In midterm elections, pundits throw around keywords to describe the scope of a party’s victory: trickle, wave, tsunami.

Blue Trickle, Wave, or Tsunami?

These words don’t have any clear definitions, and people may disagree with my judgment, but here’s my understanding. A trickle is a modest, but often underwhelming victory. Think about the 2022 midterms, when Republicans narrowly won the House and failed to retake the Senate despite higher expectations (Generic Ballot of R+2.5). A wave year needs at least a solid victory in the House and a decent Senate performance. 2018 is the most recent example of a strong wave year, when Democrats won 235 House seats with a generic ballot of D+8.6. They lost two Senate seats, but mostly because a difficult map had them defending seats ruby-red in South Dakota and Missouri. To win these kinds of impossible seats, both in the House and Senate, you’d need a tsunami. For that, I would argue, you’d need to win both chambers and at least 235-240 House seats.

Even in the face of Republican Gerrymandering, Democrats are very close to that target.

E-mail readers can open this post in the web for better visuals.

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The chart above represents the Election for the House of Representatives. Each dot represents a district, and the x-axis shows a neutral national environment. Meaning, if 2026’s congressional vote were to be a tie, Democrats would win all seats to the right of 0, and Republicans would win all seats to the left of zero. In that scenario, Republicans would win the House, because they gerrymandered more states than Democrats.

You can easily spot the effect of Gerrymandering in the chart. Gerrymandering from both sides removed competitive districts and increased the number of districts with a partisan lean of 15-25 points, creating a gerrymandering valley around the zero mark. But not only districts with competitive partisan leanings move to that “mountain” area on the chart. Districts that were considered extremely safe (partisan lean of +60 for either party) move there as well, as they take in and dilute votes of the opposing party.

2026 won’t be a neutral environment. The generic ballot is currently forecasted at D+9.6 points, flipping many seats to the Democrats. Today’s forecast has them winning 239 seats. That’s tsunami territory. During the summer, their generic ballot lead only pointed to modest gains, largely because each two-point step netted only a few seats (dots on our chart). But as they approach double digits, the Republican gerrymandering mountain comes into view.

To show this, I ran different generic ballot results through my model. I chose a range from D+6 to D+12, which roughly covers the standard margin of error for single points.

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Going from D+6 to D+7 and from D+7 to D+8 only netted Democrats three additional seats each time. However, going from D+10 to D+11 would net Democrats a total of seven seats.1

In that scenario, Democrats would sweep Colorado and pick up seats like Florida’s 27th, causing a Republican gerrymander to backfire. If you are interested in a district-level analysis, Johnny from PlusMinus4 published a great district-level analysis last night about where the Democratic Tsunami could hit Republicans.

A double-digit result would not only mean a tsunami election in the House and likely a comfortable win in the Senate, but it would also mean a historic loss for President Donald Trump.

Democrats Might Make History in Nov. 3rd

As Nate Silver pointed out, wave elections for the out-of-power party are the rule in midterm elections. Tsunami elections, however, are very rare.

With the current forecast of D+9.6, Democrats would set the record for the highest congressional ballot victory in a midterm in the 21st century, outdoing their record from 2018.

If the NYT poll of D+11 turns out to be right on the money, it would be the best result of the 21st century, period. Even landing ahead of Democrats’ 2008 landslide, when Barack Obama was elected President and Democrats won 257 seats in the House, together with a Supermajority in the Senate.2

It would be the largest congressional ballot victory since 1982, when Democrats won by 11.8 points.

Do you think Democrats can reach double digits?

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Incumbency effects can explain some of these differences. Republican Brian Fitzpatrick is still favored to narrowly win PA’s 1st district, even though it voted for Harris by 0.3 points in 2024. But the biggest factor driving these uneven shifts in all 435 districts is undoubtedly race1.

Hispanic voters became the story of the 2026 election months ago. They swung heavily towards Trump in 2024, but persistent inflation and ICE overreach have led to a historic reversal. Democrats might even match their 2020 performance with Hispanics across most of the US, though polls indicate they still lag behind their 2018 showing.

The reversal is why districts with large Hispanic populations are projected to swing harder left than other districts. According to The Argument’s numbers, Hispanics will shift at a rate of 1.6x the generic ballot.

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Hispanic Voters Move Forecast in Democrats’ Favor

For this analysis, I compared two versions of my House forecast model. One is the fundamental baseline, which includes the district’s partisan lean, incumbency effects, and the generic ballot. The second version includes the next layer: demographics. Using Household Income and race, the model calculates how much the generic ballot will shift in each district, based on the Argument’s extensive data for each subgroup.

Data bite: Republicans are pulling money out of IA-1st and NJ-7th, signaling a lack of confidence that they can defend the two seats.

The individual findings are pretty clear, but the income and race layers often even themselves out: Heavily black districts shift less to the left because they are already voting overwhelmingly Democratic, but poor districts will shift to the Democrats at a higher rate. Southern majority-black districts with low income therefore barely shift at all. An example: If we apply data for race subgroups on Alabama’s 2nd congressional district, it shifts 2.2 points to the right, but after accounting for income, the shift gets diluted to 0.3 points.

What about Hispanic voters? When controlling for other racial demographics and household income, a district’s Hispanic share is the single largest demographic driver in the shift of the forecast layer, accounting for almost 40% of the model’s total explanatory power, far ahead of any other subgroup.

When analyzed in isolation, we get a similar result. The shift between the two fundamental baselines (pre-demographic layer → post-demographic layer) in a district is closely related to the district’s Hispanic voting-age population (r=0.83). Almost 70% of the variation in the model shift is explained by a district’s Hispanic share when the variable is analyzed in isolation. In most districts, the Hispanic shift drowns out shifts by other race and income groups. Of course, including demographic shifts is an imperfect approach to fine-tuning a forecast model. Hispanic voters are a diverse group and vote vastly differently depending on their country of origin. While I believe all Hispanics will shift left, there might be a significant gap as to the extent of said shift.

No other subgroup, race, or income is as significant in its influence as Hispanic voters, but it’s worth looking at the differences. Democrats underperform the national average shift in white and wealthy districts. They do better in low-income districts. They underperform their national shift in black districts as well, but those are mostly Safe Democratic districts anyway, and turnout will play a crucial role in key races in the Deep South.

Explore the Shift in All 435 Districts

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For that reason, I compiled a list of five alternative indicators for the 2026 midterms, along with ratings of which party each indicator favors and how accurate it is.

1. Primary Turnout

Indicator Lean: Strongly Favors Democrats
Indicator Strength: Moderate Accuracy

Millions of voters already went to the polls this year to cast ballots in the Democratic or Republican midterm primaries. With the November election still months away, analysts and political commentators took a closer look at these primaries for any possible indication of how the 2026 midterms would go.

The idea is easy. One compares the number of votes cast in the Democratic primary with the total voter turnout in the Republican Primary. Record Democratic showings further fueled this practice. In Texas, Democrats outvoted Republicans for the first time in a non-presidential in decades. Across the South, primary turnout surged among African American Democrats, who were likely enraged by the Supreme Court’s decision to dismantle large parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

While primary turnout tells us a lot about base excitement, it doesn’t have to be indicative of future performance. Most party primaries across the US are closed to either registered Democrats or Republicans, meaning Independents – who make up the largest & growing share of the electorate – are being left out. Primary turnout doesn’t help us predict crossover appeal.

Still, primary turnout rates can be an indicator for the general election. An analysis of nationwide primary turnout and election results in past midterms shows a damning picture for the GOP, predicting a D+10 to D+12 year. The graph below only includes a few data points, but should the 2026 results fall within this range, primary turnout might become a popular indicator.

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2. Early Voting

Indicator Lean: Favors Democrats
Indicator Strength: Moderate Accuracy

Early voting is one of my personal favorite indicators. Not necessarily because of its accuracy (which is debatable), but because it’s fun and you are looking at real data from people who already cast a ballot in the election you are trying to analyze.

How indicative early voting data can be of the November election results depends on two things. First, the state. Each state’s electorate votes differently. In states like Nebraska, about 60% of voters cast their ballots on Election Day. In Georgia or Florida, a clear majority votes early, either by mail or in-person, creating an opportunity for a decent analysis. The information about who voted differs from state to state. In Florida and Georgia, we know how many registered voters of each party cast ballots, but in Virginia, we have no data about the party registration of voters.

This brings me to the second factor: The model you use. Dave Trotter from Voting Trend uses a model that centers around geography. Where are the votes coming from, and how does that place usually vote? His ranges represent a nowcast, not a forecast, but comparing them to his nowcasts of past elections (2024, 2025) can help one understand which base is turning out in greater numbers.

VoteHub’s early vote models analyze party registration and detailed voter file data to calculate what they call a turnout boost (difference between 2026 electorate and the 2024 recall vote). Another helpful insight they provide is an analysis of voting behavior of low- and high-propensity voters. In 2024 early voting, Democrats blew through their high-propensity voters (voters who voted in all past 3 elections), masking a weakness with low-turnout voters in the toplines.

What about 2026? Virginia offers the most expensive data. Almost 500,000 people have already voted in the state. According to StateNavigate’s model, the early vote electorate is shaping up to be about 4 points bluer than 2025, when Democrats won in a landslide.

3. Gallup’s Party Identification

Indicator Lean: Strongly Favors Democrats
Indicator Strength: High Accuracy

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In 2024, only three Senate candidates outran their state’s partisan baseline by more than 14%. Two were electoral juggernauts: Larry Hogan, a popular Republican governor out of Maryland, and Jon Tester, Montana’s longtime Democratic Senator. The third was Dan Osborn, a labor union leader with no electoral experience. Running as an independent, Osborn came within 7% of flipping Nebraska, a state Republicans carried by more than 20 points at the presidential level and in the state’s other Senate race.

Two years later, the national environment has shifted sharply away from the GOP, and Osborn is running for Nebraska Senate again. He only needs to repeat his 2024 overperformance to win this time, which would make him the state’s first independent Senator in nearly a century. But history doesn’t always repeat, and Osborn faces a problem he didn’t have two years ago: fundraising.

Ricketts Leads the Money Race

In 2024, the independent caught Republican Deb Fischer asleep at the wheel, outraising her by nearly 3-to-1: $15 million to $6 million. Today, Osborn has just $6 million to the $11 million of his Republican opponent, incumbent Senator Pete Ricketts. Osborn himself isn’t failing to raise money, as these figures only went up to the second quarter of 2026. Instead, Ricketts’ fundraising suggests that Republicans aren’t sleeping on Nebraska this time around. At the same time, many anti-GOP donors are flocking to other states like Texas and Ohio—expensive battlegrounds where Democrats currently have higher odds of flipping seats.

PlusMinus4

Forecast: Who’s Winning the Senate in 2026?

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3 months ago · 22 likes · Johnny

But where is all of this money coming from?

A fair amount of individual contributions come from other states: Ricketts has raised almost half a million dollars from Texas and Illinois, while Osborn is pulling in over a million dollars from New York and California. It may be better to focus on where the candidates are raising money inside Nebraska, however. According to FiveThirtyEight modeling, in-state money is 5 times more predictive of election outcomes.

Looking at our donations map, Ricketts maintains his advantage in-state, leading Osborn across most of Nebraska. The bulk of his lead comes from ZIP codes around Omaha, the largest city in the state and home to nearly a quarter of the population.

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Osborn With Clear Raw Donor Lead

The individual donor map paints a very different story, however. Osborn now has a clear advantage in most ZIP codes, including many where Ricketts raised more money. He dominates in Omaha and Lincoln, the next-largest city in Nebraska, with donor leads in all but one ZIP code in both cities.

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The sharp divergence between who’s raised more money and who’s backed by more donors is actually consistent with national trends this cycle. Democrats have been doing well in terms of raw donors in Senate races from Ohio to Georgia, while Republican candidates rely on a smaller number of large donors. You can explore this in more detail using our national maps, where we have donors and donations by ZIP code for 15 of this fall’s key Senate races.

Money is still money, and Republicans will be flooding the airwaves to hold Nebraska this fall, but individual donors point to real enthusiasm among Osborn’s supporters. This dynamic could explain why he’s currently ahead in the polls, though it’s important to treat his lead with caution.

The race is exceedingly narrow—47 to 46—and Nebraska hasn’t seen nearly as much polling as other competitive states. We also have to remember that independent candidates have led the polls in red states before, notably Greg Orman in Kansas in 2014, but none have won. It remains to be seen whether Osborn can break that trend, but the data we have today does point to another close race.

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Contents:

1. Democrats’ Problem With Undecided Voters in Kansas

2. The Golden 50

3. Iowa: A Blowout for Democrats?

4. Texas: Talarico pushes closer to 50%

Democrats’ Problem with Undecided Voters in Kansas

First, let’s look at the “undecided problem”. Polls aim to have as few undecided voters as possible. A 53-48% polling lead with 1% undecided voters is much more meaningful than 44% to 39% lead with 17% undecideds. Many undecided voters end up voting, and, in the past, they often skewed heavily Republican.

In Indiana’s 2018 Senate polling average, incumbent Democrat Donnelly led his Republican challenger Braun 44.3% to 43.0%. Donnelly ended up with 45%, close to his predicted vote share, but he lost to Braun, who received 51% of the vote, 7 points more than predicted by the polls. This is one of many cases where a large share of undecideds broke for Republicans on Election Day, creating a polling error, even though Democrats didn’t underperform their own polling share. Some of the data points show the same dynamic in 2026, but there is good news for Democrats, too.

A good example of this is Kansas. Democrats don’t need to win Kansas. If they do, it could be seat number 54 for them. However, a recent Emerson poll showed Adam Hamilton (D) leading incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall (R) 45% to 43%. The result is strikingly similar to Indiana’s 2018 polling average, but with fewer undecided voters, because a well-known Libertarian candidate is getting 4% of the vote, leaving 8% undecided voters. But undecided voters in recent polls lean heavily Republican.

In the Emerson poll, Trump 2024 voters made up 3/4 of the 8% undecided share, while Harris voters only made up 15%. In the graph above, you can see that if the undecideds were to break 3 to 1 in Republicans’ favor, Roger Marshall (R) would win by 2 points.

Winning over these undecided voters is difficult for Democrats. These are 2024 Trump voters who are saying they are undecided but who are still somewhat likely to vote. There is a good chance these are shy voters, who end up voting Republican but refuse to admit it in a polling interview, similar to what might have happened in Indiana. Some may be persuaded, but Democrats should also hope that some of these Republican undecideds just stay home. That would change the math. If only half of the 8% undecided voters show up, the race would be exactly tied at 47.9% to 47.9%.

Data bite:

• Today’s NYT/Siena polls show Democrat Troy Jackson trailing Susan Collins by three points in Maine, and Democrats leading by 5 points in New Hampshire & Michigan.

The Golden 50

The undecided voter split is not just working in Republicans’ favor in Kansas. We can observe a similarly tilted balance of the group in other states like Texas and Ohio. The good news for Democrats: Candidates in these key states are polling much higher than Hamilton is in Kansas, and they are getting closer to the golden mark of 50%, where undecideds won’t tilt the race anymore. Third-party candidates can also be of help. As you’ve seen above, a candidate can win with 48-49% of the vote if there’s a third-party candidate who clutches around 2-4%. (We’ll keep the crucial battleground of Alaska out of this analysis because the polls in Alaska account for ranked-choice voting. In these polls, Mary Peltola (D) is above 50%.)

For all free Subscribers of Frontline Democracy, I will take a closer look at Texas and Iowa in the next paragraphs. In both states, Democrats recently got fabulous results from an A-rated pollster.

Iowa: A Blowout for Democrats?

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Democrats have been traumatized ever since they witnessed some disappointing presidential election nights after being favored in the polls. Polls overstated Democrats in 2016, 2020, and, to some extent, in 2024. In these cases, national polls were actually quite accurate, but states decide the Electoral College, and state polls overstated Democratic support quite badly in some key swing states.

That poses an interesting question for the upcoming midterms. The congressional generic ballot has been accurate in past cycles, especially in midterms. The Senate, however, is decided by statewide races, so we have to rely on state polls & forecasts. In the past three presidential cycles, Senate polls badly overestimated Democrats, but luckily for them, we are only in a midterm cycle, and Trump is not on the ballot. Do Democrats still need to be afraid?

I took a look at the 2022 and 2018 midterm Senate forecasts by FiveThirtyEight’s Deluxe Model, the former gold standard of election forecasts, to see which party got overstates where. Looking at the forecast misses in each race, we get two very different pictures. Depending on which polling miss you believe to be the more likely scenario for 2026, you’ll get a drastically different prediction.

Republicans Underestimated in Most, but not All Key Senate Races in 2018

The 2018 midterms are the current go-to election for comparisons because they happened during Trump’s first term. While he wasn’t on the ballot, it was, in part, a referendum on his presidency similar to the upcoming 2026 midterms.

538’s generic congressional ballot forecast for the US House was highly accurate. Democrats won by 8.6 after being forecasted to win by 8.8%.

The Senate is a different story. Republicans were favored to keep control of the chamber as Democrats faced a brutal map, but 538 forecasted Republicans to only gain between 0-1 Seat. In the end, they gained two. In the Senate, two seats go a long way. That miss is largely explained by forecast misses in a few key races, where incumbent Democrats had to defend states Trump won in 2016.

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The two key misses here that led to Republicans’ net gain of two seats are Indiana and Florida. Indiana was classified as a toss-up leaning towards Democrats by 1.9 points, but Republicans won the state by almost six points. Florida was categorized as lean D by a margin of 3.4 in favor of incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. The race became the closest in the nation and went to Republican Phil Scott by just 0.2 points. That 3.6-point miss is not bad at all for a forecast, but it makes all the difference in close races.

These were the two deciding misses, but 538’s forecast also underestimated Republicans in other battlegrounds. The forecasters expected Democrats to lose their Senate seats in deep-red Missouri and North Dakota, but they overstated Democratic support by 5-6 points. Ohio and Michigan, two Midwestern states, where Trump outperformed polling expectations, saw Republicans do 6-8 points better than forecasted. The only bright lights for Democrats in this comparison came from Nevada and Texas, where their candidates did almost 3 pts better than expected.

Other Key races were fairly accurate. Four of the six closest key races had acceptable forecast misses below 3 pts (Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Montana), and the other two were within a decent range, with misses between three and four points (Florida and West Virginia).

Across the 10 key races I identified – North Dakota through Nevada – 538 underestimated Republicans by 2.79 points. Across all races, they were underestimated by 2.76 points. So the error stretched across the map. That is a key difference from 2022.

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Democrats Underestimated in ALL Key Senate Races in 2022

2022 paints a completely different picture. It was the only time since probably 2012 that Democrats outdid polling expectations. In the House of Representatives, Republicans were huge favorites, but they ended up with one of the slimmest majorities ever.

In the Senate, Republicans were slightly favored to win back control as they only needed to flip a single seat. The morning after Election Day, it became clear that Democrats had defended all their vulnerable incumbents and even picked up an open seat in Pennsylvania.

They outdid 538’s forecasted margin in all key races.

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They central finding here is probably that the forecast, and therefore the underlying polls, systemically underestimated Democrats in the key contests, but no so much in the rest of the races.

In the 10 key races I identified1, Democrats outperformed 538’s forecast by an average of 3.31 points. That’s about half a point more of an overperformance than Republicans had in 2018 in key races, but there is an even more interesting finding. Republicans’ 2.79-point overperformance in key races was almost identical to their overperformance across all races in 2018, meaning they were underestimated across the map. That uniform forecast miss points to an issue with fundamentals, rather than battleground polling.

In 2022, however, Democrats were only underestimated by 0.4 points across all Senate contests. So the systemic forecast miss was almost entirely confined to key races. Yes, Democrats were largely underestimated in deep blue states, but so were Republicans in deep red states. The two practically cancel each other out.

I can only think of one reason for that discrepancy: polling. Key races saw countless election polls that heavily influenced 538’s forecast, while obscure contests were largely built on fundamentals. While the largest misses happened in these races, they were more random and not systemic. Races that were heavily polled had smaller misses, but all favored Democrats. My read: Late, Republican-associated polls (by the likes of Insider Advantage & Trafalgar) overstated Republican support and tilted the averages in their favor.

This is also the reason I choose to use 538’s forecasted margins. They did much better than the simple polling averages from Real Clear Politics, partly because 538 weighted pollsters more sophistically and used a mix of indicators in their deluxe model. RCP overstated Republican support by an even larger margin.

Summarizing Our Findings: What Does it Mean for 2026?

1. In 2022, polls in key races underestimated Democrats: While 538’s Senate forecast was very accurate overall, polls skewed the forecast in the top 10 battlegrounds in favor of Republicans by 3,31 points.

2. In 2018, 538 underestimated Republicans across the board (2.76 points), and in the 10 key battlegrounds (by 2.79 points). Given the evenly spread nature of that forecast miss, the reason might not just have been the polls but the fundamentals the team used back then.

3. As G. Elliot Morris pointed out: If you try to account for past polling biases in your forecast for 2026, you’ll end up doing worse. If you’re a Democrat, you are probably most worried about states like Ohio, where polls have overstated Democratic support in the past, and more relaxed about New Hampshire or Georgia.

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Contents:

1. The Results in Saxony Anhalt: A Hung Parlament?

2. AFD’s MAGA coalition

3. How Conservatives Enabled Facism

4. Two (Irreversible) Mistakes

But first, let’s take a look at what happened last Sunday.

The Results in Saxony Anhalt: A Hung Parlament?

Before we look at the data behind the AfD’s coalition, I should note that, while most AFD voters live in the west, East Germany is their stronghold. Voters there have long felt left behind since reunification 36 years ago and have always been more open to extremist actors.

The 43.8% they received in Saxony-Anhalt last Sunday were the AfD’s best-ever result in a state or federal election, but they fell short of their self-declared goal: winning an outright majority. Coalitions are the norm in Germany, but every notable party has long ruled out partnering with them. The 39 seats the AFD won are three short of the 42 seats required for a majority. This is where the BSW comes into play, which managed to eke into parliament by narrowly clearing the 5% threshold. They won 5 seats.

The BSW is a newer, ideologically complicated party mostly defined by anti-establishment and pro-Russian positions. The latter issue provides common ground between the AFD and the BSW. The BSW in Saxony-Anhalt has said it might support an AFD candidate for Minister-President (sort of the prime minister of a state). The AFD could then try to govern with a minority, hoping the BSW or some unfaithful CDU members might support some of their bills. A coalition of AFD-BSW, which would have a slim, 43-seat majority, would not be necessary if AfD state leader Siegmund is elected as leader.

Should the minister-president election fail, we would likely be in for a snap election in Saxony-Anhalt. All the while, the push to ask the Supreme Court to consider a ban for the AFD is gaining renewed steam.1 Quite a few elected AfD members in Saxony-Anhalt have supported Neo-Nazi-ideology in the past, and the party’s platform is unconstitutional in parts.

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AFD’s MAGA Coalition

While the AfD’s landslide victory won them most voter groups, the differences between these groups are the same as those we see in federal German elections and state elections in the west.

This data shows that the AFD isn’t just similar to the MAGA movement in their ideals; they also share a similar coalition. Take the education gap. In the US, Trump excels with uneducated voters while struggling with college-educated ones. Infratest Dimap, Germany’s leading pollster and exit-poll provider2, divides education into simple, intermediary, and high. High education includes all voters who finished their 13-year high school diploma, qualifying them for college, and upwards.

In Saxony-Anhalt, the AFD performed worst among highly educated voters and best among voters who received a basic education.

Among college-educated voters, the AFD only finished at 24%, slightly ahead of the Green Party (20%).

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Similar to Trump, the AFD also did better with men than with women by about 10 points, and about half of its net gain this election came from previous non-voters. So the influx of low-propensity voters, who helped elevate Saxony-Anhalt’s voter turnout to a record high, mostly helped the AFD. That is a trend we also see in America, where Trump turns out people who care little about politics.

How Conservatives Enabled Facism

How did the AFD get this far?

Well, the current economic struggles in Germany, high gas prices, and a long period of worldwide inflation are the perfect breeding ground for extremism. However, that doesn’t mean these extremist powers necessarily can grab power.

In their 2018 book How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt examine how democracies died in the past century, at times due to erosion or due to drastic overhaul. The rise of fascism in 1930s Europe presents cases that show a quick and drastic overhaul of democracy. Fascism arose in most European countries, yet it was only successful in a few. The most infamous case was the rise of the Nazis in Germany.

Levitsky & Ziblatt discovered that the actions of key power brokers played a role in deciding whether or not fascism was stopped or enabled in Europe. In elections in Belgium, fascism was on the rise, and the pressure on the center-right and conservative side to include them in a government was immense. But key players refused. Instead of choosing the partner with the most overlap on the issues and thereby partnering with extremists, conservatives chose to bridge larger gaps between left-leaning but Democratic opponents. In other words, they build a firewall against fascism and were able to sit out the strong election results from the far right. In Finland, the traditional conservatives took the same approach after their initial collaboration with fascists brought the country’s democracy to the brink of collapse.

In Germany, conservative leaders took a different approach. They tried to partner with Hitler, thinking they could soften or tame him on key issues, and they thought that they could peel off his voters by taking over his issues. As we know today, they were wrong. Traditional power brokers, often center-to-center-right figures, had options to act as gatekeepers and shut fascists out of power. In Germany, these gatekeepers failed, and Germany vowed to never make the same mistake again.3

Almost a hundred years later, the far-right is on the cusp of power again, if only in one of sixteen states. The AfD’s success has prompted despair in the factions of the CDU/CSU, and their leaders now have to tread carefully in order to avoid two costly mistakes. One would be fatal; the other is one they have been making for years.

Two (Irreversible) Mistakes

First, they need to keep the so-called firewall intact. The firewall, in German called Brandmauer, has been a constant in German politics. It’s a promise by all democratic parties not to work with far-right parties. Democratic parties will form wide ideological coalitions to keep the AFD out of power at all costs. It’s exactly the approach that saved many nations from falling to fascism before WWII.

Some CDU officials, especially in eastern Germany, have already questioned the firewall as the AFD grows stronger. 34% of CDU voters think their party should consider working with the AFD in some cases. Even CDU members in the east, however, are bound by a strict directive from their party leader in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz.4 Rumors suggested that one or two elected CDU members might switch allegiances to hand the AFD their majority, but the BSW’s success might render that scenario moot. (It would take three CDU crossovers)

The second mistake is one the CDU/CSU has been making for years now. It’s the idea that you only have to take over the extremists’ talking points to win back voters. History has shown that emphasizing the far-right’s issues only ends up helping the far-right. Political scientists have found that the strategy seldom works. Instead, you only legitimize extremist ideas for voters, prompting them to accept said extremism more easily.

In the 2025 federal election (February), Mr. Merz pushed immigration issues into the spotlight, even though migration numbers had been decreasing and were miles below crisis-era averages. In the end, the AFD achieved a record result of 21%, while the CDU fell from previous polling highs and finished at 28%. Merz took the AfD’s success as yet another sign that his party needs to double down on immigration. Since Merz became the CDU’s nominee for chancellor in September of 2024, the AFD has surged from 18% to 29%, while the CDU fell from 32% to 21%. One party surged 11 points, the other plummeted by the same amount. Mr. Merz promised to cut the AFD in half when he took over the CDU. He has done the opposite.

Mr. Merz has promised he would be able to govern in a way that the AFD naturally loses its strength. So far, he has failed to do that. Other players in his party, together with the Greens, the SPD and the Left, have long pushed to finally ask Germany’s Supreme Court to consider the case for banning the AFD. It’s a rarely used, unique tool devised by postwar Germany to protect Democracy at all costs. You can read on how that would work here.

In the coming weeks, Mr. Merz will be at a crossroads. He can double down further and crack down even more on immigration that is already dangerously low for the economy. Or, he can learn from history’s mistakes and flip the narrative.

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The nationwide map shows which party leads with individual donors at the local level (We have data for every ZIP code). The map will be updated regularly.

Fundraising Data can be a Performance Indicator

What can fundraising data even tell us about the possible outcomes of the election in November? Past presidential races have clearly shown us that money is not everything. That’s why, apart from dollar amounts, I wanted to take a look at how many individual donors each Senate candidate accumulated at ZIP code level.

This project was inspired by one of my favorite New York Times visualizations. A few months ahead of the first contest of the 2020 Democratic Primary, they published an extremely detailed map showing which candidate has the most individual donors. Bernie Sanders held a commanding lead across almost the entire map, hinting at a juggernaut grassroots campaign that would make him win the most votes in three of the first four contests. Most candidates performed best around their home states, with Pete Buttigieg’s grassroots support spilling into Iowa (a state he went on to win). Joe Biden’s numbers were strongest in Delaware, but his second-best area was the black belt in the Deep South. He went on to win African American voters by a large margin, securing the nomination.

That NYT project showed that donor maps aren’t just visual treats; they can be of value. In Ohio, our individual donor map shows a landslide for Sherrod Brown across the state (The picture is more mixed when looking at dollar amounts; more on that below).

The data displayed on the map has a few important limitations. First, this map – much like our national map – only looks at in-state donations, and strong fundraisers like Sherrod Brown benefit from Democratic donors in California and New York. Second, this data solely includes contributions from donors who donated a total of $200 over the 2025-2026 election cycle. FEC Donation files from donors who do not spend this much do not include ZIP code details. That mostly influences Democratic candidates, who rely heavily on small-dollar donations. 42% of Brown’s nationwide $30 million contribution tally came from unitemized donors, compared to only 21% for Husted.

As I indicated above, Republican Jon Husted closes the gap a bit when we don’t look at who leads with individual donors, but at who has raised more money.

The difference between the two maps is unsurprising. As I’ve analyzed in another visualization at the start of this year, Republican Senators rely more on larger donations. While they often have fewer unique donors, their average donations are larger, making them more competitive when it comes to money.

What can we take from this data? Brown also leads in the money race, even more so when you start counting out-of-state contributions. He should have no trouble flooding the airwaves until November. That being said, field work is perhaps more important in turning out and convincing voters, and Republicans have built up strong infrastructure in Ohio in the past year. Nevertheless, Brown’s outstanding grassroots donation support in the state may hint at Democratic excitement.

Brown Leads City Centers, Husted in Wealthy Suburbs

Brown leads across most of the state with individual donors, stacking up the numbers in and around the state’s large cities. The money map offers a more interesting picture.

While Brown still does well in the cities, Husted manages to register on the map near population hubs, too. He leads in various ZIP codes near Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. These ZIP codes often represent wealthier suburbs.

An example is the ZIP code 45243, which is located in Hamilton County in the suburbs of Cincinnati. Husted leads here with $180 thousand dollars, his largest lead. The wealthy area has an average household income of $170,006 which is more than double of Ohio’s statewide average.

What About Other Senate Races?

In other states, the donor picture doesn’t look as rosy for Democrats as it does in Ohio. In Michigan, for example, where Democrats had a divided and late primary, their nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, still lags behind Mike Rogers across most of the state.

You can find the map with all Senate races here.

(Some states are still missing; I’ll update the map regularly)

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CONTENTS:

1. House of Representatives: Democrats Favored

2. The US Senate: A Difficult Path for Democrats

3. Governor Races & State Legislature

House of Representatives: Democrats Strongly Favored

The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a district of similar size. All laws have to pass through the chamber. The House can launch crucial inquiries such as impeachment hearings. It has no control over cabinet or Supreme Court nominations.

The battle for the House has turned ugly this year, as Republicans raced to brutally gerrymander the states to gain seats in what will be a difficult year for them. Their – often illegal – gerrymandering efforts will net Republicans about 5-10 seats, but that won’t be enough.

Our forecast currently gives Democrats an 89.5% chance to win the chamber. That is almost exactly the same odds the forecast gave them when I launched it last December (89,4%). A lot has changed since then, but as Democrats gained in the generic ballot (they now lead by almost 8 points), they offset Republican redistricting gains, keeping the odds stable.

If the election were to be held today, our forecast would project 233 seats for Democrats to 202 for Republicans. That’s close to Democrats’ final 2018 result, when they won the generic ballot by eight points.

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Our forecast is slowly starting to incorporate more district-level polls as they arrive. In some cases, this boosts Democrats, as they are profiting from scandal-ridden opponents. For example, Democrat Brian Poindexter is favored to flip Ohio’s 7th district and unseat Rep. Max Miller (R). The district voted for Trump by 11% in 2024, but credible assault allegations by Miller’s wife (the daughter of Republican Senator Bernie Moreno) have put Democrats ahead.

The most impactful swings, however, will come only if the generic ballot moves substantially. If it does not move below D+4 – the margin of defeat Republicans can still win with because of redistricting – we can assume a Democratic victory in the House.1

Trump would then be unable to pass any more laws and would likely face uncomfortable hearings, although Democrats are holding off on calling for a third impeachment inquiry right now.

The Senate is A Toss-Up

The Senate has 100 members, with two Senators per state. That tilts the chamber in favor of small, rural states where Republicans do well. With a simple majority, a party can approve Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, and pass reconciliation bills. If the House impeaches the president, the Senate holds the trial. 66 votes are required to remove the president.

Yes, I know you may have heard this a dozen times this week already, but the Senate is indeed a toss-up as of today. That alone is a monumental achievement for Democrats. The Senate favors Republicans, and Democrats need to pick up Seats in states that are considered likely or solidly Republican to win the Senate. In total, Democrats need to flip seats. They currently hold 47, but a 50-50 tie won’t help them too much since Vice President JD Vance acts as a tie-breaker.

Here are the steps Democrats need to take to climb the difficult ladder:

First, they need to hold their own ground. In a good midterm year, that should be no problem. Georgia was the prime target for Republicans, as it’s one of two states with an incumbent Democratic Senator that Trump won. But Republicans failed to recruit a decent challenger, and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) is ahead by over ten points in some polls. Ossoff’s strong polling performance and huge fundraising hauls have put the state out of play for Republicans and Ossoff on the map for 2028. The other state Trump carried where Democrats need to hold a seat is Michigan. Democratic incumbent Gary Peters is retiring, and Democratic voters have nominated DSA-aligned Abdul El-Sayed as their candidate. He is facing Mike Rogers, a scandal-free Republican who is well known in the state. Democrats' nomination of El-Sayed has tightened the race and given Republicans an easier path to holding the Senate, but as we get closer to November, partisanship will likely have its effect, and it will be difficult for Rogers to overcome a blue environment. Especially if El-Sayed manages to brand Rogers as yet another “yes”-vote for Trump's agenda. The President’s approval rating is down almost 20 points in Michigan.

The second step is flipping two states: Maine and North Carolina. Democrats managed to recruit former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. Cooper was an immensely popular governor and is strongly favored to flip the seat. He is leading comfortably in the polls and is well-known across the state. If I had to bet money on one seat Democrats can flip, it would be North Carolina. Maine, the easiest target on paper, has been controversial, as Democrats had to replace their nominee, Graham Platner, after sexual assault allegations surfaced. Their new nominee, Troy Jackson, shares Platner’s progressive values and working-class background (Jackson is a logger), but has no baggage and can focus on unseating Republican Senator Susan Collins. Collins has held the state of Maine, which voted for Clinton, Biden, and Harris, for four decades largely because of her moderate image. 2026 might be the year when some pro-Trump votes she has cast in the Senate might catch up with her.

The third step is where it gets tricky. Democrats are now at 49 seats and need two of the following four to win a majority: Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa. Trump won these states by over 10 pts, but candidate quality is working in Democrats' favor. In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown is trying to return to the Senate. Brown might need to overperform Democrats' generic ballot performance in Ohio to win, but he has done that before2. In Texas, James Talarico is trying to capitalize on the many weaknesses of his opponent Ken Paxton. In Alaska, native Mary Peltola is working to unseat Sen. Dan Sullivan, a generic Republican incumbent. Normally, that’s a difficult task, but Peltola is popular in the state and won this week’s jungle primary ahead of Sullivan, almost reaching 50% (In past midterm cycles, Alaska’s November electorate turned out more Democratic than the primary electorate). Iowa is the last state on this list, because I see it as a heavy lift. The state has trended right in the past, and Republican nominee Ashley Hinson is no Ken Paxton. Still, working-class white voters have been souring on Trump, and Democrats also have a strong gubernatorial candidate at the top of the ticket. An early poll by the NYT showed Democratic nominee Josh Turek within the margin of error.

Almost all of these races will be incredibly close. VoteHub currently forecasts the Senate races in Ohio, Texas, and Alaska to be within just one point.

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Governor’s and State Legislature

Last but not least, let’s take a look at some governor races. These are the least polarized races in America. Even in these times, Kentucky still has a Democratic Governor, and New Hampshire and Vermont have moderate Republican governors. Still, there are three important races I want you to know about.

1. Georgia: Sen. Jon Ossoff might win Georgia by more than 10 points, but he could only risk running for President if Democrats finally win Georgia’s governor race (the Governor is allowed to appoint a new Senator if Ossoff would leave a vacancy). The environment in the state favors them, but their candidate, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor, will have a hard time against Republican billionaire Rick Jackson, who is seen as less extreme than other Republican candidates. Even as many Georgians have split their Senate-Governor vote in past cycles, it will be difficult for Jackson to overcome what could be a blue wave year. A win for Democrats here could also be a lifeline in the ongoing redistricting war.

2. Ohio: In Ohio, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is eyeing the governor’s seat. His opponent, Democrat Amy Acton, is hoping to prevent the billionaire from taking the state’s top position. They are tied in the odds.

3. Iowa: Last but not least, Democrat Rob Sand is slightly favored to become Iowa’s next governor. Sand is the only Democrat elected to statewide office in Iowa in 2022, and he enjoys great favorability ratings and bipartisan appeal. The NYT recently visited him on the campaign trail.

State legislature elections often go overlooked, but the recent redistricting fights have again proven how essential they can be. Democrats are seeking to gain trifectas by flipping state houses/senate in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania. In Georgia, they might make inroads in the State Senate and perhaps even win the State House. The Texas State House is another possible target.

Winning state trifectas (controlling both chambers and the governorship) not only helps with redistricting. It could also put the US one step closer to ending the Electoral College if these states join the Popular Vote Compact. I wrote about the issue here.

And that’s a wrap. This is the first midterm election I am covering as a journalist and not just an election enthusiast, and I got a feeling that the outcome of this election and its many, many races will be felt in the years to come. Democrats have their shot at halting Republicans’ and Trump’s attacks on democracy. They have a chance of blocking his agenda and bringing balance back to the Supreme Court. But only if they win this November.

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CONTENTS

1. How Democrats Plan to flip Kansas’ Senate Seat

2. Democrats Have Found Their Candidate

3. Kansas Is Trending Left

4. What Do the Polls & Experts Say?

How Democrats Plan to Flip Kansas’ Senate Seat

The best way to start this analysis is by looking at the status quo. Donald Trump carried the state of Kansas by about 16 pts in 2024, which put it 14.5 pts to the right of the national environment. That simply means that the national vote would have to shift >14.5 pts towards the Democrats in order to flip Kansas blue – which would translate into a D+13 generic ballot victory. Of course, states don’t shift uniformly, and we will deal with that later.

A D+13 generic ballot is a stretch for Democrats, but it is also not far from the current 8-point victory my midterm forecast is working with. A D+8 victory – 9.5 points bluer than 2024 – would theoretically put the generic ballot vote in Kansas at R+6.5. That is not far from The Argument’s modeled generic ballot for Kansas, which currently stands at R+8.3. Coming within six or even eight points in Kansas’ Senate race would be historic for Democrats and point to a great night nationally, but it would still be a loss. Still, there is another crucial factor in Senate races that is playing a big role in the 2026 midterm cycle: candidate quality.

Candidate quality has put some states on the map for Democrats that were almost as out of reach as Kansas in 2024. Think about Democrat James Talarico leading the polls against scandal-ridden Ken Paxton in Texas or Democrat Mary Peltola being tied in the polls in Alaska. Trump won both these states by about 14 pts. There are limitations when comparing these states with Kansas, though: Texas had been significantly closer before, in 2018 and 2020, and Alaskan native Mary Peltola is a proven electoral overperformer who won the state’s congressional seat in 2022. What this does prove is that candidate quality matters. So who are the candidates in Kansas, and why are they giving Democrats hope?

Democrats Found Their Candidate

Last Tuesday, Kansas Democrats chose Adam Hamilton as their nominee for the U.S. Senate. Hamilton is widely seen as a good recruit. He is the founder and pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, a mega mainline Methodist church mostly active in the greater Kansas City area. Notably, these counties won him the Democratic nomination. He is scandal-free, has a clean political slate, and might benefit from his appeal to Christian voters. A trend that is also evident in Texas, where James Talarico is making his faith the center of his progressive campaign.

As in Texas, the better question is perhaps this one: Who is the opponent? Unfortunately for Democrats, incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall is no Ken Paxton. The first-term Senator is not particularly well-known; neither is he very popular or unpopular – his most recent net-approval rating sits at +6. That by itself poses a challenge for Democrats. In Texas, they are benefiting from an astoundingly unpopular opponent; in Kansas, they are facing a mostly generic Republican incumbent. Sen. Marshall also left his primary relatively unbruised (he won with 80%) and is going into the general election contest with a six-million cash pile.

The primaries themselves also underscored why this will be a tall task for Democrats. Democrats in Texas outvoted their Republican counterparts in the state’s primary. In Kansas, however, Republicans still dominated the primary votes, even if the margin was tighter than in previous elections. The raw numbers are still not good for Democrats: Roger Marshall received a total of 267,982 votes in the Republican Senate primary. That tally was higher than the combined total of the entire Democratic Senate primary (220,803).

So, is blue Kansas just a dream Chuck Schumer had one night? Not exactly, because we still have to look at one more aspect: Electoral trends.

Kansas has Swung left over the past decade

Kansas is known as a deep red state not only because it has only elected Republican Senators for a century, but because the margins of presidential elections in the state weren’t exactly close. (Statewide elections are another subject entirely. Democrat Laura Kelly won the Kansas governor race in 2018. She is now retiring.)

But recent elections have produced an interesting trend that Mr. Schumer and other Democrats might have noticed. When examining how states shift electorally, we need to look at how they voted relative to the national popular vote (Because it’s natural that the margins everywhere shift in a landslide scenario).

As you can see above, Kansas’ Republican lean seemed untouchable for a while. Its lean relative to the nation even moved slightly to the right from R+21.3 in the 2000 presidential election to R+25.4 in 2012. Then came the Trump era, and the state started to shift left. It started slowly, but in the most recent two elections, the state moved from a lean of R+19.1 to R+14.7, a shift of almost five points. A shift of such a magnitude reminds me of Virginia and Georgia. Of course, Kansas would need two more presidential election cycles with the same movement to make it competitive, but the state is trending towards the Democrats. In fact, from 2016 to 2024, only two other states shifted further to the left relative to the popular vote.

Where does this shift come from? The first factor is President Trump’s alienation of educated, suburban voters. If the population then starts to shift – like in Georgia, which has seen an enormous influx of educated voters –, previously uncompetitive states can become targets for Democrats.

Even as Kansas suburban areas are growing, the state still has some way to go before it becomes competitive. Until then, Democrats need to work with Donald Trump’s negative approval rating (it sits at -5 pts in Kansas) and their own candidate quality.

What Do The Polls and Experts Say?

Contents:

1. Candidate Quality Hurt Republicans in 2022

2. Are Democrats Fumbling A Key Governor Seat?

3. What the Data Says About Wisconsin’s Election

4. Democrats’ Winning Recipe

Candidate Quality Hurt Republicans in 2022

So in the past years, many primary voters (mostly those in Republican primaries) looked past scandals and issues of candidate quality when nominating candidates for governor’s or Senate races. Republican voters usually followed Trump’s endorsement calls and did not think of any overwhelming electoral consequences since the President didn’t suffer any either.

They were wrong. Many dubious candidates nominated by Republicans underperformed horribly in key races. The 2022 Senate race in Georgia serves as a good example. It was a Biden midterm that ended up favoring Republicans by about 2.5% nationally. That’s seven points redder than 2020, when Raphael Warnock narrowly won the special election for Georgia’s Senate seat. Since it was only a special election, he had to face re-election again in 2022 and win the voters’ trust for a full term. Republicans nominated Herschel Walker, a former football player, to unseat him. Herschel Walker went on to become entrenched in scandals and poor public performances. At one point, former Senator Lindsey Graham had been tasked with sitting by Walker’s side in Interviews to avoid more trouble. Voters ended up punishing Walker’s poor candidate quality, and he narrowly lost to Warnock in a year where Republicans carried the state’s congressional ballot by almost 5 points.

In the same year, Republican voters also nominated Trump-ally Doug Mastriano to run for Pennsylvania’s open Governor’s seat. Mastriano was a known conspiracy theorist and believer of Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. He lost what could have been a close race for a swing state governorship to Democrat Josh Shapiro. Shapiro’s stunning 15-point victory quickly put the 2028 hopeful on the map. It also was a hint that, in statewide races, candidate quality still matters much more than partisan polarization.

So why am I writing about this? Because this time around, Democrats are looking at a strong midterm election. Yet, some of their primary contests are dominated by discussions about electability. While electability has always been an issue in every primary election, the discussion feels different this time around. That is because usually, Democrats were astoundingly good at nominating electable candidates while their Republicans fumbled the ball quite a few times, as the examples above showed. In Wisconsin, however, the electability debates are taking place on the Democratic side.

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Are Democrats Fumbling A Key Governor’s race?

Tony Evers’ 2018 upset victory moved mountains for Democrats. During his eight-year tenure, Evers was most notably able to redraw the state legislature maps that had been brutally gerrymandered by Republicans to lock Democrats out of power forever. With Evers’ new maps, Democrats might be able to retake the state legislature for the first time since. Once again, nominating an electable, center-left candidate paid off for the party. But there are still battles to be fought. Evers is retiring, and a new Republican governor could undo these improvements to democracy. Given that they might finally retake the Wisconsin legislature, it would be a horror story for Democrats should they lose the governor’s seat in a blue wave year.

Naturally, the race for the democratic nomination attracted much attention, but it slowly turned into quite the mess. For a long time it looked like Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin’s Senate seat in 2022 (he narrowly lost to the unpopular incumbent Republican Ron Johnson in a red environment), would take the nomination. Then, Francesca Hong rose in the polls. Hong is a progressive DSA (Democratic socialists of America) member. Her DSA affiliation, along with past remarks about abolishing the police, raised alarm bells in the Democratic Party. Would Wisconsin’s swing electorate elect a candidate that is widely seen as too progressive or even radical? As it became clear that Barnes’ chances were fading, David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, re-entered the race last month with a fresh endorsement from Governor Evers. But as it turns out, the Democratic primary electorate has little faith in Evers’ endorsement: In head-to-head polls, Crowley trails Hong by about 20 points.

If no miracle occurs, Democrats will nominate a DSA progressive in a state Donald Trump won in 2024. Of course, many of Hong’s policies are popular with voters, like a moratorium on data centers. But it remains to be seen if a candidate similar to Zoran Mamdani can win in Wisconsin. In the end, it will boil down to one question: Will the blue wave be big enough to carry Hong across the line, or will Wisconsin’s electorate prove to be off-limits for Mamdani-like progressives?

Why do I assume that Hong will have a hard time? That has two reasons. The first is that Republicans have managed to nominate a scandal-free candidate. While their presumed nominee, Tom Tiffany, is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, he has managed to stay out of any conspiracy trouble.

That brings me to the 2nd reason Hong will have a hard time: Different standards. A Republican candidate who doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories is almost automatically seen as a moderate and acceptable choice by a good share of the electorate. On the other side, a Democrat who once tweeted something critical of the police force is portrayed as unelectable for decades to come. (According to data, Democrats in Congress are morde moderate than Republicans)

Hong has, of course, long since retreated from earlier calls to defund the police (a majority of Wisconsin voters want to increase police funding), but it remains to be seen whether voters are willing to accept one misstep.

What Does the Data Say About the Race?

Contents:

1. Ship Traffic out of Hormuz & Oil Prices: More Hope Than Realism

2. The Economic Implications: Are Markets Underestimating the Situation?

3. Political Implications: Trump is Wishcasting About Hormuz

4. What Will Happen Next?

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Ship Traffic out of Hormuz & Oil Prices: More Hope Than Realism

When Trump started the war against Iran, the global stock market plummeted. It was only a natural reaction. After all, the closing of the Straight of Hormuz – a vital bottleneck for the shipping of commodities – led oil prices to skyrocket from about $60 a barrel to over $110 a barrel. High oil prices are known to weigh on the economy as they drastically raise gas prices and have trickle-down effects that can lead to long-term inflation. This can lead to higher interest rates and worsening market conditions. So, the S&P 500 falling almost 10% in March seemed rather logical.

Today, however, markets are back to all-time highs, having left the lows of March 2026 in the dust. The reprieve and following rally had a few reasons. These are the continuing boom in sectors unaffected by the supply-chain issues, such as AI & technology, but the Iran situation also played a role. As the US and Iran drew closer to a peace deal – one that has failed spectacularly this month – markets quickly concluded that everything would go back to normal soon. Oil prices receded to levels only slightly above pre-war prices, causing a sigh of relief for the markets and the FED - which sets interest rates. Yet, that fall of oil prices seemed to have largely been built on hope and not realism. Because during the short-lived peace deal in June, which caused oil prices to drop and markets to rise, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remained at a fraction of pre-war levels.

The chart once again outlines how a brief window of hope for peace caused oil prices to plummet, even as shipments only barely picked up. As of this Thursday, the Strait of Hormuz is closed again, the war is back, and it might even widen. Iran-allied Houthi Rebels have started attacking Saudi tankers, threatening to create a 2nd choke point.

Today, oil prices climbed back above $90 a barrel, and it seems like they will only continue to rise. That has immense implications, both politically and economically.

The Economic Implications: Are Markets Underestimating the Situation?

The Federal Reserve had long planned to bring interest rates back to low levels. But in order to do so, inflation needs to fall below the target of 2%. For a while, the US seemed to be perfectly on target. When Biden left office, inflation had fallen back to 2.8%, so the Fed started lowering rates. Trump’s tariffs brought uncertainty and rate pauses, and conflict in Iran is worsening things. The annual inflation rate rose to 4.2% in May, mainly driven by higher oil prices. It fell back to 3.5% in June as the peace deal made oil prices fall, but the window of reprieve has passed. As a result, the FED and its new chairman Kevin Warsh might have to raise rates soon (which the FED kept at 3.75% for about a year now). That’s not something investors want.

While low interest rates help boost the economy and markets, the FED can raise interest rates to slow down the economy and ease inflation. That happened in 2021 & 2022, when post-COVID & Ukraine-war inflation infected the world. Higher Interest rates make stock market investments less attractive as investors can bank on high risk-free interest rates off the markets.

Shipping out of Hormuz has basically been non-existent since March, and yet, the S&P 500 has risen about 8% from pre-war levels. If markets have indeed overestimated Trump’s peacemaking skills and the threat of rising inflation, then the sobering moment might come as a shock to some. A very slow shock. While the Iran War or Trump’s liberation day caused stock crashes that dominated news headlines, high-interest-rate economies damage markets more subtly. In 2022, the last year with rising interest rates, saw a slow but steady decline of almost 20%. Given that many Americans might soon like to cash in their 401k’s, that development could become a political subject.

Political Implications: Trump is Wishcasting About Hormuz

1. Mapping All 865 Campaign Stops

Note: All data comes from FairVote.org and, while accurate, it might not be perfect.

The map above shows all campaign stops by presidential and/or vice-presidential candidates from 2016 to 2024. A larger bubble means more campaign stops in that area. It once more becomes evident that the political campaign circus is heavily concentrated on swing states. The highest density and volume on the map can be found in the states that were swing states across all three cycles: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and North Carolina. Naturally, the population centers in these states set the records: Philadelphia (23), Las Vegas (22), and Detroit (21) saw the most campaign stops from 2016 to 2024. But in these senior swing states, campaign events also stretched to other communities outside the population centers. Almost every town and city in Pennsylvania had at least one visit by a candidate from the presidential ticket. The small swing city of Erie (part of Erie County, a bellwether for Pennsylvania) stacks up nine total campaign stops.

Other states with a decent, but slightly lower, number of campaign events are swing states that have either lost their battleground status or gained it between 2016 and 2024. You can find many dots in Florida, like in Miami, but a large majority of these events took place in 2016 and 2020, when the state was still competitive before it drifted to Republicans. The same can be said about Ohio and Iowa, states that only stand out on the map due to their importance in the 2016 and 2020 elections. On the other side, Georgia didn’t see widespread campaign events until 2020 and 2024, when it became a swing state.

What about population centers? The popular vote is decided by the people, and most people live in larger states, such as California, Texas, or Florida. Apart from Florida, large states saw very little attention, though I suspect that Texas could soon become the target of presidential campaigns, as the state’s vote margins have been narrowing over the past decades.

Looking at 2016 to 2024, there is a clear winner among the 50 states when it comes to campaign events: Pennsylvania (147 campaign events) leads North Carolina (106) and Florida (98). Pennsylvania’s lead is unsurprising, as it has been the biggest electoral prize among the closest swing states. Florida, with its 30 electoral votes, has an even larger population, but suffers from no longer being a swing state.

2. New Hampshire Reigns Supreme: Campaign Visits Per One Million Residents

Raw population can distort the picture. It’s only natural that the nine million registered voters in Pennsylvania require more campaign events than the two million registered voters in Nevada. Therefore, a more comparable way to analyze the past campaign events is to examine which state saw the most campaign events relative to its population.

A quick note: Washington, D.C. is not on this map, but with its 20 campaign events per one million residents, it would quite easily take the crown. (Though most of these are a result of the 2016 election)

Accounting for population differences, the attention shifts to smaller swing states. While Pennsylvania remains a strong third place with 11.26 campaign visits per one million residents, it’s overtaken by Nevada (11.88 visits per million, 6 Electoral Votes) and New Hampshire (16.96, 4 EVs).

Despite delivering the most Electoral Votes, most of the largest population centers are far away from this kind of electoral importance. California (0.30 visits per million, 54 EVs), Illinois (0.31, 19 EVs), Texas (0.41, 40 EVs), and New York (0.95, 28 EVs) all registered less than one campaign event per a million residents over the course of the past three presidential elections. Still, they are not the worst off.

16 states, colored grey on the map, didn’t see a presidential or vice presidential candidate in any of the past three races. These are mostly smaller and highly partisan states, such as Wyoming or Vermont. But also larger states with a softer partisan lean, like Montana, were neglected.

3. What Could Change in the Future?

The two presented maps would change drastically should the push to end the Electoral College be successful. Yes, California or Texas would get most attention, but that’s where the people live. On our 2nd map – the one showing events in proportion to population – we would likely converge towards a balanced picture. One, where every state sees approximately the same number of campaign events per capita.

Should the Electoral College survive, the uneven map will persist, although with some state-specific changes. As mentioned, Texas is becoming more competitive and could demand more attention, while Florida could sink into the depths of electoral unimportance. Alaska and Kansas, smaller states that didn’t register any campaign events as they were firmly Republican, could rise in importance as they have been drifting towards the Democrats.

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Contents

1. How We Got Here

2. Replacing Platner: Mills or Jackson?

3. How Can Democrats Win?

How We Got Here

Maine’s Senate seat is something of a must-win for Democrats this November. It’s the easiest seat on paper, given that Maine is the only target for Democrats that is a likely Democratic state (Kamala Harris won here by 7 points). Still, Democrats knew they were in for a tough battle, as Republican Susan Collins, a longtime Senator with moderate appeal, is running for re-election. In 2020, when Biden carried the state by 9 points, Collins secured re-election despite being down in most polls. Her 8-point victory over Democratic challenger Sarah Gideon is, however, a little inflated. Maine uses ranked-choice voting, but Collins won just over 50% in the first round, so the process never kicked in. Gideon was left behind at 42%. Had the ranked-choice process been used, Gideon would have closed the gap as the third-party candidates favored her.

2026 will likely be a few points bluer than 2020, and Collins is more unpopular than she was back then. It became the prevailing sentiment that Democrats just need to run an ordinary candidate to defeat Collins in a Trump-midterm. Yet, primary voters chose Graham Platner as their candidate, despite already knowing about scandals involving online comments and an accidental Nazi tattoo. Platner had already been losing ground to Collins in the polling averages. He went from being ahead by six points to being tied with Collins. The sexual assault allegations likely bury his campaign, but they are far from a gift for Collins. Because Democrats still have a few weeks to replace Platner on the ballot should he drop out. Their new candidate will have a lower profile and less time to beat Collins, but he or she will also have less baggage and, in one case, very favorable polling.

Replacing Platner: Mills or Jackson?

An obvious, albeit problematic, choice would be Maine Gov. Janet Mills. Why do I say problematic? After all, a Governor running for a Senate seat should be an easy bargain ( just think about Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, who will likely cruise to victory in November). Well, Mills is one of the more unpopular Governors of the nation; she is almost 80 years old, and she has already run. She eyed the nomination but dropped out after it became clear that she would suffer an embarrassing primary defeat to newcomer Platner. The entire saga of events - Mills’ failure to beat Platner - raises questions about her potential electoral performance. Perhaps Democrats need someone with a blank slate.

Another choice would be Troy Jackson, the former president of the Maine Senate, who ran for Governor this year but lost the primary to Hannah Pingree. Jackson, an ally of Bernie Sanders, would be more closely aligned with Platner’s popular values and policies. Of course, he lacks Platner’s populist appeal, but that might turn out to be an advantage. Mainers like Platner’s policies, but they obviously dislike the scandals surrounding them. Jackson would be a more experienced candidate who is, quite frankly, more boring. That could shift the attention away from scandals and back to Susan Collins, who will then have to defend her Senate voting record to an electorate that broadly dislikes President Trump.

Jackson’s clean slate appeal is also appearing in a hypothetical Senate poll. In the most recent Wedgewood Senate polls, Susan Collins beats Graham Platner by 4 points and is tied with Gov. Janet Mills. In a match-up against Jackson, however, Susan Collins loses by 5 points. The poll was fielded before the newest scandal broke.

How Can Democrats Win?

As you can see above, Susan Collins ’ electoral performance is not immune to partisan polarization and Maine’s blue trend. A polarization that, in 2024, defeated Democratic Senator Jon Tester in Montana.

Still, Democrats need two things to finally defeat Susan Collins: A very strong midterm environment and a decent, unproblematic candidate. They will likely meet the first requirement come November, but it long seemed like Platner could squander the second. If he drops out, Democrats get another shot at nominating a safer bet. That logic is also the reason why betting odds for Democrats winning in Maine have risen, instead of fallen, after the Platner story broke. Predictors seem to view Platner’s fall as more of a gift to Democrats rather than a liability.

Quite a few candidates may throw their hat in the ring, but voters won’t get to choose the replacement. That is now up to the party. Should they miss this opportunity or should Platner stay on, Republicans will, in all likelihood, hold the Senate.

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While Democrats are favored to win the House even in the face of Republican redistricting, their Senate battle looks much more difficult. They have to flip four seats to win control of the chamber. Apart from holding battlegrounds in Michigan and Georgia, they have to flip Maine and North Carolina, as well as two out of four states that voted for Trump by over 10 points (Alaska, Ohio, Texas, and Iowa). As of today, the Senate is a toss-up, with VoteHub giving Republicans a 56% chance of winning control.

So what do the new polls say, and what might they have missed?

Latest NYT/Siena Polls Might Skew Republican

The polls are a mixed bag for Democrats. They are the clear favorites to flip North Carolina, where former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper leads his challenger by 7 pts. Maine, the most Democratic state on paper, is turning into a close race, as populist Democratic candidate Graham Platner leads Susan Collins (R) by just three points. Democrats in Ohio, Alaska, and Iowa are 2-3 pts behind, while the race between James Talarico (D) and Ken Paxton (R) is tied in Texas. This is troublesome for Democrats as they need to win at least two of the states where they are behind and carry all where they are leading or tied.

But these results also seem strange at first glance. Ohio should be a prime target for Democrats, with former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who is well-known in the state, trying to reclaim his seat in the Senate. Yet, he is doing one point worse than the Democratic Candidate in Iowa, Josh Turek, a race long considered a stretch for Democrats. There is a simple reason for that divergence: Poll sampling.

Sienna/New York Times has recently started to weight their polls not just by party ID, but by recall vote, meaning they ask respondents whom they voted for in 2024. Since most midterms voters are higher-propensity voters who also vote in presidential races, this provides us with some useful data (In presidential elections, more non-voters turn out compared to the previous midterms and vice-versa). Election results, after all, don’t just change because people change their minds, but because some people don’t turn out. In 2024, Kamala Harris suffered from plummeting turnout among 2020 Biden voters. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats profited from the strong turnout of young voters.

In 2026, low-information Trump voters might stay home, and newly motivated, younger voters will likely vote Democratic. Most analysts expect the electorate to be much more Democratic as a result. The New York Times/Sienna polls do not. At least not by much.

The column on the right is the important one. It shows the difference between the sample electorate of the state poll and the state’s 2024 electorate. As you can see, the swing in the electorate of the samples varies slightly but decisively. The state with the unexpectedly good results for Democrats, Iowa, has a sample that’s 5.2 pts bluer (more Harris voters) than the 2024 results. Ohio, the negative surprise for Dems, only has a sample that’s 2.2 bluer than the state’s 2024 electorate.

Yes, states have different profiles and different economies, so different swings towards the Democrats are to be expected. Iowa is a farming state that has been suffering, but, in the data we have, this different election environment doesn’t show up.

Forecasters Predict Blue Electorate

According to The Argument, Democrats will do 8 pts better in Iowa in 2026 than they did in 2024, but they’ll do 11 pts better in Ohio. This does not align with the NYT’s sampled electorate.

Generally, Democrats are favored to outperform their 2024 results by 8 to 10 points, which would put the generic ballot at D+6 to D+8. A D+8 result (the same result as 2018) would likely require not just persuasion, but a bluer electorate. An electorate, the NYT/Siena polls are not working with in most of their polls. This leads me to believe that the NYT’s newest polls might be underestimating Democratic turnout and overestimating Republican turnout (except for Iowa, perhaps). If the electorate will be just 2-3 points bluer than the NYT/Siena polls suggest, Democrats could flip all six Senate seats and end up at 53 seats.

An indicator for better-than-expected results is the Democrats’ sizable advantage with highly motivated voters. In a recent Fox News poll of Maine, Graham Platner lost to Susan Collins by 3 points among registered voters. But among those “extremely motivated” to vote, he leads Collins by 9 pts.

We still have to keep in mind that turnout gaps are smaller in states that have high-profile races, as more voters will be aware of the election. A state with no big race will see lower turnout, with mostly motivated voters making their way to the ballot box. Democrats might therefore benefit if some races do not get nationalized too much and stay “under the radar”. Iowa or Nebraska, where Independent Dan Osborn is running, might be examples for that.

Can We Trust the Polls?

You should, however, also keep in mind that NYT/Siena is an “A” rated pollster, with outstanding methodology and transparency. It might just be that Democrats do unexpectedly well in Iowa while underperforming in Ohio. The best thing to do is throw these polls in the average and wait for Election Day. But can we trust the polls? Yes, but you should be aware of recent polling misses.

While polls famously overestimated Democrats whenever Trump was on the ballot, they didn’t in midterm years.1 In 2018, most polls were spot on, and in 2022, they even underestimated Senate Democrats in some key races. In 2025, they heavily underestimated Democrats: Mikie Sherrill was forecasted to narrowly win the governor’s race in New Jersey by about three points. She ended up winning by over 14 points. A ridiculous polling miss. I expect midterm polls to be more accurate, but, given recent history, it appears more likely that they will underestimate Democrats rather than Republicans.

You can make both points by cherrypicking certain topics, but that is not what I want to do here, because even for this question, the answer lies in publicly available data.

Contents

1. How the median ideology of Democrats and Republicans shifted

2. Divergence

3. Conclusions

Republicans Moved Far to The Right In Past 40 Years

VoteView tracks the ideological score of every single US House member and Senator on a scale from liberal (-1) to conservative (+1), using roll call voting data and the NOMINATE system created by political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal (the system, in part, analysis roll call votes). Compiling all scores of House members of one party together leaves you with a median ideological score for that party at a particular point in time. The great part is that VoteView has tracked this data for each US Congress dating back to formation of the two party system over 100 years ago, so we can get a timeline of how the major parties shifted ideologically. Before we take a look at historic shifts, let’s answer our leading question: Which party has drifted away from the center the most in the past 40 years? The answer: Republicans.

The median ideological score of Democrats has only slightly moved left, from -0.32 in 1977 to -0.40 in 2025. At the same time, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Their ideological score has more than doubled from 0.26 to 0.53. The result is the polarization gap - the ideological difference between the two major parties - jumping from 0.58 in 1977 to 0.93 in 2025. Republicans are responsible for about three-quarters of that increase. While Republicans in 1977 could argue that they were narrowly closer to the center than Democrats, they are today 0.13 points further away from it than their opponents.

In historical terms, the Democrats are just as liberal as they were in the 1920s. There was a period in time when the average House Democrat became much more centrist, but this was mainly due to Southern Democrats clinging to segregation (many of these Democrats abandoned the party after the civil rights movement, and white southerners are now the backbone of the Republican Party). Republicans also had a period of moderation during the civil rights era. But starting with Nixon’s presidency, who famously resorted to racist sentiments to win over the South, Republicans moved away from the center at an astoundingly steady pace.

That reality has not made its way to the voters. In a recent CBS/YouGov survey, 58% of Americans said that the Republican Party was too extreme, and 49% said the same about the Democratic Party. That comes despite the fact that the House Democrats have barely moved ideologically in the past 100 years, while Republicans have.

But what about the progressive Democrats calling for unprecedented ideas that even many of their colleagues view as too liberal? It is correct that there are a lot of differences among Democrats, but the party is closer together on the NOMINATE ideology scale than Republicans. In the 119th Congress (the current one), Republicans are stretched out on the x-axis, which measures ideology: Some members are moderates like their Democratic counterparts, but the dots on the grid you can find below stretch out to the conservative edge.

Democrats, on the other hand, are not stretched out horizontally, but vertically. The vertical axis “2nd dimension” measures not ideology, but divergence on secondary issues, such as social issues like Civil Rights. In polarized times, the gaps here have dwindled, as cross-party voting became rare. You can explore this timeline vizualisation to see how extensively members of congress used to stretch out on the y-axis as they frequently voted with the other party. While the y-axis does not measure loyalty, it still presents us with an informative picture.

Republicans unwavering bind and loyalty to Trump as well as their fear of his primary powers might explain the lack of fluctuation they have on the y-axis. The outlier is Thomas Massie, a conservative who was not afraid to buck Trump on many secondary issues like the Epstein Files. Massie just lost his primary to a Trump backed challenger.

On the Democratic side, there is still some eagerness to break with party expectations. Unsurprisingly, progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are at the bottom of that group, often breaking with their party, even as their ideologies broadly align. If you are into the math of this method, which I tried to understand and explain to my best abilities here, you can read up on detailed methodology and data analysis at VoteView.

Conclusion

The first conclusion is that the US has become incredibly polarized. 40 years or even 30 years ago, members in the scatter plot you see above used to overlap with the other party and were stretched out vertically, as cross-party voting was still the norm. Now, the parties are strictly separated, with very few moderates left. Here are all my conclusions about the current congress:

1. House Democrats are morde moderate than House Republicans.

2. Seven Democrats and five Republicans are within the very centrist -0.2 to 0.2 range. Three of these 12 representatives might lose re-election in 2026. A fourth, Jared Golden (D-ME) is retiring.

3. Republicans have 12 “hardliners” while Democrats have zero. This means 12 Republicans have a score of >0.8 while no Democrat exceeds -0.8 pts on the ideological scale

4. Democratic voting behavior, particularly among progressives, is less bound to the party than Republican voting behavior.

If you should even run into someone trying to argue about extremism or a leftward shift within the Democratic party, this is the data to prove them wrong.

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Granted, the joy is somewhat subdued, even for a die-hard football (yes, it’s called football) fan like me. The Trump administration’s attacks on democracy and civil rights, the barring of fans, and even a referee from Africa are certainly one issue. The other problem: Horrendous prices and a FIFA President who cozies up to Trump and couldn’t care less about those who make this sport so great: the Fans.

We will likely get a mixed World Cup, with a lack of fans present from multiple nations. Nevertheless, everyone I know is busy trying to guess who will win the trophy this time. I want to show you what the data says about each of the 48 teams, with a focus on the offensive and defensive tilt of each nation.

Offense vs Defense: How is Each Nation’s Squad Structured?

There is extensive material out there from data analysts predicting the World Cup, and they all come to a similar conclusion (more on that later). I didn’t want to put you through the same ordeal to tell you the favorites are favored to win. Instead, I tried something new. I collected data on the market valuation of each World Cup squad and grouped it by defensive and offensive players. Doing so would allow me to detect which squads have a more valuable - meaning better - offense and which have a more valuable defense.

You can interact with this chart to reveal details of each nation. The note at the bottom is important because if this weren’t a logarithmic graph but one where the scales are proportional, most smaller nations would be cramped in the bottom-left corner, as the distance in absolute value is much greater between the top nations than between smaller nations. While this visualization does not show an accurate scale of total market value, it does give an accurate representation of each nation’s defensive/offensive tilt. Here are some takeaways:

1. On average, the offense is more valuable: Because offensive players usually enjoy a better market value, most teams have a more valuable offense. The trend line, therefore, represents the average among our 48 squads. Mexico, which lies right on the trend line and represents the perfectly balanced nation among the 48 teams, has an offense that is 1.4x more valuable than its defense.

2. Most smaller teams rely on a good defense: Many immense underdogs like New Zealand, Curacao, and Uzbekistan have a much more defensive team than the average participant. Cape Verde is perhaps the best example, with a total squad valuation of €54.5 million. €41.4 million of that comes from the defense.

3. Ecuador is the biggest outlier among competitive nations: Ecuador is favored to make it to the knock-out stage. Nations with a similar market value live close to our trend line, but Ecuador doesn’t. Their defense is almost four times more valuable than their offense, powered by two center-backs, William Pacho of Paris St. German and Piero Hincapié of Arsenal FC. Both played in this year's Champions League final.

4. The favorites are close together, but differences emerge: Brazil has the biggest spread in valuation in favor of their offense, while Portugal has a slight defensive tilt. France has a slight offensive tilt, driven, of course, by their start attacking trio: Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé, and Michael Olisé. Germany has the most balanced squad out of the broader favorites, followed by Spain and England.

5. Star Players can distort the picture: Having one star player with a stellar market value can create a disbalance in the valuation between defense and offense. Norway is a good example of this. Their offense is 4.5x more valuable than their defense, but if you strip away their star striker, Erling Haaland, that factor plummets to 1.9x, which would be close to average.

One note about my method: Defensive players include the goalkeeper, all defenders, and defensive midfielders. Offensive players include center midfielders, offensive midfielders, wingers, and strikers. Some players, most often midfielders, can be used both in offensive and defensive positions. Here’s the data as a searchable table, with the defense and offense valuations as a share of the total valuation:

Who Will Win (According to Data)?

Predicting a World Cup winner like predicting an Election with statistical data is a widely used practice. I can point you to Nate Silver’s extensive World Cup predictions, which are based on countless data points. Long story short: Most models and experts expect the best squad to win, which would be France and Spain. Other favorites are Argentina, England, Portugal, or maybe even Germany.

I will watch as many matches of the World Cup as I can, even as the circumstances under which the greatest event in the world is held get more terrible by the day. FIFA and the US as a host may have lost their ways, but the beautiful game, as they call it, will always bring people together, no matter the circumstances.

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I was recently going through topics and data I could write about, and during that process, I flipped through what other data journalists are writing about. Between elections, the World Cup (I might write about this one tomorrow), and Trump, I realized that almost no one is talking about the climate crisis anymore. So here we go with some reasons why we shouldn’t forget the climate crisis, including a map of where America has gotten hotter in the past 45 years.

Contents

1. Everybody Forgot the Climate Crisis

2. The United States has gotten a lot hotter: Interactive Map

3. How can the Climate Crisis become a Number One Issue again?

1. Everybody Forgot the Climate Crisis

The gut feeling that a large portion of the media and the public don’t really care about the climate crisis anymore is also evident in data.

The Economist/YouGov polls don’t just track Trump’s approval, which just hit an all-time low, but also which issue voters name as the most important issue facing America. Naturally, inflation/prices (30% say it’s the number one issue) leads, followed by jobs & the economy (15%), and Healthcare (10%).

“Climate change and the environment” is only ranked 7th out of 11 issues. A meager 5% of voters say it’s the most important issue facing America - that’s 8% of Democrats and only 1% of Republicans. The drastic party split has a history. While the importance of the issue fluctuated over the past years as Democrats and Independents changed their priorities, Republican voters had always assigned low importance to climate change or the environment. Given that almost half of Republicans, including their President, don’t even believe in man-made climate change or refuse to acknowledge rising temperatures, that is not exactly surprising.

To keep it very brief: Yes, man-made climate change is real. Virtually every scientist on the planet agrees on that.

You can also observe the low importance of the climate crisis on the campaign trail. The issue wasn’t part of any debate in 2024, and likely won’t matter in 2026 either. Compare that with 2018 and 2020, when climate protection was an issue that Democrats publicly stressed over and over again, as the climate movement around Fridays For Future peaked.

The fact that Democrats don’t talk about climate change doesn’t mean they won’t tackle it. Biden famously made the largest investment in renewable energies in the United States’ history. On the other side, Trump - driven by the ideology that windmills cause cancer - is actively shutting down green power plans.

Biden’s investment was long overdue, but it may be too late. Researchers already agree that the utterly important 1,5 degree mark, which global warming must not exceed in this century, will most likely be exceeded anyway. Humanity has already inflicted enough damage, despite knowing of science’s warnings.

View this post in your browser to experience all visualizations in the best way possible.

Global warming is affecting the US, and thanks to the CDC, which records temperatures and heat days for each US county, it can be visualized.

2. The United States Is Heating Up: Interactive Map

(This is an animated map, you can find the interactive map below)

The map above shows the time-lapse change from two different eras. To get more meaningful results, I looked at two groups of five years. Displayed are heat days (days when the temperature exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit, or 32,2 degrees Celsius) from 1979 to 1983 and from 2019 to 2023.

You can spot right away that, while the five-year period from the late 70s to early 80s already had intense heat in some areas, the occurrence of heat days expanded across the US.

For a more accurate comparison of how many more heat days each US county experienced in the early 2020s compared to the early 1980s, you can interact with the map below.

As you can see, there are even some counties that “cooled down”, but most of the US saw an increase in heat days. You can hover over the map to reveal details. We can make detailed comparisons using this data. For example, central Florida and parts of East Texas bordering the Gulf of Mexico have seen the sharpest increase in heat days. Most of these dark purple counties recorded between 250 and 300 additional heat days between 2019 and 2023. That’s an additional 8 to 10 months of days over 90 degrees Fahrenheit within five years.

Most of the bible belt - states like Alabama or Georgia - saw an additional 100-200 heat days (roughly 3 to 6 months) within five years.

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3. Can the Climate Crisis Become a Number One Issue Again?

There’s a rather simple and obvious answer to the question of why voters don’t name climate change as an important issue: the media.

A prominent theory in communication and political sciences is the “Agenda Setting” theory. It has been proven empirically over decades. It states that the topics news outlets choose to report on are the topics that the public views as important. The media is setting the agenda for the public debate. If the media talks about crime non-stop, so will voters; if they talk about immigration non-stop, so will voters. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, the climate protests around Fridays for Future dominated news coverage in Europe, including Germany. Voters subsequently named it as one of the most important issues, and the Green Party of Germany celebrated record polling results. In the 2025 election, migration - which had not been a big topic for a while but suddenly got built up ahead of the election - dominated news coverage and election debates. The far-right AFD finished second with a record result of almost 21%.

A direct connection between news agenda setting and vote preference is disputed and difficult to prove, but we do know that the media sets the agenda for public debates. Can we influence that?

On one side, journalists can try to find a balanced approach in the stories they choose to report. Politicians can also exert influence by addressing issues, as media outlets tend to report on that, and, by doing so, they give an issue airtime (Think about all the crazy conspiracies that have gotten substantial coverage because they have been put out by the President and not some random Facebook user).

Lastly, the public has the power to influence media coverage. The Fridays for Future protests are a great example of that. The key to their success was disruption. If the rallies had been held on Sundays, few people would have cared, but since they were on Fridays and encouraged the youth to skip school, they raised national attention. Even if it’s negative attention, like politicians raging about kids missing school, it’s still attention to the issue of climate change.

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1. US Population Growth: Interactive Map

2. How Movers are Reshaping Elections in Florida & Georgia

3. The 2030 Census Might Hurt Democrats

4. Did Population Growth Help Kamala Harris in Ohio?

There are certain trends in American politics that are reshaping the Electoral Map. Some of them are profound and long-lasting, like the party switch among white southerners after Democrats aligned themselves with the civil rights movement in the 1960s or Trump’s gain among white working-class workers. Other trends are more isolated and less stable, such as Trump’s gains among Hispanic voters in 2024 (he is now historically unpopular with the group).

These shifts have all, to some extent, changed America’s electoral map. White working-class voters have turned Ohio from a swing state to a Trump +11 state; educated suburban voters have turned Virginia into a solidly Democratic state.

Some state trends, however, are not driven by political realignment but by something else: People moving. Millions of Americans have moved from one state to another in recent years, and there are a few reasons why their decisions to move can reshape America’s electoral maps.

Florida & Georgia: Movers are Reshaping Elections

One of my all-time favorite NYT data pieces analyzed where Americans moved at the county level to map polarization in the US. They looked at people leaving swing counties - counties that voted for Biden or Trump by less than five points - and their destination.

They found a clear pattern: Republican voters were much more likely to choose a heavily Republican county, and Democrats were much more likely to choose a more Democratic county. The idea is simple: in a polarized society, people want to live near neighbors who share their views. The NYT observed the same development on the state level, with blue states getting even bluer and red states even redder.

While Vermont becming bluer or Wyoming becoming redder because of US-migration would not change any election results, an uneven influx of voters might tip elections in swing states. The most drastic example of this is Florida.

Trump won Florida by just around 3 points in 2020, yet the voters who moved there between 2020 and 2024 were more Republican than Democratic by a margin of 40 points. On the raw numbers level, around 100,000 more Republicans than Democrats moved to Florida. Trump went on to win the state by 13.1 points in 2024, and the state has moved away from being considered a swing state (contrary to Ohio or even Texas, it’s not a target for Democrats in 2026).

An opposite, although smaller, trend can be observed in Georgia. Democrats have made inroads in the state, which was considered reliably Republican during the Obama Era. Now it has two Democratic Senators. Biden won it by 0.2 pts in 2020, and while Harris lost it in 2024, the state moved left relative to the national popular vote.

According to the NYT analysis, Democrats led Republicans by 12 points among newcomers to the state. Additionally, more Republicans than Democrats left the state, and a third of those moved to - you’ve guessed it - Florida.

What about other swing states? Arizona has seen an influx of more Republicans by 26 points, while new movers in the Blue Wall (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) favored Democrats by about ten points. We have to keep in mind that the net migration to these states is lower, so we might just be talking about a difference of a few thousand people.

Who do these moves favor? That’s hard to say, but I am more inclined to give Democrats the edge (except for one caveat, the 2030 census, which I will discuss in the next section). Florida is continuing to see a broad influx of conservative voters, but that doesn’t change the electoral map much. Even before 2020, Florida had voted for Trump and had two Republican Senators. Going from three-point victories to 13-point victories might feel better, but it doesn’t change control of Congress or the presidency - for now. Republicans might be in danger of creating a vote sink - an already Republican state where conservatives from Swing States move to, creating an advantage for Democrats in these states.

Something similar is already happening in Georgia, where the metro Atlanta area is growing rapidly, making the state rocket to the left.

This type of suburban growth seems to be favoring Democrats, and it’s also present in Texas, where suburbs of Houston and Dallas have grown and trended Democratic, putting the state on the map for Democrats in the future.

Still, there is one caveat for Democrats, and it’s the 2030 census

Democratic states might lose electoral votes

Conservatives flocking to Florida might not change control of Congress, but it changes the state’s population, which can create a problem for democrats. The Electoral Votes a state has in the Electoral College, as well as its number of seats in the House of Representatives, are determined by the population. At the start of every decade, a new census determines the population and re-attributes Electoral Votes. Booming growth in Texas, Florida, and even Idaho is expected to net Republicans new Electoral Votes in the Electoral College. At the same time, Democratic states like California and New York, which have been struggling with housing and have been losing citizens, could lose Electoral Votes.

That could change everything. In 2024, Harris could have won 270 EVs by simply carrying three swing states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (as well as Nebraska’s 2nd district). Under current projections, that would no longer be possible, and Democrats would need to win an additional state.

Many in the Democratic Party are aware of the problem and are urging their state parties to tackle housing. There is still some time to turn the trend around, and some developments, like the mass exodus from California during the COVID pandemic, have slowed or stopped entirely.

Did Harris Profit From Movers in 2024?

While both Trump and Harris will have profited from an uneven influx of newcomers in some states, there are many other factors that make a statistical analysis of the effects of movers on the 2024 presidential election difficult. Vote swings are also driven by persuasion or turnout.

As a fun exercise, there is one state I wanted to look at: Ohio. If you look at our map, you’ll see that population growth has stagnated in much of Ohio, except for two counties: Union County and Delaware County, which you can easily spot as the two green spots in central Ohio. Harris lost ground in Ohio compared to Biden, but in these two counties, she did not.

The analysis of all counties shows that, in Ohio, there was at least some correlation between population growth and the 2020 to 2024 swing. Harris only gained ground in three counties. Two of these were the two counties - Union and Delaware - that saw the strongest population growth from 2020 to 2024. The third, Clermont County, also saw decent population growth of around 3%. The statewide average was 0.5%.

Again, many other factors contribute to vote swings. Some Counties that are more likely to see growth are suburban counties, but these are shifting left even without Democratic voters moving there, simply due to persuasion effects (Trump has lost a lot of ground in the suburbs). The R² value of 0.31 isn’t great, but it’s not horrible either.

The correlation is much weaker in other states I looked at, like Georgia. Ohio seems to be a unique example where population growth was geographically concentrated, and other trends may have been more muted.

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