing Washington, D.C. construction projects and resurrecting conspiracy theories about monument vandals. When the president did turn to the elections, more than 23 minutes into an hour-long speech, he seemed to foreshadow major Republican losses in the House and Senate, describing it as “The most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime.”
“When you vote, remember a party that hates America cannot be allowed to rule over the people who built our country,” Trump said, referring to Democrats, whom he said want to “blow all of this up by electing communist jihadists.”
“If the people that voted for me and voted in the last election where we had such a great victory, if they go out and vote, just a good portion of them, we will win in a landslide,” Trump said midway in his speech. “Now that doesn’t happen because usually whoever the sitting president is, Republican or Democrat, uh, good or bad, good president, great president, bad, for some reason the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot.”
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The last day of polling indicates that Democrats have odds that are better than good to flip control of the House and Senate. The final results from the New York Times/Siena University polls report “The party is ahead in all seven states likeliest to decide control of the Senate: Michigan, Kansas, Texas, Maine, Ohio and, more narrowly, Alaska and Iowa.” The final predictions in the Cook Political Report included five additional shifts for Democrats in North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia, projecting “that Democrats will win 15 to 25 seats, putting them at a 230- to 240-seat majority.” If a sweep happens in the toss up races, it’ll give Democrats their strongest majority since 2009.
Meanwhile, early voting records have been smashed around the country, in places like South Carolina and Ohio. In Texas, more than 7.7 million voters did so early, surpassing the record turnout for a midterm election set in 2018. Across the nation, about 50 million ballots have already been cast so far, with the share of registered Democrats notably increased in several key state races. But according to the New York Times, around half the expected votes will come on Election Day itself, making it difficult at this point to determine how big a role early votes will play in the outcome.
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