The last time Republicans faced voters with Trump as president without him also being on the ballot, they lost the House in a rout while gaining Senate seats from friendlier terrain.

Eight years, two presidential elections and one mob assault on the Capitol later, Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is stronger than it was then. Republicans are so bound to him that they staged a midterm convention built around the president and his record — a wager that leans into the one thing midterm voters most reliably punish: the president and the party in power.

Democrats, meanwhile, are still arguing over how they lost to the man they organized their whole strategy against, and whether the way back is through rebuilding the party’s national brand or running from it. 

Below are the 50 races that will settle those arguments — starting in a place where Republicans rewrote the rules and may lose anyway.

The southern state shift

North Carolina Republicans are trying to engineer their way into electoral success by making it harder for a Democrat to keep winning a congressional district coveted by conservatives.

Rep. Don Davis (1) is a moderate who votes against his party often enough — and stays out of the national spotlight thoroughly enough — that he has held his seat even as Democrats have struggled in the South.

* = incumbent

The new lines that GOP lawmakers in Raleigh forced into law, over the objections of a Democratic governor whose power over the map is essentially nil, have made his district friendlier to Trump.

In an ordinary cycle, a shift like that — part of the mid-decade redistricting fight playing out nationally — would have made Davis an easy opponent this fall, especially with Republican Laurie Buckhout challenging him for a second time. But as with so much in the Trump era, the obvious outcome is not the only one possible.

Davis may yet hold on, helped in part by former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is running against Trump-backed former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley for the state’s open Senate seat. (2)

Progressives wanted a shot to win in purple places. Now they have it.

For years, Democrats have argued among themselves over whether candidates well to the party’s left can win competitive general elections — with progressives insisting that proximity to the center is not the same thing as electability.

In Michigan, that wing of the party is finally getting a chance to see if its appeal can be broad enough to win over voters in a state Trump has carried twice. A loss by progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed (3) would all but end Democrats’ path to flipping control of the Senate. El-Sayed overcame a fortune in outside spending against him in the August primary, and a victory in November could push the party onto a markedly different course.

Republicans, watching their Senate candidates struggle elsewhere, see former Rep. Mike Rogers as their best chance to take a seat Democrats currently hold. Rogers is two years removed from losing Michigan’s other Senate seat by fewer than 20,000 votes.

The race also runs through some of the country’s rawest divides: over antisemitism and Islamophobia, over U.S. ties to Israel at a moment of deep unease in the Middle East and over whether “America first” should mean pulling back from the world. Whatever Michigan voters intend by their choice, it will be read nationally as a verdict on all of it.

Progressives have also spent years losing crowded primaries for the right to take on House Republicans. In Michigan’s 7th District, home to the state capital of Lansing, William Lawrence (4) won the nomination to challenge Republican Rep. Tom Barrett, beating both a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a former Navy SEAL who split the field. He did it while answering for past podcast comments in which he, a white leftist, described “the older generation of Black political leadership” as a “pillar, frankly, for establishment capitalist imperialist American power” within the Democratic Party — a dynamic that, he said, “really defangs the white left.”

Lawrence’s general election pitch may prove a hard sell in a seat Democrats badly want back: Barrett flipped it in 2024 as then-Rep. Elissa Slotkin left to run for U.S. Senate.

House Democrats’ campaign arm picked before voters did. It didn’t get its way.

Control of the House could come down to a handful of seats. Against that backdrop, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made its preferences known before primary voters had their say in several races, among them California’s 22nd District, Arizona’s 1st and Maine’s 2nd. (5, 6 and 7)

In all three, the candidates the DCCC touted lost to rivals — leaving the winners to campaign with the public knowledge that their own party’s campaign operation had picked against them, whatever shows of support Washington has offered since.

Republicans’ redistricting Hail Mary

Beginning last year, Trump and his allies pursued a nationwide effort to redraw Democratic-held districts in red states, all in service of trying to keep at least a narrow House majority.

Starting in Texas and stretching to Missouri, North Carolina and Florida, GOP-led legislatures changed boundaries in their states to try and bring as many as 11 seats from the left to the right this fall. Through that lens, nine races in those states have the potential for outsized impact: Missouri’s 5th District; Florida’s 9th, 14th, 22nd and 25th; and Texas’s 15th, 28th, 34th and 35th. (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16)

That effort got a boost in late April from a Supreme Court ruling described by the Republican Party as  “a win for fairness, the rule of law, and anyone who opposes racial gerrymandering.” It opened a path for more Republican governed states to change districts with major minority populations that had been won by Democrats. Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee moved quickly as a result, bringing Republicans another trio of potential seats. 

Democrats’ attempts to respond to those redraws have been scattered. California Democrats pushed through an overhaul targeting Republicans to offset the Texas gains, but a large-scale effort in Virginia fell apart.

Not every reshaped seat will change hands on election night. But the maps have already changed the fundamentals of the midterms. And there remains a real possibility that Black voters’ anger at seeing their electoral power curtailed across the South — particularly in Alabama’s 2nd District, where Rep. Shomari Figures is running despite the Republican redraw — shows up in turnout (17)

The Senate shift to state capitals.

Seven years ago, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar was running for president. 

This fall, she is trying to leave the Senate seat she has held since 2007 to become her state’s governor. (18) The move reflects a clear choice among some politicians: rather than just be one of 100 votes in the Senate they could lead a state — with all the power, risks and responsibilities that come with it.

She is not alone. Republican Sens. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, both of whom disputed the 2020 presidential election results, are also running to lead their states. (19 and 20)

The size of their 2026 wins could springboard them to a White House run.

Republicans have a chance this fall to beat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in a state that proved pivotal to Trump’s return to the White House. 

That doesn’t mean they expect to.

Shapiro faces Republican state Treasurer Stacy Garrity in November, and the potential 2028 presidential contender appears to be running far ahead of her. (21) A decisive win would lift Shapiro further in a 2028 conversation expected to be enormously crowded.

It could also determine whether his party takes the House. 

Pennsylvania has at least three Republican-held congressional seats, and possibly four, where his coattails could matter: Pennsylvania’s 1st, 7th, 8th and 10th districts. (22, 23, 24 and 25) Given how narrow control of the House could end up being, Shapiro’s help could be a force in deciding which party has control of the chamber in Washington this time next year.

In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff headed into this cycle appearing to be one of the most vulnerable incumbent Democrats in the country. Since then, he’s commanded national attention in a race against a Republican challenger whose flaws have led to worry within the GOP. (26) A standout performance from Ossoff, especially coming from the presidential battleground state of Georgia, would only add to talk about him being a strong presidential contender.

Hating on the Democratic Party party could help the left outrun ghosts

Democrats have spent years slipping in Iowa. Since the 2020 caucus debacle cost the state its place at the front of the left’s presidential calendar, the party has struggled. Now it has its best opening in years — in statewide races and down the ballot in a series of House contests, from the Iowa Senate race between Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek and Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, and the House races in the 1st and 3rd districts. (27, 28 and 29)

Key to Democrats’ efforts is the campaign of state Auditor Rob Sand, the only Democrat holding statewide office in Iowa. He is running for governor while relying on an identity deliberately separate from the national party’s — and has shown a willingness to break with it. (30)

The Texas-sized question mark

Ken Paxton is among the most controversial candidates on any statewide ballot in the country this fall. The Texas attorney general was impeached, and acquitted, by a Legislature run by his own party over allegations that he misused the office. He was also behind the failed Supreme Court bid to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss.

Behind all of that baggage, he still managed to defeat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a primary runoff in which the attorney general had Trump’s endorsement.

Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas since 1994. Paxton’s record has put that streak — and the seat — in genuine peril as he hurtles toward the finish line in a close-fought senate race against state Rep. James Talarico. (31)

Texas is a state where Hispanic voters, who around the nation helped Trump win the presidency, have the ability for major electoral influence. In both the Senate race and down the ballot in Texas’ 15th District (see 13 above) — where Bobby Pulido, a famous Tejano musician, is running against incumbent GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz  —immigration politics that were an asset for the right not long ago threaten to turn into a liability.

Election deniers’ path to more power 

Republicans have largely tried to move past Trump’s attacks on the 2020 election, even as the president’s false claims that he won have become central to his legacy.

Yet a striking number of election deniers are running for governor this year, several of them well positioned to win — a throughline suggesting that siding with Trump on 2020, whatever the falsehoods involved, has carried little political cost.

Voters have generally shown that democracy-related issues are not decisive in their choices. And there is a strong chance that from Florida to Ohio to South Carolina, Republicans who undermined Biden’s 2020 win will hold far more powerful offices heading into the next presidential election.