Five days out, the 2026 midterms have settled into a handful of races that will decide control of Congress. The ad money is mostly spent. The maps, redrawn in Texas, California, Florida, North Carolina and elsewhere, are final for this cycle. What's left is the question every government affairs team is asking: where does the battleground actually stand, and what should you watch for on election night?
On October 29, CQ Roll Call's campaign team took one last look before the votes come in. Andrew Menezes, politics and campaigns editor at CQ Roll Call, moderated a conversation with Mary Ellen McIntire and Daniela Altimari, campaigns and elections reporters and authors of the At the Races newsletter, and Nathan L. Gonzales, CQ Roll Call elections analyst and editor and publisher of Inside Elections. They walked through Inside Elections' final race ratings, CQ Roll Call's final lists of the most vulnerable senators and House members, and the states that could tell the story early. Here's what they had to say.
Key Takeaways
- Inside Elections' final ratings of the cycle moved 45 House races and nine Senate races toward Democrats. Gonzales pointed to the president's slipping job approval and what he called "incredible softness" in Republican support, and noted that Republican strategists themselves are flagging races to watch.
- CQ Roll Call's final list of the most vulnerable senators is led by Ohio's Jon Husted, Maine's Susan Collins and Alaska's Dan Sullivan. Georgia's Jon Ossoff, who topped the first list in May 2025, now sits at No. 8, a fall McIntire said she has never seen in a general election ranking.
- Redistricting shaped the most vulnerable House members list: the top four slots went to members whose districts were redrawn, yet no Texas Democrat made the list despite a map drawn to target them.
- Texas is a state to watch in both chambers. Inside Elections moved the Senate race to Tilt Democratic, and the panel framed South Texas as a test of whether President Trump's 2024 gains with Latino voters carry over to down-ballot Republicans.
- Pennsylvania's four competitive House seats could offer early signals on election night, and the panel flagged a polling miss in either direction as a possibility worth keeping in mind.
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Video Timestamps
- 2:29 - Nathan Gonzales previews Inside Elections' final House and Senate ratings of the cycle
- 5:39 - Mary Ellen McIntire walks through the most vulnerable senators list
- 9:28 - Daniela Altimari on the most vulnerable House members and the mark redistricting left on the list
- 12:49 - New additions to the House battleground, from Texas' 9th District to Tennessee's 9th
- 15:04 - Why Inside Elections moved the Texas Senate race to Tilt Democratic
- 15:49 - South Texas and the durability of Trump's gains with Latino voters
- 18:46 - Pennsylvania's four competitive House seats
- 21:01 - Does 2006 still offer the better template for this cycle?
- 24:25 - October surprises, including the Alaska Senate race
- 26:11 - Could the polls be wrong?
- 28:17 - Each panelist's sleeper race to watch on election night
Full Transcript
Andrew Menezes
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Decision 2026, the final stretch before Election Day. I'm Andrew Menezes, the politics and campaigns editor here at CQ Roll Call, and I'll be moderating this conversation for the next half hour.
To help us make sense of these last few days before Election Day, I'm joined by three people who need no introduction, but here we go. Daniela Altimari and Mary Ellen McIntire are both campaigns and elections reporters here at CQ Roll Call and the authors of the At the Races newsletter. And we're also joined by Nathan L. Gonzales, who's our elections analyst here at CQ Roll Call and the editor and publisher of Inside Elections, which provides nonpartisan analysis of races for Senate, House, governor and president.
So thank you all for being here, and let's get started. Nathan, I'm going to start with you, and we're just going to start with the bottom line. How would you describe the Senate and House battleground now, with less than five days to go before the election? I think you're about to break some news here, because Inside Elections just came out with its final race ratings for the cycle. If you could go through that with us and tell us what your projections are for both the House and Senate.
Nathan Gonzales
I know this is going to shock a lot of people out there, but I think Democrats are going to have a pretty good week next week. Our latest ratings are coming out as I speak, but to give a preview, we changed the rating in 45 House races toward Democrats, by at least one category. And we changed our range. Our new projection is that we expect Democrats to gain between 20 and 30 seats.
Saying those numbers out loud is slightly scary. Not because Democrats might win the majority, but because those are big numbers, and those are numbers that are not what we expected, even a few months ago, six months, 12 months, two years ago. But the president's job approval rating continues to slip, and there is just an incredible softness in Republican support all around the country.
We are getting texts or messages from Republican strategists who are saying, you might want to watch out for this race, you might want to watch out for this race. It's not that Democrats are thinking they can win everywhere. Republicans are very concerned. Some of them are even thinking about, this is 2006.
We also changed our ratings in nine Senate races. Our range there moved from three to five Senate seats to four to six Senate seats, and they need four for control. We also did some governor's races, but I know we're very D.C.-centric here.
So that's where we are, and I'm a little bit concerned, is that the right word? I know that polls have underestimated Republicans before, but we're seeing a lot of hot spots, fires that Republicans are trying to put out, and I'm not sure there's enough time or money to put them all out.
Andrew Menezes
Thanks, Nathan. Later in this conversation, I'll come back to you and maybe ask you to pick out a few races to highlight for us, especially the surprises, the ones moving from solid onto the battleground. But I do want to get to Mary Ellen and Daniela, because also this week, both of them came out with their final lists of the most vulnerable lawmakers in both the Senate and the House.
This is a series that we do every cycle. We came out with our first list back in May 2025, and since our last webinar in August, they've actually done two versions of these lists. There have been some changes since the start of the cycle, but both of the most recent lists are very Republican-heavy. So, Mary Ellen, I'll start with you. Could you walk us through the Senate list of most vulnerable lawmakers?
Mary Ellen McIntire
Yes. This cycle, the Senate list has always been Republican-heavy by nature of Democrats in some of the most competitive states, Michigan and New Hampshire, retiring. Similarly, Joni Ernst in Iowa retired, so a number of those races have not been on the list all cycle.
When I looked back at the first list that we did, we had Jon Ossoff in the No. 1 spot, and Jon Ossoff is now heavily favored to win his reelection, which is very striking. If you go back a year and a half ago when we were first doing that, this was far and away Republicans' best pickup opportunity, in Georgia, coming off of the 2024 elections.
From about a month ago to now, the list is relatively stable. Our top three incumbents are all in pretty close races. You could maybe argue amongst ourselves which of these should be the top race. We have Ohio's Jon Husted, Maine's Susan Collins and Alaska's Dan Sullivan in the top three. That's been consistent for the last month.
The biggest change this fall, in this post-Labor Day campaign stretch, is the Republicans who have come on the list. Roger Marshall of Kansas, a state that hasn't elected a Democratic senator in almost 100 years, is in a real race against Adam Hamilton. This is a really tough race. Nathan, I was just looking at your ratings, and you've moved that into a toss-up category, which, if you take a step back, wow.
Darline Graham of South Carolina, who was appointed to the Senate this summer. We saw a poll out from The New York Times out of South Carolina yesterday, a really tight race against Annie Andrews. One of the additions that we made to this list this week was adding Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi. She's running against District Attorney Scott Colom. This is one that, even with this environment, if she loses, that's going to be a real shock to the system, but she is having to run a real race. President Donald Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris have made visits to the state in recent weeks. This is not a state that normally gets presidential-level visits in the final week of the campaign.
These are all folks that, a year and a half ago, we did not necessarily see being part of the battleground, but they truly are. The list rounds out with Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, who is in a slightly better situation than he was maybe a month ago. He moved down a little bit. And then Jon Ossoff rounds out our list at No. 8. There are some questions. Georgia has a runoff policy, so he really wants to make sure that he can get to over 50 percent, but he is looking in a very strong position heading into Election Day.
Andrew Menezes
That's striking. He was our No. 1 person on the list when we first started doing this, and he finishes at the tail end of the list on the eve of the election.
Mary Ellen McIntire
I don't think I've ever seen that in my three election cycles of rankings. I don't think I've ever seen someone in a general election race fall from the very top to the very bottom. I can't remember a time that's happened.
Andrew Menezes
Exactly. Okay, so we'll move on to Daniela now. Daniela, if you can walk us through the House version of this list. It was certainly Republican-heavy, but in the top few positions, I think there was something called redistricting that may have influenced some of our additions. So why don't you share with us what we ended up doing there?
Daniela Altimari
Yeah, you can clearly see the impact of the redistricting wars on our list, because the first four slots are two Republicans and two Democrats. Two California Republicans, well, one independent now and one Republican, whose districts were made far less red. That was something that was done in California in response to what happened in Texas. And then we see Florida and Alabama also having members on there because of redistricting.
What's really striking, though, when you think of redistricting and what happened over the past year and a half: Texas started this whole thing, at Donald Trump's request, redrawing the maps. There aren't any Texas Democrats on our list, which is kind of striking when you think about how this all unfolded. Republicans in the Texas legislature redrew the districts of two perennially vulnerable Democrats and made it much harder for them in South Texas. Yet everything we've heard is that those seats have grown far less competitive. That's a reflection, as you pointed out, of the national environment.
We're also seeing North Carolina. Don Davis has always been on the front edge of vulnerable. He's made our lists in the past. He's fallen off it now. He could, in fact, still lose. Nobody knows what's going to happen on Tuesday. But between the national environment and the strength of the Senate candidate there, Roy Cooper, for the open seat in North Carolina, Democrats' hopes have really been bolstered that despite the redistricting, despite the fact that that district grew far less hospitable to their party, they still will be able to hold on.
So it's interesting to see how this has all played out now that it's… well, I won't say now that it's over, because we'll be ready for a second round.
Andrew Menezes
Right.
Daniela Altimari
But this cycle's redistricting is over.
Andrew Menezes
Yes, for sure, and we'll probably be going through the same thing next cycle, as you said. But what I was struck by in my conversations with you and Mary Ellen, when you were trying to decide on the list, was how many races you couldn't fit into this list. It's not to say that these are the only 10. There are a number of other incumbents who are also very vulnerable, but we only have room for 10.
And talking about vulnerable incumbents, Nathan, a lot of the folks on these lists are in toss-up races or worse, according to Inside Elections. But could you walk us through some of the new candidates, or districts, that have now entered the battleground? I'm looking through the ratings, and I'm shocked. For example, Daniela mentioned Texas. There's Texas' 9th District. This was a seat that was drawn specifically, in the Houston area, to give Republicans an easy pickup, and you've moved that now to Lean Republican.
Nathan Gonzales
Yeah. It continues to be a close race, and I think it is a good example of the environment. In some places, Republican candidates seem to be doing their best to lose. But in the case of Texas 9, Republicans have a good candidate. Alex Mealer, her resume is great. She fits the profile of someone who would be in Congress. But it's a very close race, and you don't even have to believe me. Republicans are spending in that race, trying to make sure that it ends up in the Republican column, even though they drew it to be in the Republican column. It's a struggle there.
Some of the ones that we have added that are new to the battleground, that were in Solid: we finally put Lauren Boebert on in Colorado. Derek Schmidt in Kansas. If you haven't checked out the Democratic nominee there, he is kind of a character in his own right. Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey. We put three North Carolina members on, including NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson, with Greg Murphy and Brad Knott the others. Mike Turner in Ohio. Stephanie Bice in Oklahoma. And Tennessee's 9th District, which is striking because it was drawn to be a new Republican district, and Congressman Cohen decided not to run. But you have a young African American legislator in Justin Pearson, and then you have the Republican who's going through some negative headlines about pictures he was sending.
It's just a confluence of events. In districts around the country, it feels like a combination of the president's job rating, frustration with the economy and some Republican candidates who are really kind of stumbling across the finish line. I don't think all of these people are going to lose, but there's enough data out there to show that Solid didn't quite fit these races.
Andrew Menezes
Right, exactly. And I think we should mention that we're saying they're competitive, not that they're sure things for the Democrats. Republicans are still favored, but they're not as comfortable as they were before.
Nathan Gonzales
There's the misconception that there are only two categories, Toss-up and Solid. We have a ton of other categories in between. It's a spectrum.
Can I just talk about the Senate real quick? Because I think our most provocative move in the Senate was that we moved Texas out of Toss-up to Tilt Democratic.
Andrew Menezes
Oh, wow.
Nathan Gonzales
On one level, you say, are you crazy? Democrats haven't won in 30 years. And I'm like, well, maybe, but James Talarico has been leading this race by between one and three points for five months now. Five months! And in the face of hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. We have this Tilt category, and I think we can't ignore the data, even though history has been on the Republican side.
Andrew Menezes
Talking about Texas, Daniela, I know you were there last month for the midterm convention, and you spent time in the San Antonio area and visited a number of districts there. As Nathan said, the very fact that the Senate race is now rated Tilt Democratic is a shock, something we could never have predicted at the start of the cycle. And Texas could be key to control of the Senate and the House. Could you talk us through some of those races there, especially in South Texas?
Daniela Altimari
Yeah, again, it goes back to redistricting. Republicans drew that map at the request of President Trump, and they drew the map based on recent history, the 2024 election, maybe going back a little to 2016, because President Trump made big gains with Latino voters in South Texas and elsewhere around the country. Republicans looked at that and said, we're going to draw these maps based on these numbers.
The real question, even from the start, was how durable are those gains? Are those gains that Donald Trump made, or are those Republican voters? I think we'll find out the answer next week, but it's increasingly looking like those are not Republican voters. Those were Trump voters. They liked what Trump was saying about the economy specifically, the border and some other issues. Now we're two years into the president's second term, and a lot of those voters are having buyer's remorse, or they were never really Republican to begin with.
It's one thing to support Trump in a presidential year. It's another thing to support a member of Congress who doesn't necessarily have the same cachet as the president. Maybe they're not going to vote, maybe they are going to vote, maybe they're going to vote Democratic. That's certainly what a lot of folks told us out there.
Also, the Democrats did a pretty good job, as Nathan was saying earlier. Candidate quality still matters. When you look at who the Democrats recruited in South Texas, they've got a Tejano music star who's a bona fide Grammy winner with a lot of charisma. They've got a deputy sheriff running in the San Antonio-area district, which diffuses a lot of the "defund the police" attacks. He is the police, literally. So they feel as though they've done a pretty good job.
Now, Republicans also have some really strong candidates there. Eric Flores is a rising star in the party.
Andrew Menezes
He's running against Vicente Gonzalez.
Daniela Altimari
Yes. He'd be a strong candidate in any year, but perhaps this year, those other trends and the general environment will just undercut him. We'll see.
Andrew Menezes
We will see. Another state we'll be watching closely, and I know Mary Ellen certainly will, is Pennsylvania. She was there earlier this month. Mel, based on what Nathan says, Democrats need three seats to flip the House. That could very well happen just in Pennsylvania.
Mary Ellen McIntire
Yeah, I've been looking at Pennsylvania all year as one of those, just with that statistic. You've got four competitive races in the classic swing state. You have a governor's race this year. Republicans have a much stronger candidate in Stacy Garrity than they had four years ago, but Josh Shapiro is still heavily favored to run away with that. And as he looks to potentially run for president in 2028, he's looked at these four races and said, this is how I'm going to prove that I can potentially be that person for the Democratic Party, by flipping a few of these seats.
In the 7th and 8th Districts, you have two freshmen, Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan, who both flipped seats two years ago. Then you have Scott Perry, the former Freedom Caucus chair, who is someone Democrats have been targeting the last couple of cycles. His district has gotten increasingly competitive since he was first elected. And then in Bucks County, you have Brian Fitzpatrick, a white whale for Democrats on the House map, someone Republicans point to as a survivor, facing his hardest challenge yet from County Commissioner Bob Harvie.
Mackenzie in particular has been a mainstay on our most vulnerable list all year. We just added Congressman Perry this week. Rob Bresnahan was certainly in the mix of folks that maybe could have been on the list. We talked about him with our sources. Fitzpatrick is a little bit outside of there, but I did just see that he's in a toss-up race now.
Andrew Menezes
Toss-up now, yeah.
Mary Ellen McIntire
Pennsylvania's not exactly known for being a quick vote counter, but it is on the East Coast, so it might be a state where you get some interesting early calls on election night.
Andrew Menezes
I'm probably showing my age here, but I'm thinking back to other elections where we had a number of Pennsylvania House seats flip, and I go back to 2006. I also go back to a column that Nathan wrote, it's been almost two years ago now, where you were trying to draw parallels between the 2006 election and this one. When people think about blue waves, the first thought is always 2018, but you made a very good point for why 2006 maybe offers a better template.
Do you still feel that way, Nathan? Do you think things have gone the way you thought they could have, given what happened in 2006, when Democrats swept both the House and the Senate with an unpopular president in the White House and a war in the Middle East?
Nathan Gonzales
I stand by what I wrote. If it ends up being wrong, let's forget that column ever happened. What is interesting is not only are the conditions similar, but it could end up being similar numbers. In 2006, it was 30 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate. We'll know in a few days, but it could be remarkably close to that.
It's good to feel conflicted live on a webinar, but it's hard to describe the amount of soft support that is out there. I know I said that before. It is possible for Republicans in the last few days to get Republican voters to turn out and vote Republican like they always have. But just in the last couple of days, I would say the data is not pointing toward that. It's not that there's going to be this late break toward Republicans. We haven't seen it yet. It could still materialize, but time is running short.
Andrew Menezes
I'm curious about that, Nathan, and Daniela and Mel, please feel free to jump in. Republican outside groups have been spending so much. Trump has been all over the country trying to get the base voters. Has that made a difference at all? Are there any places where maybe that has had an impact, where things were looking worse for them a month ago but are more solid today?
Nathan Gonzales
I'm looking down at my list, which is why I'm looking off-screen. It's going to be hard to know. If they hadn't spent that money, would things be worse? Texas 9, for example, was identified as a problem, and they spent money, and it's still competitive, but maybe it would have been worse. So I would go in that direction. But I don't think the fundamental trajectory of the election has changed all that much.
Mary Ellen McIntire
I agree. If anything, in some of these toss-up races, the spending over the last three to six weeks in various places has kept more Republicans in it. They haven't necessarily gained points on Democrats, but it's kept the Republican candidate in the race in a meaningful way.
Nathan Gonzales
And in some places, I think they are effectively driving up the negatives on Democratic candidates, but it's not giving Republicans a lot of distance on the ballot when people are actually making the choice of who they're going to vote for.
Andrew Menezes
It's striking, especially when we were looking at the most vulnerable lists, that so many of these races are seats or states that Trump carried by double digits just two years ago. The election is playing out on red territory, so to speak, when you think about this expanded landscape.
One question, because this is on all of our minds, and it was in your column, Nathan: October surprises. Daniela, I think we've had maybe a couple of October surprises already. Do you want to walk us through one or two of those real quick?
Daniela Altimari
Yeah, I think certainly The New York Times report on the Alaska Senate race was pretty damning. That report, through interviews and documents and messages, found that this whole issue with the two Dan Sullivans was something the Peltola campaign was helping to orchestrate. That was quite damning, because she has said all along she had nothing to do with it. Her campaign has said that.
Andrew Menezes
And they're still saying that, right?
Daniela Altimari
They're still saying that, and people can judge for themselves who they believe. But it certainly was a bombshell. We're now seeing criminal investigations launched and the president calling for her to drop out, so there's a lot of late movement in that race, a story that just broke this week. I would say that was probably one of the biggest October surprises we've seen.
Andrew Menezes
I was also thinking about the unprecedented ad in Ohio that rocked the governor's race there as well. That's another state where Democrats seem to have a chance in both the governor's race and the Senate race, compared to before.
But Nathan, you mentioned this earlier, and I do want to ask you. We've had some big polling misses this year. Certainly over the summer, as Mary Ellen can tell you with some of the states she covered, we went in thinking this was going to happen, and it ended up quite different. Could the polls be wrong?
Nathan Gonzales
Sure, yeah, they could be. But an important point is that in the past four cycles, the midterm polling has been better than the presidential polling. I've lived through polls underestimating Republicans. I am a little bit concerned that pollsters might be overcompensating, not wanting to miss in that direction again, and that they might actually be understating the deep frustration that is out there in the electorate right now. That's on my mind as well.
I realize polling is imperfect, but I think it's still a useful tool in looking at races. It's hard for me to just say, all right, this is what the data's showing, let's knock 10 points off Democrats, or let's knock five points off. That gets dicier. I might be looking at the unemployment line this time next week, but I'm just following the data.
And I keep repeating this, but this is really not just Democrats saying, oh, we're going to win in all of these places. There are Republicans who have lived through multiple cycles, and they are concerned about what is happening and the lack of Republican turnout that could be happening on Tuesday.
Andrew Menezes
The early voting numbers in certain states have been quite striking in terms of Democratic constituencies and their turnout. Okay, we're getting close to wrapping things up. At the last webinar, I asked each of you to tell me your bellwether district or state that you'll be watching on Election Day. I'm going to cheat this time and borrow something Nathan did on his podcast last week. I want each of you to name your sleeper race. This is a race that perhaps hasn't gotten as much attention, but one that could surprise people. I understand some of these races may now be competitive, according to Inside Elections. Daniela, I'll start with you. What is your sleeper race?
Daniela Altimari
One that was mentioned earlier, North Carolina's 3rd District.
Andrew Menezes
You wrote about that recently.
Daniela Altimari
Yes. Last time around, the Republican incumbent, Greg Murphy, did not have a Democratic opponent, and he's in a race now. It's the same thing you mentioned before. The fundamentals of the district favor him, sure, but the climate is tough. He's spending money, and outside groups are spending money, so we'll see.
Andrew Menezes
Okay, so that's Daniela's: North Carolina's 3rd District. Mary Ellen, what's yours?
Mary Ellen McIntire
I'm going to go with Virginia's 5th. Congressman John McGuire is facing a challenge from former Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello. This is a really red area, so if we are seeing particularly soft Republican support, that is probably going to be somewhat necessary for Perriello to win this. But he's a former congressman, he previously ran for governor, so he's well known, and he's had a huge cash advantage all year.
If he can win this seat, it's a sign of a really big night for Democrats, where they're winning seats that haven't necessarily had a lot of outside groups putting money behind them. The fact that it's a former congressman has me a little bit interested in what could happen here.
Andrew Menezes
Very good choice. And Nathan, what about you? What's your sleeper race?
Nathan Gonzales
I said Oregon governor on our podcast as a race that could break unexpectedly, so I won't do that again. But I'm going to stick with governor and say that early on election night, I think people are going to be surprised by the margin in Tennessee for governor, where Senator Marsha Blackburn is running. There's been a well-funded independent candidate who's tried to run as a conservative. I think that race is going to be much closer. I think she's going to win, I don't think she's going to lose, but I think that margin early on election night, people are going to be like, what is happening here? So I think that's one to watch.
Andrew Menezes
That's a good choice, Nathan. I am very curious now, because the Democratic nominee is Memphis City Councilwoman Jerri Green, and Blackburn also had a fairly close primary win.
Nathan Gonzales
Yeah, she won the primary with less than 50 percent, and I think she's going to win the general election with less than 50 percent.
Andrew Menezes
Wow. Okay. Well, I think that's all the time we have. Thank you to Mary Ellen, Daniela and Nathan for joining us today and sharing their insight, and to all of you for tuning in to this webinar. You can keep following our campaign coverage on RollCall.com, and make sure you subscribe to the At the Races newsletter for all the latest campaign news. Also check out InsideElections.com, Nathan's site, for all the race ratings and analysis, and you can listen to the Inside Elections podcast there.
One programming note before I sign off. After the election, on Thursday, November 12 at 2:30 p.m., my colleagues Jason Dick, the editor-in-chief of CQ Roll Call, and Peter Cohn, the managing editor, will be hosting another webinar called Decoding the 2026 Midterms, where they'll look at the post-midterm picture and what it means for policymaking and 2027. But again, thank you for joining us, and we'll wait to see what happens on Tuesday. Thank you.
Nathan Gonzales
Thank you all.
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