Districts to watch: NC-14, KY-6
Another way to estimate the possible size of November’s swing is to look at the partisan shifts in elections held in 2025 and 2026, ever since Trump took office. These races include the 2025 governor’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia, other high-profile statewide elections and several special elections for the U.S. House.
Although Trump lost Virginia and New Jersey, the other recent elections have tended to occur in places that supported Trump in 2024. Averaging across all of these states and districts, Trump won them by an average of about 3.5 percentage points in 2024. In the 2025 and 2026 elections, however, those states and districts supported the Democratic candidate by an average of about 11 points. This amounts to a shift of 14.5 points in the Democrats’ favor.
If the Democrats are able to shift the vote in every district by such a historically massive margin in 2026, they could win as many as 263 seats to the Republicans’ 172. That would be the largest majority that either party has held in the U.S. House since the 1990 midterm elections.
Such a shift could put into play districts like Florida’s 27th District, represented by GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar. Republicans in Florida left this district nearly unchanged when they redrew the state’s congressional map, believing that a district that Trump won by 14.6 points would be out of reach for the Democrats.
But it appears the race in this heavily Hispanic district is tightening, as polls show Latino voters nationwide turning against Trump and Republicans, with economic concerns weighing heavily on their minds. These voters were critical to Trump’s winning coalition in 2024, and indications that they are moving back toward Democrats are helping drive the party’s competitiveness in Republican-leaning, heavily-Hispanic districts in states like Texas, too. Salazar outran Trump’s win margin by nearly 6 percentage points in 2024, and her survival in the 2026 election may require a similarly strong overperformance.
A 14.5-point national swing toward Democrats could also make North Carolina’s 14th District competitive. Republican Rep. Tim Moore’s district is one that North Carolina Republicans did not bother changing when redrawing their maps last year. Trump won the district by 15.1 points, and Moore himself won it in 2024 by 16.1 points.
Another district to watch is Kentucky’s 6th District. This open Lexington-based seat has been held by Republican Andy Barr since 2013, and was carried by Trump in 2024 by 15.0 points. Barr is running for the U.S. Senate this year. Republican and Democratic-aligned groups are spending heavily here, reflecting the importance of the race, as Republican Ralph Alvarado faces off against Democrat Zach Dembo.
The NBC News Decision Desk rates this race as lean Republican. In 2024, this district reported almost 90% of its votes by 8:40 p.m. ET. If Democrats are on track for a massive national shift, this district may provide one of the best pieces of early evidence.
National trends don’t mean every district shifts the same amount
To be sure, all of these scenarios assume that the partisan shift in 2026 will be the same in every district. This may be true on average, but some districts will have a larger shift than the national average and others will have a smaller one.
Demographics of a specific district may play a role in the size of the shift. For example, if Hispanic voters shift more dramatically toward the Democratic Party than non-Hispanic voters, then districts with higher concentrations of Hispanic voters will vote more favorably for the Democrats than the underlying partisanship of the district would predict.
Incumbency can also play a large role in causing a district to shift more or less than the national average. In 2024, the incumbent members of Congress outperformed their party’s presidential candidate by an average of 2.5 percentage points.
This year, there are slightly more Democratic incumbents seeking re-election than Republican ones. This means that the Democratic Party as a whole stands to gain more from the benefits of incumbency compared with the Republican Party.
On the other hand, there are more Republican incumbents who represent districts with an evenly divided underlying partisanship. For example, an “incumbency bump” matters a lot more to a Republican in a district Trump won by 5 points than to a Democrat in a district Harris won by 25 points.
Finally, redistricting has also played a key role in this year’s midterms. By redrawing districts in several states, Republicans stand to win as many as 10 more seats than if the map remained unchanged after 2024.
Redistricting impacts the role of incumbency, too. When the lines for a district are redrawn, incumbents are now fighting for the votes of people whom they’ve never represented, and who may be less familiar with their record. This tends to diminish the size of the incumbency advantage. Republican incumbents in Texas and other red states and Democratic incumbents in California must lean heavily on the “D” or “R” next to their name when they try to win the support of their new potential constituents.
