Your Guide to the 2026 Midterms

0:00One senior Republican defined the 2026 midterms to me this way recently. They said, it's going to be anger, meaning anger at the president, the economic situation, the establishment, and the entrenched sort of political crowd, versus fear. Hey there, hope you had a nice Labor Day, a relaxing summer. But now that we're almost two weeks into September, we're looking toward November and the 2026 midterm elections. So starting today, we're going to be taking a closer look at the races, issues, and storylines that will matter leading up to election day. Every weekday, we're going to check in with CNN's team of political reporters, fanned out across the country, to take stock of what they're hearing and seeing from candidates and voters, and how that fits into the bigger picture as control of Congress hangs in the balance. To kick us off, I invited CNN political director and Washington bureau chief David Chalien to walk us through the races you should be paying attention to.

1:00He's also going to tell us how President Donald Trump will loom over the proceedings, whether Republicans want him to or not. From CNN, I'm David Rind, and this is one thing midterms. Stick with us. So David, I can't necessarily blame anyone for wanting to tune out electoral politics after the craziness of 2024. But now it's after Labor Day, we've got 56 days until the midterms. The countdown is well and truly on. So we need to lock in. I know you haven't been tuning anything out. So big picture. How are you looking at this landscape with less than two months to go? Well, I think any conversation about the midterms has to start with President Trump. Midterms are, as you know, David, historically a referendum on the incumbent president. I mean, I think there have only been two elections in modern American political history, 2002 in the immediate

2:00after-graph of the 9-11 attacks. And 1998, when Bill Clinton was facing an impeachment over Monica Lewinsky, and that wasn't popular with the American people, there's only two times an incumbent president actually sort of gains seats and made advances for their party in the midterms. Otherwise, it is just a truism that incumbent presidents and their party tend to lose seats in midterm elections. So people, they've fed up with what they've gotten from this president, and they usually vote against their party. That's usually how it shakes out. Yes. And history, of course, only serves as a guide until it isn't. But you and I are sitting here eight weeks out. And this president, Donald Trump, is sitting at historically low approval ratings. And here's the thing. In our polling, and you see this in polling everywhere, two-thirds of Americans say that his policies have made the economy worse. And that is the sort of mountain

3:04that Republicans have to climb up as they try to defend their majorities. Right. We always say economy is like the number one issue time and time again, are there other issues that voters are frustrated with when it comes to the Trump administration? There are, but nothing else comes close. Even something like the war in Iran, which is unpopular with voters, but it feeds directly into economic concerns, right? It gets to gas prices. Yes, prices. Exactly. And part of that, I would say, and you see this actually on both sides, is this anti-corruption, this battle against a rigged system. I mean, it's like you hear Steve Bannon on the right going after what he calls the Brola Garks and folks in tech that are co-zying up to the administration and getting Donald Trump on board to support data centers and the like. And you have folks on the left, like John Assoff, who is running for re-election in Georgia in the Senate race there, who has put sort of the rigged system and corruption that politicians

4:05catering to the donor class and not to the working class at the very heart of his message, which is proving successful thus far. So you have this moment where folks are frustrated with the administration, especially when it comes to the economy. History suggests that incumbent parties do poorly in the midterms. So this would seem to be a moment where Democrats are looking to season all that and kind of take back some power in Congress. So can you walk me through the math? How many seats do Democrats need in each chamber to flip things? Sure. So in the House, Democrats need three seats. And in the Senate, Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win the majority there, given the fact that if it were 50-50, Vice President Bans would still have the tie breaking both there and keep it in Republican control. Now, all things are not equal, right? The House battleground is an easier one for Democrats, given that there are real swing seats and the House races tend to sort of follow the national

5:11environment. The Senate races, which also can follow a national political environment at times can also sort of have their own identity in a statewide race. And the reality is is that in much of the territory that Democrats are seeking to convert to their side in the battle for the Senate, it's taking place in states that Donald Trump won by double digits. So where in the House, there may be a bunch of battleground districts that Republicans currently sit in, but that Donald Trump won very narrowly on the Senate side, you know, double digit Trump states. That's hard to flip. You're talking about places like Ohio and Iowa and Alaska and Texas that need to turn blue for the Democrats to have a shot at winning the majority. All right, coming up the races that could swing election day. Stick around. Let's have a good news for your ears, the podcast. I am your host, Michael E. and Black.

6:12What are we going to talk about? Let's get into it. We're talking about. We're back at war with Iran. And Trump has the AI sloped videos to prove it. Dandriskel quits. Right when we learned who he was. Trump's midterm plans involve several unpopular things himself and data centers. Have I got news for your ears? Check us out on Apple, Amazon Music, wherever you get your podcast, even better you can watch the podcast on Spotify. So what are a few races there in the Senate that you're going to have your eye on even in this environment where it's a tall task for Democrats? So we were just talking about what Democrats need to do to flip Republican states. But I would say the number one Senate race that I have my eye on is actually one that Democrats are trying to hold. It's currently a Democratic seat in the state of Michigan. And this is like the great political experiment of 2026. As you know, there was this unbelievably divisive and competitive Democratic primary. What we understand about these tariffs

7:15is that they are like all things Donald Trump does, amfisted chaotic and self-serving. Abdul Al-Sayed emerges the winner there wins it by one percentage point over Haley Stevens. And then you think about his time in the White House. He's more interested in the ballroom and the drapes than he is in the well-being of local communities. He is the sort of progressive. He doesn't call himself a Democratic socialist, but he certainly aligned with that Democratic Socialist wing of the party. And he has that energy on the left of the Democratic party. And that was sufficient enough to get him the nomination. Now the question becomes, can a progressive, a den socialist aligned progressive emerge victorious in a general election context in a battleground state? So Michigan's one I'm watching. And then I would say I am looking at Maine with the Susan Collins versus Troy Jackson. Remember Graham Platner and all that scandal and he had to get out of the race, the Democrats switched their county late. She has a proven track record, this long time

8:15incumbent of defying the national political environment. And whether or not Trump is so unpopular in a blue state like Maine to finally have Democrats kind of get Susan Collins in the way they have been seeking to do cycle after cycle. And they've proven unable to do is this the moment they can do that. That's a big question I watch. And then I would say I know this sounds absurd and I promised myself in my entire political career never to talk about Texas as potentially competitive. New warning signs for Republicans in the battle for the Senate majority. Like in Texas, where my new reporting details how Republicans are fretting as Democrats bombard the airwaves, spending roughly seven times more than the GOP in recent weeks. But that Texas Senate race, because of how unpopular and underfunded and scandal played Ken Pax in the attorney general is. Remember, Donald Trump got involved in that primary and he backed Pax and over cornon, which the entire Republican establishment wanted cornon. Right. That's not the guy we want.

9:16What are you doing? Exactly. Trump went the other way. And now this is a true toss up race in Texas. Now again, I'll be convinced when I actually see votes come in that Democrats can flip Texas. But I think this environment and this candidate mix between Tallerico and Paxen is probably as good a chance as Democrats are going to have to try and finally do that. So you mentioned at the top that you can't separate any of this from President Trump and how voters feel about him and the the administration. So how is he positioning himself in relation to all of these races? So excellent question. There are two things at play here. One, Donald Trump, and by the way, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, sort of foreshadowed this for everyone nearly a year ago. I think it was December. She was on the podcast and said, we are going to put Donald Trump on the ballot. Now that's an amazing thing given what we just discussed that like every White House,

10:16irrespective of a party has dealt with the reality that midterms are a referendum on the president and they tend to be a backlash against him. And yet there was Susie Wiles saying, no, no, no, we're going to put Donald Trump on the ballot. Well, that was a welcome development for Democrats because they want to be running against all the antipathy towards Trump. They want to be using that in their battle here. But for Trump, the point is he has a unique ability to bring voters out of the woodwork. Now that has been a proven ability when he is on the ballot running, like he did in the three times for president and the kind of turnout he got that didn't prove to be quite as successful obviously in his first midterm back in 2018 when Democrats won the House. And the problem that we have is they say that Trump does great when he's on the ballot. But when he's not on the ballot, his people don't come and they don't vote for senators, congressmen and other Republicans. But they believe there is no way to decouple Trump from this effort. And so they are urging all their members like run with him, embrace him, even if you're

11:20in a battleground issue because you need his voters to show up. So what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I'm on the ballot just come and vote it so important. So one thing he's doing is putting himself at the center. The other thing is the disqualification of the Democratic side. So the entire fall campaign, you are going to hear Donald Trump and all the Republicans run against the left word progressive march we've seen inside the Democratic party making them sort of scary communist socialist completely outside the mainstream and just paint the Democratic party with that big broad stroke. Is that going to work? It might work some places. It may not work everywhere. One senior Republican defined the 2026 midterms to me this way recently. They said it's going to be anger, meaning anger at the president, the economic situation, the establishment and the entrenched sort of political crowd versus fear. And it meant the fear that Republicans are

12:26going to sell to the public about Democrats being so far outside the mainstream and we'll see which is going to win at the ballot box there. And to your point about how Trump wants to make himself central to the conversation, Republicans are holding a midterm convention this week in Texas where Trump is expected to be prominently featured and there's already been some agita from Republicans about whether that is the right way to go at this point. Well David Chalien, thank you. Thank you. All right, that's it for this first edition of one thing. Midterms, please hit the follow button. If you haven't already, so you can stay up to date on all the political news. We're going to do this every week day right here in the five things feed. And of course, we'll have another update with all the other headlines from around the world later today. I'll talk to you next time. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. Last week, there was this important report that dropped that I think got a lot of attention. It's about football and there was

13:27this new study in the British Medical Journal, which estimates that of all the NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021, about 878 players, at least 25% of them had confirmed CTE. That is the disease that is caused by repetitive hits to the brain. So CNN's resident NFL veteran, Koi Wire, he called me, we called fellow CNN sports anchor Andy Sholes, and we were talking about it. I know as a former player, anytime I forget my keys, if I get a slight headache, it pops in my head. I'm thinking like, man, I hope this is just Andy, do you forget your keys? Rarely. Oh, dear, it's supposed to say yes all the time Koi, make me feel better. Listen to Chasing Life streaming now wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper. On my podcast, all there is we explore grief and loss in all its complexities. My guess on the podcast is NASCAR Champion and Hall of Famer Kurt Busch. He's grieving the

14:30recent death of his younger brother, NASCAR Champion Kyle Busch. I'm trying to grieve in ways to help people. I want your mom, my dad, and I try to do it where I'm not biting off more than I can chew, and then back off a bit, and trying to help everyone get through this and share stories. It's not going to get any easier, but time will help heal. I have a nice therapist that I worked with towards the twilight of my career. Has therapy helped? It has. I embraced it a few years back, whereas the younger teenager, 20-year-old, 30-year-old, nah. Talking grief, building community, that's what the podcast is all about. This is all there is. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.