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Democrats are favored to win the House but are slight underdogs in the fight for the Senate with 100 days to go before the midterms, according to the latest forecast from Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ).
Both parties are dealing with headwinds as they head into the home stretch of the high-stakes election.
Republicans are worried about the escalation of the Iran war, which only a few weeks ago seemed on the edge of ending. The new fighting risks widening the war as the Iran-backed Houthis move to close the Red Sea to ships. It’s all led to a new spike in oil prices, adding to the Trump administration’s economic woes.
Democrats, meanwhile, are dealing with a bitter debate about the direction of the party that has given a new line of attack for the GOP.
Wins by democratic socialist and antiestablishment candidates in House primaries across the country have sparked concerns from centrists that their party will be characterized as too extreme. It’s a line of attack being emphasized by President Trump and GOP leaders in Washington working to convince voters not to hand power to the Democratic Party.
The result is a situation 100 days out that gives both parties reasons to be hopeful and worried.
“It’s a competitive situation in both the Senate and the House,” said Geoffrey Skelley, DDHQ’s chief elections analyst.
Democrats like their chances in the House, where the GOP is gripping a narrow lead in a midterm year in which the president’s party has historically lost seats. In the Senate, Democrats have a shot at the majority but will need to win seats in several states won by Trump.
DDHQ forecasts Democrats winning a 15-seat advantage in a 225-210 House, while Republicans narrowly retain power in a 50-50 Senate with Vice President Vance as the tiebreaker vote. As of late July, Democrats had a 60 percent probability of winning the lower chamber, while Republicans had a 60 percent chance of holding the Senate.
That represents a tightening in the fight for the House since the start of the month, when the model indicated Democrats could have as much as a 25-seat advantage.
And a slight narrowing of the high-stakes cycle is borne out in recent polling on a generic congressional ballot.
DDHQ’s averages show Democrats with a 4-point advantage over Republicans on a generic ballot. That includes July polling from YouGov/The Economist, which found Democrats up 5 points in its latest survey, and from Morning Consult, which put Democrats up just 3 points. Last month, the average was closer to a 6- or 7-point edge for Democrats.
A new survey from Emerson College Polling painted a more promising picture for Democrats. It showed them with an 11-point advantage over Republicans on a generic congressional ballot. But it remains to be seen whether that double-digit edge is a sign of momentum or an outlier.
Skelley said the Emerson data “suggests a real range of opinions about what things are going to look like in the fall.”
Democrats hope they can capture voters souring on Trump and frustrated with a GOP-controlled Congress.
Voter unhappiness with the economy is driving Trump’s lackluster approval numbers. It promises to be the biggest issue of the 2026 midterms and is deeply intertwined with the Iran war.
“The big question is: will the Iranian conflict … will people being concerned about that ratcheting up, is that going to create reverberations in things like the generic ballot that signal ‘OK, Democrats’ advantage is growing again’?” Skelley said.
On the generic ballot averages, the Democrats’ lead expanded as the Iran conflict picked up earlier this year, spiking gas prices in an electoral environment already wrought by economic strain. As the conflict eased somewhat and gas prices fell in the spring, Republicans narrowed the gap in some polling.
“The challenge for Republicans is the Iranian conflict is heating up again,” Skelley said, pointing to this past week’s news that gas prices were on the rise as the conflict continued to build.
“This is politically very bad for the GOP. For them to try to make a case that Democrats are too extreme, it’s a lot easier to make that case if economic conditions are at least OK,” he said.
Polling from The Economist/YouGov earlier this month underscored the war’s unpopularity, with 57 percent calling the war the wrong decision. Although nearly 8 in 10 MAGA Republicans approved of the war, just 51 percent of non-MAGA Republicans, which represented roughly a quarter of GOP respondents, said the same.
Republican lawmakers have also expressed worry that Trump, who has called affordability concerns a Democratic “hoax,” is out of sync with the base on the economy.
“Given that President Trump was elected in part on the strength of how people viewed his handling of the economy during his first term … for polling to show sizable majorities disapproving of his handling of the economy or inflation or other things like that, it’s just very bad,” Skelley said.
The good news for Republicans is that Democrats also have problems.
Democrats, bruised by 2024 losses and searching for a new standard-bearer ahead of the 2028 presidential race, are divided about the best path forward for the party in a cycle without Trump at the top of the ballot.
Candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have made headlines with wins in key races this cycle, and insurgent progressives have ousted some longtime incumbents in what many see as a surge of energy within the Democratic base.
Trump has blasted the democratic socialist movement as “communism” and “the biggest threat to our nation there is.”
Republicans “are going to be, from here until the fall, trying to sort of blanket the opposition with terms like ‘communists’ and ‘socialists,’” Skelley said.
There’s a key test of voter appetite for progressive candidates next month in Michigan, where centrist Rep. Haley Stevens (D) and progressive Abdul El-Sayed are in a competitive Democratic primary to take on presumptive GOP nominee Rep. Mike Rogers in a race that Cook Political Report considers a “toss up” and DDHQ thinks leans toward Democrats.
If El-Sayed emerges from the Aug. 4 primary, though, some Democrats fear that could give Republicans a leg up in the general.
And if Republicans win Michigan in November, they jump to an 86 percent chance of holding the Senate, according to DDHQ.
“If Democrats are going to find a path to a majority, they cannot afford to lose Michigan,” Skelley said.
Altogether, the latest polls and forecasts show it’s “far from a blue wave kind of environment,” he added even as Democrats appear in position to gain ground on Capitol Hill this fall.
At this point in the 2018 cycle, when Democrats won big in the so-called blue wave, the generic ballot showed Democrats up by an average of 7 points or 8 points, DDHQ said, which is double the current edge.
With just more than three months until Election Day, the tight forecasts make races like the Michigan Senate fight must-wins for both parties, adding urgency to the handful of toss-up contests that could decide control on Capitol Hill.
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