It’s Election Day! Two years after Donald Trump’s return to power, America votes again. Although he won narrow control of both the House and the Senate in 2024, President Trump has accomplished fairly little legislatively and has largely relied on Executive Orders, which the next president can undo, and on his conservative Supreme Court Justices. Still, the eighty-year-old has been in a comfortable position over the past two years.
Should Democrats win big today, the next two years could become extremely uncomfortable for Trump. As my House Forecast and ratings for the Senate & Governor races will show you below, the President is in a lot of trouble.
Contents:
The House Forecast
The Senate Predictions (+detailed analysis)
Governor Predictions (+detailed analysis)
The House Forecast: SAFE Democratic (FLIP)
A quick explainer: The House forecast comes from my probabilistic forecast model, which I kept up to date over the past year. I am sticking with the model’s calculated calls even if I might personally disagree in some cases. I don’t have a model for the Senate or for gubernatorial contests, so my predictions for these will be purely analytical.
In my final forecast for the House of Representatives, Democrats are overwhelming favorites to win. While there is always room for doubt, the 96% chance that my model is giving the Democrats puts the House in safe Democratic territory. Trump’s efforts to have Republicans gerrymander enough seats so that Republicans retain power will fail, maybe even spectacularly so. Because one day ahead of the election, the only question about the House of Representatives is: How many seats will Democrats win?
My forecast favors Democrats in 236 seats and Republicans in 199 seats. In 40,000 simulations, Democrats won 243 seats on average. That is higher than the projected value because our model thinks Democrats have much more upside potential than Republicans.
As you can see, the model considers 208 seats as safe bets for Democrats (seats with >93% Democratic chance of victory), while Republicans only have 143 seats in that category. 208 already puts Democrats close to the 218-seat majority, and the 11 seats in the likely D column put them over the line. Even if Democrats lost all toss-ups and seats that lean in their favor, they would win the House. The model calls all races, including those rated as toss-ups. Below you will find an overview of all races that are not categorized as “safe”.
With that forecast, it is very well possible that Democrats even end up with over 240 seats, a real midterm tsunami. At that point, Republican seats could fall like a house of cards as Democrats will come close to breaking Republican Gerrymanders.
There are many races to watch in the House, and you can download the image above to have a quick cheat sheet about where each district is supposed to stand according to our House Forecast. If you want an hour-by-hour guide for when the polls in each of these districts close, I can highly recommend PlusMinus4’s election night guide.