The 2026 midterms are heating up across the country. Democrats are over-performing and defeating Republicans. The political world is buzzing with new data and polling, shifting the likelihood of races into new territory. This also means that there is a lot of drama starting to show itself in some races.

The recent election results show a shift towards the Democratic Party, and it is putting some seats in danger of flipping away from Republicans. We live in a time, politically, where being an incumbent comes as extra baggage rather than an advantage. It has led to some wild political moves. Here are some of the elections that we are watching after some sudden shifts caused drama.

Montana: Senate Race

The Montana Senate race took a turn on March 4 when Republican incumbent Sen. Steve Daines withdrew from the race three minutes before the filing deadline. He then endorsed Kurt Alme, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana. Many in the political world see right through the façade and call the move a trick to allow Alme to file to run while keeping other candidates out of the race.

By waiting until the last minute and essentially choosing a successor, Sen. Daines is putting his finger on the scale. The maneuver shut out Democrats from mounting a strong challenger in the now open Senate race. Independent candidate Seth Bodnar is capitalizing on the drama Sen. Daines created. Before the announcement, Sen. Daines held a sizable lead, and the story was that Republicans would hold onto the Senate seat.

However, the decision could put the seat into play for the 2026 midterm elections, costing Republicans a seat in the Senate. Inside Elections moved the race from Solid Republican to Likely Republican in the aftermath of Sen. Daines’s sudden retirement. President Donald Trump won Montana in 2024 with 58.4 percent of the vote. Sen. Daines intentionally injected uncertainty into the race with potentially far-reaching consequences.

Alaska: Senate Race

Mary Peltola is giving Democrats hope of a potential flip in the Senate. Peltola is no stranger to defying the odds when it comes to politics in Alaska. She won a special election in 2022 after the Republican incumbent Don Young died. She became the first Native Alaskan and woman elected to represent Alaska in Congress. She also became the first person born in Alaska elected to serve in Congress and the first Democrat elected to Congress in Alaska since 1972.

Polling shows Peltola leading the pack in Alaska’s jungle primary and ranked-choice voting system. Peltola's entering the race moved what would have been a Solid Republican seat to Lean Republican across several organizations tracking elections. She is challenging incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan. A recent survey from The Alaska Current shows that Alaska voters are not happy with Sen. Sullivan’s work in the Senate. The survey reports that 41 percent of Alaska voters think the senator should have another term, while 53 percent believe that he should be replaced.

Iowa: Senate Race

Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa threw the Senate race into chaos long before 2026. During a town hall in 2025, Sen. Ernst was asked about Medicaid cuts that were coming as part of the Big Beautiful Bill that Republicans supported. Her response was, “Well, we are all going to die.” The comment landed as well as you would expect. The backlash was swift and severe, eventually forcing Sen. Ernst to announce her retirement from the Senate, a seat she has held since 2015.

With Sen. Ernst out of the race, national Democrats are hopeful that the right candidate could turn Iowa from a Republican state back to a battleground state. Iowa voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Current polling shows a close race with 3 percent between Republican Ashley Hinson and Democrat Zach Wahls. Wahls is currently leading in the polls for the Iowa Democratic Senate primary. Cook Political Report names the Senate race in Iowa as Likely Republican, showing a shift towards Democrats.

Texas: Senate Race

The Texas Senate race drama has less to do with party affiliation and more to do with unwavering loyalty to the president over country. Democrat James Talarico won the party’s nomination after the primary election on March 3. However, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton failed to get 50 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, triggering a runoff election.

Where this gets dicey is AG Paxton’s claim that he will drop out of the race if Sen. Cornyn commits to suspending the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act. Sen. Cornyn had previously stated that he would not support suspending the filibuster for the vote, and it has thrown the Republican Party into chaos over the election. Why? Well, President Trump was set to endorse the incumbent, but he is determined to pass the SAVE Act in an attempt to disenfranchise voters ahead of the midterm elections.

AG Paxton’s announcement leaves President Trump unable to endorse one candidate over the other. On the one hand, he could endorse the incumbent to protect the seat. On the other hand, he can endorse a man who said he would drop out of the race if the incumbent changes his thoughts about the filibuster.

Meanwhile, recent polling shows both Sen. Cornyn and AG Paxton trailing Talarico by very slim margins. Talarico leads Sen. Cornyn 44 to 43, and he leads Paxton 47 to 45. Democrats have been trying to flip a Texas Senate seat for a decade, and this could be their best shot in a long time to turn a statewide seat blue.

Texas: 23rd Congressional District

Running from San Antonio to El Paso, Texas’s 23rd Congressional District is one to watch. Rep. Tony Gonzales has represented the district since 2021. However, a political scandal upended his reelection bid after admitting to an affair with a staffer who committed suicide last year. For months, Rep. Gonzales denied the affair, despite text evidence that he engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship.

After he dropped out, YouTube personality Brandon Herrera, also known as the “AK Guy,” became the Republican candidate. He was quickly endorsed by President Trump. Herrera has a long history of posting Nazi and gun content on social media. Texas’s 23rd Congressional District includes Uvalde, the site of the Robb Elementary School shooting.

Recent polling shows that Democratic challenger Katy Padilla Stout is within striking distance of Herrera in a district that is largely Latino. Stout is polling at 40 percent compared to Herrera’s 42 percent.

Why do these elections matter?

Democrats are capitalizing on disenchanted voters who are moving away from Republicans. Recent special elections show Democrats over-performing in even the most Republican districts with strong support for President Trump in 2024.

On January 31, 2026, Taylor Rehmet pulled off a major upset for Republicans when he flipped Texas’s 9th Senate District for Democrats. The seat had been held by Republicans since 1992, ending a 34-year streak of Republicans representing the district. Rehmet won the district by 14 points, a dramatic swing from the 20-point victory by Republican Kelly Hancock in 2022. The 34-point swing is largely attributed to the shift of Latino voters back towards Democrats following the 2024 presidential election.

Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives that could disappear after the 2026 midterms. Republican leadership has regularly stated that if Democrats control the Senate and the House, it would be an effective stop to President Trump’s agenda. Americans, according to polling, are unhappy with the president’s job. Fifty-five percent of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s job performance, with factors like the economy, the Iran war, and tariffs dragging down his approval rating.

Independent and Latino voters are shifting to the left. In a survey with Latino business owners by Politico, 42 percent said that their economic situation has gotten worse under President Trump. New data shows that 45 percent of Americans now identify as politically independent, the largest number ever recorded. The shift, however, seems to be favoring Democrats leading into the 2026 midterm elections.

There is a lot of chatter about the gubernatorial race in California. The top-two primary system, also called a jungle primary, has conservative voices on social media claiming that California is poised to have a Republican governor. For months, former Riverside County sheriff and Oath Keeper Chad Bianco was leading the pack. Second was Steve Hilton, a conservative commentator from the United Kingdom. Republicans really thought that they had something cooking in the Golden State, but claiming an early victory that never materializes is typical of the California GOP. New polling shows that the dream of a Republican-only race for governor in California is quickly evaporating.

Sorry, Republicans. The new frontrunner for California governor is a Democrat

For months, polling numbers showed a rare Republican two-way race in the top-two primary. A top-two primary is when all candidates for an office run against each other in the primary. This means that there is no Democratic or Republican primary for a two-party matchup for the general election. This is a rare primary structure that is only used in a handful of states. California and Washington both use a top-two primary system. Louisiana has what is called a classic jungle primary, where all of the candidates run on the same ballot, and only the one with more than 50 percent of the vote wins. Otherwise, there is a runoff. In Alaska, there is a similar system, but the top four candidates go into a ranked-choice voting runoff.

Previous polling showed Chad Bianco, a former sheriff from Riverside County and an unapologetic former member of Oath Keepers, and Steve Hilton, a conservative political commentator born in the United Kingdom, leading the large pack of gubernatorial hopefuls. This had Republicans hyped that they might take the governorship in California.

New polling from Emerson dashed those hopes this week when it was reported that Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell is now leading the pack with 17 percent. Meanwhile, Hilton remained in second place with 13 percent, and Bianco dropped to third place with 11 percent. Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer is tied with Bianco for third place. Katie Porter, who was the favored candidate and the first to announce her candidacy, is in fifth place with 8 percent. So far, 25 percent of voters are still undecided and likely deciding on which Democrat to support.

The possibility of a Republican governor for California is very slim

The California GOP has been relying on a potential lockout scenario to win the California gubernatorial race. While it is technically possible, it is also an almost impossible situation. The gubernatorial race is filled with a lot of hopefuls.

There are currently nine Democrats in the race for governor. When you add up the polling numbers between Swalwell, Steyer, Porter, Antonio Villaraigosa, and Xavier Becerra, it accounts for 42 percent of likely voters. Meanwhile, the only Republicans in the mix account for 24 percent of potential voters.

For reference, Democratic voters outnumber Republican voters in California by almost double. There are 10,398,558 registered Democrats in California compared to 5,845,164 registered Republicans.

History shows that Californians aren’t into the Republican Party

Conservative pundits and social media users were obsessed with telling everyone that California is turning red. It would be an impressive feat if Republicans could somehow flip the Democratic stronghold. However, the data and history are not on their side. While they point to maps with large red districts, population numbers are important. The red areas of California are largely rural with fewer voters than major metropolitan areas, like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

When you dig into the historical data, the idea of a Republican governor becomes even more unlikely. The last Republican governor of California was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected during a recall election in 2003 and won reelection in 2006. He served until 2011 and left the state in bad shape. Schwarzenegger left office with a 23 percent approval rating, a $28 billion deficit, and an economy in ruins.

To put this in even clearer terms, Schwarzenegger was elected as governor the last time in 2006. Coincidentally, 2006 was the last time that California voters elected a Republican to a statewide office. By 2022, no Republicans have come within a 10-point margin of winning a statewide office.

As the race narrows, the Democratic lead will grow

With so many Democrats running for governor in California, the numbers right now aren’t telling the true story. California is strongly Democratic and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The Republican Party's rebrand to MAGA and anti-immigrant doesn’t play well within the state. The last thing that Californians want is a state-level government that functions like a Trump administration.

Two out of three California voters do not approve of the president’s job. More specifically, a large majority of voters in California said that political extremism or threats to democracy, economic conditions, and immigration are important problems facing the nation with President Donald Trump in the White House. Three out of four believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction. These fears and opinions spell a worsening situation for the California Republican Party, which is already weakened due to the national Republican Party’s message.

Additionally, none of the low-ranking Democratic candidates would want to be the spoiler that would usher in a Republican state government these days. If any of them want to have a future career in California politics, the right thing to do is to suspend their campaigns and put their support behind the leading Democrats in the field. Once that happens, the fantasy of a Republican winning the 2026 gubernatorial race in California will fully evaporate. Till then, pay attention to the numbers, not the loud voices.

Representative Tony Gonzales (R-Texas 23rd) is not seeking reelection to Congress. The announcement comes after mounting pressure for answers after his staffer, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, died by suicide. Speculation swirled that the two had an affair after Santos-Aviles’s tragic death. Here is a recap of what led to the end of Rep. Gonzales’s political career.

Rep. Tony Gonzales will not seek reelection after a political scandal

Rep. Gonzales was first elected to represent Texas’s 23rd Congressional District in 2020. In that election, he defeated current San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones after he was endorsed by President Donald Trump. By 2022, he won the Republican primary with 55.87 percent of the vote. That margin became slimmer in 2024. He won the Republican primary with only 50.6 percent of the vote, which is less than 400 votes.

But his ongoing decline in popularity is not the reason that he isn’t seeking reelection. Rep. Gonzales has been embroiled in a political scandal that includes sex, infidelity, a tragic death, and lying.

It all started with the tragic death of staffer Regina Ann Santos-Aviles

Santos-Aviles was the Uvalde Regional District Director for Rep. Gonzales. First responders were called to her home the night of Sept. 13, 2025, after the staffer sustained burn injuries over her body. According to footage recovered from the home, the video showed Santos-Aviles covering herself in gasoline and lighting herself on fire.

Her death exposed allegations of infidelity between the congressman and Santos-Aviles. According to a report from the San Antonio Express-News, attorney Bobby Barrera contacted the politician about $300,000 for a non-disclosure agreement about the affair on behalf of Adrian Aviles, Santos-Aviles’s husband. Rep. Gonzales shared the message on social media, claiming that Aviles was attempting to blackmail him.

Rep. Gonzales denied the allegations of sexual misconduct for months

Barrera told CNN that he had text messages from Santos-Aviles that confirmed an affair. According to the attorney, Santos-Aviles showed text messages between her and the congressman to her husband in 2024 when she admitted the affair to him. Additionally, Santos-Aviles texted with a close colleague about the affair.

Rep. Gonzales came out strongly denying the allegations of any impropriety between him and Santos-Aviles. Furthermore, he claimed that Aviles and Barrera were tarnishing the memory of Santos-Aviles with the accusations.

“Ms. Santos-Aviles was a kind soul who devoted her life to making the community a better place. Her efforts led to improvements in school safety, healthcare, and rural water like never before,” Rep. Gonzales said in a statement to CNN. “It’s shameful that Brandon Herrera is using a disgruntled former staffer to smear her memory and score political points, conveniently pushing this out the very day early voting started. I am not going to engage in these personal smears and instead will remain focused on helping President Trump secure the border and improve the lives of all Texans.”

People wouldn’t let the congressman skirt accountability

Despite his consistent denials of an affair, people continued to ask questions. The mounting evidence prompted Republican leadership in Congress to call on the House Ethics Committee to launch a formal investigation into the relationship. The committee announced an investigation into whether Rep. Gonzales engaged in a sexual relationship with a member of his staff on March 4.

By March 5, Rep. Gonzales admitted to having a sexual relationship with Santos-Aviles and dropped out of the race.

“I made a mistake, and I had a lapse in judgment, and there was a lack of faith, and I take full responsibility for those actions,” Rep. Gonzales told conservative radio host Joe Pags. “Since then, I’ve reconciled with my wife, Angel. I’ve asked God to forgive me, which he has, and my faith is as strong as ever.”

Republican leadership released a joint statement commending him for stepping aside.

“We have encouraged him to address these very serious allegations directly with his constituents and his colleagues,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Whip Tom Emmer, and GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain said in the joint statement. “In the meantime, Leadership has asked Congressman Gonzales to withdraw from his race for reelection.”

With no incumbent running, the race for Texas’s 23rd Congressional District is open. The Republican who will be running in his place is “AK Man” Brandon Herrera, who is described as a Nazi cosplayer and gun enthusiast. The district includes Uvalde, the site of the Robb Elementary School shooting.

In our 121,487,563rd reason why we need a matriarchy, the U.S. House of Representatives has just passed an election overhaul bill that could make it harder for married women to vote.

It is yet another linguistic obsession of the government to “save” America. This time, it is the proposed SAVE America Act, which passed its first hurdle in the House last Wednesday. The proposal would impose strict limitations on voter registration and voting, including new rules that voting rights groups warn could trip up married women and LGBTQ+ people who have changed their names.

The only vote in favor by the Democratic Party was that of Texas Representative Henry Cuellar.

The bill that says “SAVE” while building a paperwork trap

According to The 19th, the SAVE America Act would require voters to provide documents proving citizenship at the time of registration and would layer additional ID rules on top. Critics say the combo creates a bureaucratic bottleneck for otherwise eligible citizens, especially in rural areas and among people with limited access to the required documents.

The problem is not theoretical. The 19th reported that voting rights groups have warned the bill would pose a barrier for millions of Americans who have changed their legal names due to marriage, assimilation, or gender identity, since key documents like birth certificates often do not match a person’s current legal name.

And if the point is “election integrity,” it is worth saying plainly: noncitizen voting is already illegal, yet the GOP keeps writing legislation as if it is standard practice.

Married women are not collateral damage. They are the target audience.

Proponents of the bill have scoffed at the idea that the act would meaningfully affect married people who have changed their names.

GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, a vocal advocate of the bill from Tennessee, said the concept of married women not being able to vote under the act was “ridiculous.”

“It’s an easy change — there’s no problem with that at all,” Burchett told The 19th. “That’s just like saying it’s Jim Crow. That’s an antiquated argument that nobody buys.”

But the bill’s critics are not imagining an obstacle. They are describing how bureaucracy works in real life: missing documents, mismatched names, inconsistent state systems, wait times, fees, confusion, and the quiet exhaustion that makes people give up.

As New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez put it: “A real solution would eliminate the provision that requires women to go around and gather all these documents only to then affirm their own identity.”

The “SAVE” brand is the story. They keep using it for a reason.

If you have read the Heritage Foundation’s January special report, “Saving America by Saving the Family,” the SAVE America Act lands less like an isolated voting bill and more like a familiar chapter title.

Heritage frames its project as “justice,” driven by “two truths,” including this one:

“The first is that all children have a right to the affection and protection of the man and woman who created them.”

It follows with a second “truth” that narrows the acceptable household into one moral template:

“The second is that the ideal environment in which to exercise this right is in a loving and stable home with their married biological parents.”

That report defines marriage as “the committed union of one man and one woman” and calls it the cornerstone of civilization. While the language sounds philosophical, the impact is administrative. Once a movement convinces itself that “saving” the country requires policing the terms of family life, it starts treating women’s autonomy as a system’s failure, not a right.

So when a bill appears that could make it harder to register and vote after a name change and has the same wording in its title, of course we are going to panic.

“Election integrity” has always been the vehicle. Control is the destination.

The SAVE America Act fits inside a broader, increasingly explicit GOP strategy to cast doubt on elections, tighten registration, and normalize federal intrusion into voting systems, even as Trump openly floats the idea of “nationalizing” voting.

Even some Senate Republicans have expressed concern. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski warned against one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington and said the push is “not how we build trust.”

And yet, the political logic remains consistent: when you cannot win on persuasion, you try to win on friction. You create obstacles that feel “reasonable” in a press release and punishing at the DMV. You call it security, but in reality, you are deciding who has the time, money, documents, and stamina to participate in democracy.

The point is to make participation feel risky

Here is the emotional math these bills rely on: If you are a married woman with a changed name, you start doing the calculus: Do I have the right paperwork? Do I have time off work to fix it? What if I get turned away? What if I get flagged? What if I make a mistake?

If you are LGBTQ+ and you changed your name to better align with your identity, the stakes escalate.

And once enough people decide it is safer to sit out than to fight an administrative maze, the bill succeeds without ever needing to say the quiet part out loud.

The 2026 midterms across the United States are going to be wild this year. As in most midterms, the elections will show how voters feel about the direction of the country. Recent immigration raids have pushed polling in favor of Democrats in generic matchups, adding to momentum from special elections in 2025. As we gear up for a year of campaigning, here are some of the races we are watching.

The Senate race in Texas is drawing a lot of attention

Democrats have been hopeful for years that Texas can flip a Republican seat to Democrats. Texas Democrats had hoped for more than one election cycle that Beto O’Rourke could take Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) seat. Sen. Cruz, who fled to California to avoid the latest winter storm in Texas, isn’t up for re-election this year.

However, longtime Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has held his seat since 2002. He is facing his own challengers within the Republican Party in the primary. He is being challenged by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is in the middle of a divorce brought by his wife on biblical grounds.

On the Democrat side, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas 30th) and Texas State Rep. James Talarico are locked in a heated primary. Rep. Crockett made a name for herself holding powerful people accountable in Congressional hearings and refusing to back down or sanitize the truth. State Rep. Talarico was one of the Texas Democrats who fled the state to delay the vote on partisan-drawn Congressional maps.

The primary election is set for March 3, 2026.

All eyes are on Minnesota in the 2026 midterms

The Trump administration has honed in on Minnesota as part of its dangerous mass deportation campaign. The 2026 midterms in Minnesota experienced a shake-up when Gov. Tim Walz announced that he would not be seeking re-election to a third term. This prompted Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to announce her candidacy for governor.

Sen. Klobuchar has served as senator for the Land of 10,000 Lakes for four terms. She is a well-liked politician in Minnesota who currently has a favorability rating of 50 percent, with 33 percent disapproving.

The Republican Party has two people running for governor. One is State House Speaker Lisa Demuth. The other is the former MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who is a Trump loyalist and peddled the election fraud conspiracy.

If national trends from last year carry over to 2026, things look good for Democrats. In the case of Minnesota, the unrelenting and violent raids that caused the death of two American citizens have galvanized voters.

There are several races around the country in the 2026 midterms, and we will be reporting on them throughout the year, so stay tuned.