With Republicans holding a 53-47 majority in the Senate, Democrats face a steep but not impossible climb to regain control of the chamber in 2026. As both parties jockey for position in a relatively limited number of competitive races, election forecasters are constantly reassessing the battlefield. This week, one prominent political analysis site, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, made three Senate rating changes — and each one favored the Democrats.
Before diving into the changes, I should note that while Larry Sabato, the site’s editor-in-chief, claims to be nonpartisan, the handful of times I’ve heard him speak suggest otherwise. My impression is that he is a leftist through and through.
At any rate, the Crystal Ball moved North Carolina’s open Senate race from the Toss-up column to Leans Democratic. The seat is currently occupied by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who is retiring. Meanwhile, the seats currently held by Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Jon Husted of Ohio were downgraded from Leans Republican to Toss-up, signaling a more competitive outlook for both races.
Despite these changes, however, the publication still claims to “favor Republicans in the overall race for the Senate.”
According to the Crystal Ball:
Democrats need to win all four of our Toss-ups to get to a majority, while Republicans need just one to preserve a nominal 50-50 majority because they hold the vice presidential tiebreaker.Democrats also have their work cut out for them in the four Toss-ups, albeit for different reasons. In Maine and Michigan, there are questions about the quality of the Democratic candidates. In Alaska and Ohio, meanwhile, the questions are more about Democrats’ ability to overcome each state’s pronounced GOP lean….Our topline count now shows 49 seats Safe/Likely/Leans Republican (including races not being contested this year), 47 Safe/Likely/Leans Democratic, and 4 Toss-ups. If Democrats sweep the Toss-ups, they would win the Senate, assuming that the favored party wins the seats rated as Leans, Likely, and Safe. But Republicans can block Democrats by winning just one of the Toss-ups, meaning that they’re still better-positioned to hold the majority.
The changes, according to the site’s most recent newsletter, “are more about the macro-level, big picture political factors as opposed to micro-level developments in these individual races.”
The article notes that recent polling of these races, President Donald Trump’s poor approval rating, and the Democrats’ strength in the House generic ballot, are factors in this week’s downgrades.
In the same paragraph, however, the Crystal Ball acknowledges that none of these indicators have changed much. But “to the extent they have, they’ve gotten worse for Republicans, to the point where 2026 could be as bad for Republicans as 2018 was, or perhaps even worse.”
So, the analysis tells us that while the GOP might hold onto the majority, the midterms could also be as bad — or even worse — as 2018 when Republicans got crushed. Trump was also under a bogus special counsel investigation at the time for allegedly colluding with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election.
At any rate, the Crystal Ball may be right about North Carolina. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has maintained a solid lead over former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley throughout the campaign. Cooper is currently ahead by 6.8 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. He also enjoys a fundraising advantage over Whatley.
The publication expressed concern that Whatley may have tethered himself too tightly to Trump at a time when the president’s standing in North Carolina appears weak. “With Trump’s standing in the state double-digits underwater in multiple polls, we wonder if Whatley has tied himself too closely to the president,” the Crystal Ball wrote.
But while the Crystal Ball focused on Whatley’s vulnerabilities, Cooper has some baggage of his own — namely his administration’s inept and inadequate handling of Hurricane Helene and the recovery effort in western North Carolina.
The Crystal Ball makes the case that Democratic challengers Mary Peltola and Sherrod Brown in Alaska and Ohio are “stronger candidates than Republicans would typically face in those states and could benefit from a more favorable midterm environment.”
The two polls of the Alaska Senate race in the RealClearPolitics average were conducted in 2025. Sullivan led by one point in the first and Peltola led by one point in the second. But, a survey conducted by Alaska Survey Research in March showed Peltola ahead by five points.
Former Sen. Sherrod Brown lost his seat in 2024 to Republican challenger Bernie Moreno who won by 3.6 points. Moreno did not lead in a single public poll until the final two weeks of the campaign. Trump won the state by 11.2%, but he is not on the ballot this year.
Husted, then serving as the state’s Lieutenant Governor, was appointed to the Senate by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine in January 2025 to fill the seat vacated by J.D. Vance.
While Brown and Husted are currently tied in the RealClearPolitics polling average, the most survey from Fox shows Brown up 8 points over Husted. [My experience with Fox polls is that they routinely favor Democrats.] Naturally, the folks at Crystal Ball cite this poll as evidence of Brown’s strength.
Sabato says Republicans must win one of the tossup races to maintain control of the Senate. While stranger things have happened, I can’t imagine Maine incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, losing to the embattled, unqualified Democratic nominee, Graham Platner. Collins trailed her opponent Sara Gideon in every single poll up until the day of the election, and wound up defeating her by 8.6%.
There is still a long way to go before voters cast their ballots, and Senate races have a way of looking very different in June than they do in November. For now, the Crystal Ball’s rating changes reflect growing Democratic optimism and mounting concern about the political environment facing Republicans. But optimism is not the same thing as victory. Republicans need only hold one of the four Toss-up races to retain control of the chamber, and several of the contests Democrats are counting on remain fraught with challenges of their own. If recent election cycles have taught us anything, it’s that today’s conventional wisdom often bears little resemblance to Election Day reality.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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