Ten Questions That Will Be Answered in This Midterm Election

Election Day is always relatively serene. There’s nothing much to do other than wait for results. (If you’re looking for something, you can always read our richly diverse election coverage from over two dozen states.) We’re in a state of suspended animation, waiting to discover the future after the polls close.

The evidence collected from polls, spending announcements, ground reports, and more, point to a big Democratic victory. But let’s go a layer deeper. Here are ten questions we will get clarity about with the election results.

How Bad Does It Get for Republicans in the House?

There’s a difference between a bad night and a catastrophic one, a tough result that can be overcome in a couple of years and something that will realign the country for a long time. The way that Republicans are acting right now suggests they are trying to stave off the latter.

As an example: Richard Hudson is the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which tries to win races across the country. He’s in North Carolina, which redistricted this year to shore up Republicans. Yet Hudson is spending NRCC money on his own race, after polling found a dead heat.

There’s evidence of this all over the map: districts Trump won by 15 or 20 points in 2024 that are tied, where Republicans have been forced to spend defensively. House Republicans that we knew would be in difficult spots, like Tom Kean Jr. in New Jersey or Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa, have already been left for dead. Republicans are playing offense almost nowhere; they may only unseat one or two Democratic incumbents, and only in cases where they gerrymandered the seat. If Democrats win the races they are now expected to win, they will gain the House majority. Republicans even concede that the House is lost; the fate of the members they expected back will determine whether Democrats are poised for a wave or a tsunami. There are scenarios where Democrats push up to 250 seats in the 435-member chamber, if not more.

RACES TO WATCH: If Republicans Anna Paulina Luna in FL-13, Victoria Spartz in IN-05, or Brad Finstad in MN-01 go down, or if Democrats take the open seats in northern Nevada (NV-02) or upstate New York (NY-21), it’s going to be a big night. My sleeper is Don Coover in Kansas’ 2nd District, a livestock vet running an unusually populist campaign for someone endorsed by the Blue Dogs against Republican Rep. Derek Schmidt.

Will the Senate Become Structurally Wired for Democrats?

Democrats have had trouble in the Senate reaching beyond the seats they normally win at the national level. Currently, in six swing states that decided the 2024 election—Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada—Democrats control 10 of the 12 Senate seats, yet they only have 47 out of 100 in total. Taking back Maine, winning a seat in the other swing state of North Carolina, and breaking through for a six-year term in Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and Kansas will tip that balance and make it hard for Republicans to regain the chamber for the next couple of cycles. The final polls show this is within reach. (Ohio is a special case; Sherrod Brown would have to run again in 2028 to get a new term, as he’s currently running to finish out JD Vance’s term in office.) And every additional win Democrats can eke out, including ones that haven’t been on the national radar until the last minute, would widen that structural advantage even further.

RACES TO WATCH: TX-Sen, AK-Sen, IA-Sen, KS-Sen, plus the edge races in South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Nebraska, even Louisiana, which appeared out of nowhere, and Montana, where it’s a three-way race but there are signs the nominal Democrat is losing momentum and independent Seth Bodnar is surging.

How Will Progressives Fare in Swing Seats?

I wrote back in September about the new majority makers, the progressives running in swing seats across the country that could redefine how to be successful as a Democrat. Everyone is aware of the avatar of this trend: Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. To a lesser extent, Troy Jackson is doing the same thing in Maine, running on Medicare for All and abolishing ICE in a Senate race that moderate Democrats have never had any luck in against Susan Collins. But there are even more in the House: teacher Randy Villegas in CA-22, organizer Will Lawrence in MI-07, longtime elected official Matt Dunlap in ME-02, and a series of blue-collar union members like firefighter Bob Brooks in PA-08, smokejumper Sam Forstag in MT-01, and ironworker Brian Poindexter in OH-07. These are economic populists that, as majority makers will push leadership to get things done, in contrast to the typical cautiousness of swing-seat incumbents.

RACES TO WATCH: MI-Sen, ME-Sen, CA-22, MI-07, ME-02, PA-08, MT-01, OH-07

Was It a Dummymander?

Donald Trump spent the better part of a year trying to rig these midterm elections by pushing red-state legislatures to redraw maps more friendly to House Republicans. Sadly for him, the legislatures based a lot of this work on his vote totals in 2024, despite the enormous swing away from him we now expect to see. That is most pronounced in Latino communities, where Republican standing is cratering and which happen to be particularly large in the two states that Republicans gerrymandered most strongly: Texas and Florida.

If it’s a real bad night, Republicans may not gain a single seat in either state. Only one of the gerrymandered Texas seat appears safe (TX-32) for the Republicans, who have spent money to hold the four others they expected to win. They are also on the verge of losing Latino-heavy seats in El Paso (TX-23) and the Rio Grande Valley (TX-15). In Florida, no gerrymandered seat is truly safe, and they could lose all four. In North Carolina and Ohio, the gerrymanders targeting Reps. Don Davis and Marcy Kaptur, respectively, may crash and burn. And in Missouri, the gerrymander failed before even getting to the ballot, which has put some incumbents in play. Doing nothing might have been a better strategy than doing this.

RACES TO WATCH: TX-09, TX-15, TX-28, TX-34, TX-35, FL-09, FL-14, FL-22, FL-25, NC-01, OH-09, MO-02

Did Black Voters Surge?

This question is related to the previous one, because a second surge of gerrymandering sought to wipe out majority-Black districts after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Callais. In general, the Republicans have attempted to destroy Black voting power – but Black voters noticed. We keep hearing about huge surges in early voting in Black communities, though you never can tell until it’s all over whether that is just pulling forward Election Day votes. What’s clearer is that Black candidates targeted for removal, like Rep. Shomari Figures in Alabama and Justin Pearson running for Rep. Steve Cohen’s seat in Tennessee, have kept their races extremely close despite the gerrymander. And the Black voting surge could lift Democratic candidates (and not just Black ones) across the Deep South, in statewide races no less than district contests.

RACES TO WATCH: AL-02, TN-09, MS-Sen, SC-Sen, LA-Sen

How Much Will Money Matter?

The statistic that just 20 donors put $2 billion into this general election is shocking in its brazenness. But we saw in the primaries that big spending didn’t automatically signal victory. In some cases that will carry through to the general election: When you’re spending so much to prop up the likes of Ken Paxton, there’s a strong possibility of diminishing returns. (That’s especially true given how James Talarico is confronting megadonors like Elon Musk directly in his advertising.) It will be interesting to see how late Senate spending by AIPAC in Michigan and the data center lobby in South Carolina will influence those races.

Because there’s so much vying for attention, money will likely play a role in races that are more off the radar. One election where we know money is making a difference: The battle over Prop 40, the billionaire wealth tax in California, which has seen over $300 million in spending to stop it. Polling has shown the initiative fading amid that onslaught, even though nobody has articulated any alternative way to make up for the massive Medicaid cuts that will devastate the health system here. Money may not matter as much as it has, but it still matters.

RACES TO WATCH: TX-Sen, OH-Sen and MI-Sen have seen massive amounts of outside money, with Republicans outspending Democrats by between $83 million and $206 million. Prop 40.

Where Will Dems Win a Trifecta?

There are a surprising number of options here if everything breaks right for the Democrats. The most well-known possibility is in Pennsylvania, where Democrats need to flip three state Senate seats. But there are a number of possibilities. One House pickup would restore a trifecta in Minnesota, with the expected win for Any Klobuchar in the governor’s race. Nevada already has a Democratic House and Senate and just needs Aaron Ford to defeat incumbent Republican governor Joe Lombardo. Provided Democrats keep the governor’s mansion, they need two Senate seats and five House seats in Wisconsin, nullifying a historic gerrymander that kept Republicans in power at the state level. Arizona could give a trifecta to Gov. Katie Hobbs with three Senate seats and four House seats. Michigan needs four House seats to supply Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson with a legislative majority. Even Alaska is a possibility, as Jonathan Kreiss-Thomas is looking good for governor and an unusual power-sharing arrangement in Juneau has Democrats in functional control.

There are also possibilities to break up Republican trifectas all over the map, along with at least one chance for a Republican trifecta if Ty Masterson wins back the governor’s seat for the GOP in Kansas.

RACES TO WATCH: Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Alaska, Kansas legislative races, plus governors’ races in Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, Florida and more.

Who Has Coattails?

Democratic strength at the top of the ticket could filter down to important U.S. House and Senate seats, to say nothing of further down the ballot. Iowa’s Rob Sand is poised to win the governor’s race; lower down on the ballot, there are three contested House races and the Senate race between Josh Turek and Ashley Hinson. Vivek Ramaswamy decided to blow up his own gubernatorial campaign with the most insane ad in recent memory, effectively attacking his opponent Amy Acton for being a rape victim as a child. That could impact a number of races in Ohio. Colorado has a doozy of a Republican gubernatorial candidate in karate-chopping, children-saving hardcore pastor Victor Marx. His weakness is likely to help down-ballot Democrats, too.

There are also the presidential hopefuls on the Democratic side who barnstormed America, from Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Ro Khanna to former vice president Kamala Harris and AOC, among many others. One of them—Jon Ossoff—is running for re-election to the Senate in Georgia, and his dominance might help Keisha Lance Bottoms in the governor’s race.

RACES TO WATCH: IA-01, IA-02, IA-03, IA-Sen, OH-07, OH-09, OH-Sen, CO-03, CO-05, CO-08, GA-Gov. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has sold out for an aide of his, Zack Dembo, in KY-06. Gavin Newsom wants to win the races he led the gerrymander for in Prop 50, so CA-22 and CA-48 are critical.

Are Progressives Still Winning in the Never-Ending Primaries?

Thanks to our ridiculous rules here in California (Massachusetts, don’t make the same mistake!), where the top two vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party, make it to the general election, there are a number of Democrat-on-Democrat races that have extended the battle for the soul of the party we saw in the primaries. The contest between Democrats Scott Wiener and Connie Chan in the San Francisco House race vacated by Nancy Pelosi—where Pelosi has rallied to Chan’s side and tech tycoons are mobilizing for Wiener—is among the most interesting. Ideological primaries from the left against Reps. Jimmy Gomez in Los Angeles, Doris Matsui in Sacramento and Mike Thompson on the northern coast have drawn support from Rep. Ro Khanna; it’s unusual for an incumbent to back challengers to his colleagues. Thompson has been draining the Blue Dog PAC’s war chest to save himself.

RACES TO WATCH: CA-04, CA-07, CA-11, CA-30.

What Was This Midterm About?

The conventional wisdom is that the election was about affordability. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right. The war in Iran and its impact on the price of gas and food was enormously impactful, especially as Donald Trump made lowering costs his main promise in 2024. In many states I also saw hints of the old “saving our democracy” framework, particularly in Adam Hamilton’s Senate campaign in Kansas. Candidates like Will Lawrence made opposition to data centers his signature, and it could power him to victory. Flock cameras became a late symbol of unaccountable government intrusion. Under the radar, this was also a health care election, as many of them are. And this was an election about corruption as well, more than any other that I’ve ever witnessed, where people really got energized and angered by Trump and his family making a fortune with no pushback.

But all of these point to what I think is the real heart of the matter: billionaires and oligarchs have captured Washington, pillaging the government for their own rewards while everyone else suffers. All of the above discrete topics fit into that, whether it’s oil companies earning record profits from the war, or the corrupt deals between Trump and his cronies, or the tech industry taking over our lives. Americans want no kings in government, and they don’t want pretenders to the throne from corporate America assuming that dominion over us either.

RACES TO WATCH: The exit polls should give some indication of this.