Democrats are still reeling from their 2024 presidential loss and are desperate to reclaim Congress so they can weaponize government against Trump and the GOP under the guise of “oversight.” But their chances of pulling it off are slipping fast, and the outlook for the party is looking worse by the day.
CNN’s chief data analyst gave them the bad news Wednesday morning, revealing that “What looked like a pretty clear Democratic win in the House come next year has become much closer to a toss-up at this point, although still slightly leaning Democratic.”
Harry Enten noted that the change is partly rooted in the national political environment and voter sentiment. Comparing the generic congressional ballot now to similar points during the first Trump term, he said, “You go back to April, look at the generic congressional ballot, what you see? You see plus three Democrats in 2025 in April, you see plus three Democrats back in April of 2017… Now, the Democrats are no longer keeping pace with the pace that they were setting back in 2017, 2018.”
Looking back to 2017, Enten explained, Democrats surged to an eight-point advantage, prompting many analysts to expect a flip in Congress: “I remember a lot of folks, including myself, saying, ‘You know what? Republicans look pretty decent right now in terms of the fact that they had the House, they had the Senate, they had the presidency, but things were likely going to flip.’ The bottom line is… it hasn’t happened. Democrats have stayed basically steady. They have fallen off the pace.”
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Enten also highlighted the impact of mid-decade redistricting on the 2026 House race: “If both sides max out at this point, there are more Republican gains possible than Democratic gains… If both sides max out, we’re probably looking at a GOP gain of +7 House seats.”
He warned that potential changes to the Voting Rights Act could further tilt the playing field: “If you add that in, you could be looking at adding 10, 12, 15, 17 on top of these seven seats.”
“Those national polls,” Enten said, “Democrats are not gaining the way that we expected. Then, you add in the fact that the state legislators are adding potentially more GOP seats… and all of a sudden, it becomes much more difficult for Democrats to gain, especially given that they are not keeping up with their 2017, 2018 pace in the generic poll.”
When you consider everything Democrats have thrown at Trump and the Republicans, you can see that their strategy is failing. The shutdown, now stretching into its second week, was supposed to be a political knockout, yet Republicans remain steady, Trump’s approval is holding in key areas, and Democrats are only highlighting their own dysfunction.
Enten concluded, “It’s a different new landscape, and we’re not quite sure how much Democrats will have to be ahead in the national House vote in order to gain control.”
If Democrats were counting on 2026 to be their revenge tour, they’re quickly discovering that the rules of the game have changed. Their playbook of obstruction and partisan theatrics isn’t producing the results they hoped for, and each failed gambit only exposes how out of step they are with the country.
Voters aren’t reacting to media hype or Democratic fearmongering the way party strategists imagined, and with redistricting and shifting public sentiment stacking the deck against them, the dream of a congressional takeover is fading fast. For a party still clinging to 2024 grudges, the warning signs are unmistakable: they may be preparing for a fight, but the battlefield is increasingly looking like one they can’t win.
