What the 2026 midterm elections mean for Republicans, Democrats, America, and the world

Today, millions of Americans will go to the polls to select federal, state and local representatives. With the Democrats widely predicted to win the US House of Representatives, and potentially even the Senate, in this Q&A Phelan US Centre Director, Professor Peter Trubowitz, gives an overview of the potential results, and what they might mean for the country, US allies, and adversaries.

As Americans go to the polls today for the 2026 midterm elections, how would you characterize the state of the race, and what outcome are you expecting?

This summer, Donald Trump began urging Americans to pretend that he was on the ballot when they cast their vote in November. Today it appears they are taking him up on the idea, but perhaps not with the result that Trump intended. All the standard indicators political analysts use to estimate who is likely to win are flashing Blue, pointing toward a Democratic win, from Trump’s dismal approval ratings to the Democrats’ very stable lead in generic congressional ballot, to consumer sentiment being at an all-time low. The only thing pointing in the Republicans’ direction is campaign contributions. Money matters, of course. But here’s the rub. In the face of strong Democratic headwinds, Trump, the Republicans, and mega-Republican donor, Elon Musk, are being forced to spend it on candidates in states and districts that Trump won by double digits in 2024.

Barring massive election disruption and interference, there is every reason to think Trump and Republicans are in for a bad day at the polls today. The House is all but certain to go to the Democrats and the Senate could very well, too. The “known unknown” here is whether the outcome will be decisive enough to break Trump’s vice-like grip on the Republicans and sufficient to enable the Democrats to forge a coherent, politically viable agenda for 2028. America and the world have a lot riding on the answer.

What do you think that outcome will mean for Republicans, Democrats, and the country?

Much depends on the magnitude of a Democratic victory. If the Democrats win big it will likely move the party toward the political center by denying progressives the ability to have a hold over the party’s legislative agenda. As a practical matter, the Democrats won’t be able to pass much legislation given Trump’s veto power and the fact that it takes a two-thirds vote in both chambers to override a presidential veto. But they will be able to put Republicans on the defensive on popular issues: Obamacare, housing, regulating AI. If they underperform, the Democratic leadership will focus on the things the party can easily agree on right now: impeaching Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, investigating Trump’s financial dealings and vanity projects (e.g. the White House Ballroom), and reopening the Epstein files.

The story on the Republican side will be quite different. If the election is widely judged a big Trump defeat, it will open up the political space inside the party, bringing latent divisions (e.g. MAGA vs. Big Tech) to the surface and greatly accelerate jockeying for the 2028 presidential nomination. MAGA Republicans will still be a force in Republican politics, but they will need allies and they are unlikely to align with Trump’s putative successor, Vice President JD Vance, as many inside the MAGA movement see him as Big Tech’s candidate.

How might Congress approach continued funding or intelligence sharing for Ukraine if the executive branch pushes for a negotiated settlement that involves territorial compromises?

Who controls the House is likely to be key here. There is already veto-proof support in the Senate for providing financial and intelligence support for Kyiv. Even a moderate Democratic win in the House will provide sufficient support to override a Trump veto given that there are plenty of Republicans who are not happy with Trump’s willingness to trade Ukrainian territory for Russian diesel fuel. Whether any of this would stop Trump from trying to reach a negotiated settlement over Kyiv’s objections is another matter. I doubt it. In fact, the larger the Democrats’ margin of victory, the more time and energy Trump will likely invest in getting to a negotiated settlement, partly to demonstrate his relevance in the wake of a political defeat at home, partly because Putin will think he can get a better deal with Trump than his successor or the Europeans, and partly because Trump will be looking for ways to burnish his legacy.

Millions of Americans are casting their ballots today. If you could isolate the single most critical signal that international allies—and adversaries—are looking for in the data tonight, what is it?

For both America’s allies and adversaries, the key barometer will be the vote itself. If it is a wave election and gives the Democrats control of both the House and Senate, I think America’s allies will do what they did in 2018 when the Democrats gained 41 House seats: namely, do what they can to wait Trump out figuring that things can only get better under his successor in 2029, Democrat or Republican.

What about adversaries? This is more likely to vary by which one, what they want and importantly, what they are offering Trump and his family in return. In Beijing’s and Moscow’s case, I think they will conclude that the chances of strengthening their strategic position will diminish after Trump leaves office and thus, we shouldn’t be surprised if we see Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin tying to strike a deal on issues that matter most to them (Taiwan in Xi’s case, Ukraine in Putin’s case) sooner rather than later.

This election is taking place in an environment heavily shaped by generative AI disinformation, deepfakes, and deep institutional distrust. How resilient is our civic and electoral infrastructure? If we face days of contested results or razor-thin margins, what is the likely domestic psychological toll on public trust?

I think the last ten years have demonstrated that our civic and electoral infrastructure is robust, even if there are changes we might want to make to the system (e.g. moving to proportional representation, ranked voting). As we have seen the past couple of months, the Courts have been doing a pretty good job pushing back against Trump’s efforts to impose federal oversight and interfere in the electoral process—something that the Constitution leaves to the individual states.

This doesn’t mean that Trump won’t try to disrupt the election today or try to slow and obstruct the certification process at the state level or on January 3 when the Clerk of the House compiles the state-issued certificates into an official “roll” of members-elect. The bigger the Democratic win, the harder these kinds of electoral machinations will be to sustain. In my view, the bigger problem the Trump years have exposed has to do with the separation of powers, which is far more vulnerable to party politics than our 9th grade civics courses led us to believe.

Trump is the beneficiary of a decades-long campaign by conservatives to implement the “unitary executive theory.” Advanced during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, this posits that the limit of presidential power is expansive, especially in foreign policy. In Reagan’s time, the theory stood little chance of finding its way into practice. That’s because America wasn’t polarized enough along party lines. If Reagan had adopted Trump’s expansive view of presidential powers, moderate Republicans in Congress would have balked at the usurpation of their power. In today’s intensely tribal politics, where Republican lawmakers worry more about being primaried by a Trump-backed challenger than facing off against a Democratic opponent in the general election, there are few moderate Republicans left to push back.

This article is based on comments made by Professor Trubowitz at the LSE & Georgetown event: A Transatlantic Perspective on the Eve of the Midterms, on November 2, 2026, with LSE President and Vice-Chancellor, Larry Kramer.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP– American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Source: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2026/11/03/midterms-republicans-democrats-america-world/ (CC BY 4.0)