Are Democrats blowing it? A “blue wave” is no sure thing

Despite stubbornly bad approval ratings, lackluster fundraising and some potentially disastrous redistricting on the horizon, election prognosticators say not to count the Democrats out.

The bad headlines for Democrats have been piling up. The Democratic Party’s approval rating has fallen to a 30-year low of 34%, according to a recent Gallup poll; the Democratic National Committee is currently trailing its Republican counterpart in fundraising by tens of millions of dollars; and the Texas legislature just unveiled a new district map that could deliver Republicans as many as five new House seats in 2026.

In terms of polling, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader in the Senate, addressed the party’s poor polling numbers at a press conference in late July.

“As people see the contrast between what the Republicans are going to do and what we want to do, they are going to believe Democrats are more on their side. In one of the very polls you cited where they said Democrats were lower, they still asked ‘Do you prefer Democrats or Republicans?’ Democrats, even now, were up three. We’re going to be up more,” Schumer said.

While the poll did find that Americans do prefer the Democratic Party, 46% to 43 %, Democrats are trailing behind where they were at this point in Trump’s first term. In 2017, Democrats maintained a five-point advantage, with 47% percent identifying with the party compared to 42% who identified with the Republican Party.

Gallup is not the only pollster that has Democrats on track for a less-than-stellar midterm performance, either. In the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Democrats lead on the congressional generic ballot, which asks respondents if they prefer Democrats or Republicans in general, by 9% at the beginning of August in 2017. Today, Democrats lead by just 3%in the generic ballot.

In terms of fundraising, Democrats have been getting crushed by Republicans, at least on the national level. The RNC ended June with around $81 million compared to the DNC’s $15 million. And top Democrats have indicated that they’re not sure if and when fundraising is going to pick up.

“I absolutely think that’s happening,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told The Bulwark podcast when asked, “Are people being intimidated into not participating, into not donating at this point?”

“I’m not necessarily saying that there are active threats of retribution against specific Democratic donors. I think they are watching the way that Trump targets his political enemies, and they would rather just, for this cycle, stand down and stay out of the fray,” Murphy said. “It’s the sort of threat of retribution that’s causing some, not all, Democratic donors to step back.”

The 2026 Senate map looks to Democrats, though there may be a pickup opportunity in North Carolina and potentially Texas, depending on the outcome of the GOP primary there. The focus for Democrats has been on winning back the House. However, on top of everything else, there are signs that Democrats could be running in the midterms on less favorable maps than they had in 2024.

Texas Republicans, at the behest of President Donald Trump, are pushing through new House maps that would add five new districts that Trump won in 2024 by at least 10 points.

In reaction, politicians in nine other states have indicated that they could also pursue redistricting ahead of the midterms, though it’s worth noting that California and New York, the two states that would give Democrats the biggest opportunity to pick up seats through redistricting, both have independent redistricting processes. Illinois — where Texas Democrats have fled in order to delay the redistricting process — is potentially the third-best opportunity for Democrats, the state already has highly favorable maps for Democrats.

With all of these headwinds aligning against Democrats, Republican leaders have indicated that they’re feeling “bullish” about their odds of retaining control of the House, despite having just passed a deeply unpopular megabill and being tied to an increasingly unpopular administration.

“I’m very bullish on election night ‘26. I’m absolutely convinced we’re going to grow the House majority. Lot of reasons for that, it’s not groundless optimism. It’s going to be the result of a lot of hard work,” Speaker Mike Johnson told CBS’s “Face the Nation” last month.

Election watchers, however, say Democrats still stand a solid — if not certain — chance of taking back at least one chamber of Congress.

Logan Phillips, who maintains the election forecasting site Race for the White House, told Salon that, while he’s still developing his model for 2026, “the larger picture of history suggests that they’re likely to do very well in the midterms, or at least decently well.”

“The reason I say that is every single midterm election since 1978, with the exception of 2002, right after 9/11, the party out of power in the White House has won the national popular vote in midterms,” Phillips said. “I think two things can be true: These low polling numbers for Democrats are a big concern, especially for the long-term trajectory of the party.”

According to Phillips, the shift between the 2024 election and the special elections that have taken place since then would indicate that Democrats would win the popular vote by 14 points. He doesn’t expect that big of a swing come 2026, however, instead predicting a popular vote victory closer to 4.5% for Democrats, based on historical data.

Part of the reason for this is that Democrats now maintain a coalition of higher propensity voters, at least compared to the coalition that got Trump elected. Phillips said that in the context of the 2026 midterms, this gives Democrats a “higher baseline,” though gerrymandering could “give Republicans a credible path to holding on.”

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Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, told Salon that there are other signs that the Democratic Party might actually be more organized than it was in 2017, even if it’s not as comparatively popular.

“Back in 2017, the Democrats let Republican justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court go completely unopposed, because they were so demoralized that they had lost with Wisconsin in ‘16,” Coleman said. “Now that would never happen. And in 2017 it wasn’t really, until the Virginia governor’s election that … Democrats kind of got their mojo back.”

At the same time, Coleman cautioned, Democrats have fewer clear pickup opportunities going into 2026 than they had going into 2018. Combined, there were 25 House seats that both voted in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a Republican representative. Today, there are just three Republican representatives in districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024 (there are also 13 Democrats in districts Trump won).

At the same time, Coleman said, Democrats are already in the position of defending a lot of the gains they’ve made in the House over the past eight years, which means both that they need to flip fewer seats to win a majority and that there are fewer easy seats for them to flip.

Of course, there is always the opportunity for the political ground to shift between now and when voters go to the polls in 2026, especially considering Trump’s ability to drive both Republican and Democratic voters to the polls.

“When I first started here back in 2019, one of our first guests was Joe Donnelly, the senator from Indiana, and he had just lost that last year in ‘18,” Coleman said. “He said his goal was ‘If I could get 1 million votes, I’d be doing pretty well.’ Well, he did, but his opponent — because he was backed by Trump and Trump was involved in that race — got more.”

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