US Midterm Elections 2026

Background

On November 3, 2026, the United States votes in its midterm elections. They come two years after the presidential race and tend to work as a referendum on the administration: in almost every midterm since World War II, the president's party has lost seats in Congress.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up, along with 35 of the 100 Senate seats (33 regular races and two special elections, in Florida and Ohio) and 36 governorships. Republicans currently control both chambers: 220 to 215 in the House and 53 to 47 in the Senate, counting the two independents who caucus with Democrats.

This dashboard follows the count throughout election night and then stays online as a permanent reference for the results. Click a state on the map or a race in the list to see the candidates and the vote. The tabs switch between the Senate, governors, the House and the full table.

What to watch

The Senate math. Of the 35 seats up, 22 are held by Republicans and 13 by Democrats. Because a 50 to 50 tie is broken by the Vice President, a Republican, Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control. Ten senators are not seeking reelection, and two others, John Cornyn in Texas and Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, lost their party's nomination.

The House math. A majority takes 218 seats. With 215 today, Democrats need a net gain of three. By our measure, 70 districts lean four points or less toward either party, and that is where control should be decided. Another 21 districts are held by one party but lean toward the other, largely because of the new congressional maps drawn in several states.

Governors. Of the 36 governor's races, half are in states run by Republicans and half by Democrats. In 19 of them the sitting governor is not on the ballot, mostly because of term limits. Republicans currently hold 26 governorships and Democrats 24.

The pace of the night. The first polls close at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, in parts of Kentucky and Indiana. The last ones, in Alaska, close at 1 a.m. Eastern. States that count a lot of mail ballots, such as California, Nevada and Arizona, can take days to finish. Maine and Alaska use ranked choice voting, and in Georgia a candidate below 50% goes to a runoff, which can also delay a final call.

Methodology

• Votes. Figures come from each state's official results website (Secretary of State or state election office). During the night they are transcribed into a public spreadsheet, which the dashboard reads every minute. Anyone can open the spreadsheet, and the link is listed in the sources.
• Winners. Data Openly does not make projections. A race only shows a winner after news organizations publicly announce a projection, and the organization is named in the race itself. Until then, the map only shows who is leading the count, in a lighter shade.
• Scoreboards. The Senate total adds the 65 seats not up this year to the night's projections. The governors' total adds the 14 states with no race. Independents are grouped with Democrats on the Senate scoreboard, as they caucus today, but their count is shown separately.
• Most competitive races. For the Senate and governors, these are the races that at least one of the main US election forecasters did not rate as safe for either party on the eve of the election. For the House, they are districts with a PVI (the Cook Political Report's partisan lean index) of four points or less.
• Candidates. Candidate lists, the party currently holding each seat and PVI as listed on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0 license), checked on November 2, 2026. The dashboard shows the two major party candidates and competitive independents.
• Limits. Election night results are unofficial. Each state certifies its results weeks later, and numbers can change as mail ballots are counted or recounts happen. For the House, the dashboard shows vote counts only for the most competitive districts. Elsewhere it shows the projected winner only.
• After the count. Once counting ends, the results are frozen in a file inside the portal itself, so this page remains available as a permanent record of the election.