President Donald Trump’s midterms headache is trending toward all-out GOP catastrophe since going to war with Iran.
Top prediction markets are in agreement that the Democratic Party now has an 85 percent chance of regaining control of the House in November, and are inching closer to being the favorite to retake the Senate, too.
Kalshi and Polymarket, which have accepted millions in wagers on the matter, each list the GOP as having just a 15 percent chance of maintaining a House majority—down from a 43 percent chance in October.
House Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be in denial about this harsh reality for Republicans.
“I’m very bullish about the midterms,” Johnson told the Daily Wire on Thursday. “I’m absolutely convinced we are going to win the midterms and grow the majority. It will defy historic trend.”
Republicans are still favored to maintain control of the Senate, but those chances are shrinking by the day as Americans grapple with spiking fuel prices, and reports continue to filter in that American troops are continuing to die in the Middle East.
Data guru Nate Silver said the political ramifications of the Iran war have to be “one of the dumber moves in recent memory.”
“Maybe the base case is that things get back to normal, but the risks for Trump are weighted to the downside,” he added on X.
Polymarket and Kalshi list the Democratic Party at 48 percent to retake the Senate—something that would have been considered a long shot as of the fall, when the party had just a 17 percent chance.
Flipping the Senate, which only has 35 seats up for grabs in November, will still be a tall task for Democrats, even with approval ratings for Trump and his party of sycophants trending sharply down.
Republicans currently hold 53 Senate seats. Democrats hold 45 seats, plus two independents who caucus with the party.
The Cook Political Report lists four Senate races as true toss-ups: Georgia, Maine, Michigan, and North Carolina. Only two of those seats are currently held by Republicans, meaning that even a Democratic sweep of those seats would not be enough to deliver them a majority.
That means Democrats will have to flip seats the Cook Political Report considers “leaning” red, including in Alaska and Ohio, while not being upset in any of their own vulnerable states, like in New Hampshire.
The report says a Democratic upset is possible in Iowa and Texas, which it lists as “likely” Republican.
The Democratic path to a majority in the House, where every seat is up for grabs, is much clearer.
Republicans hold a four-seat majority in the chamber, but the Cook Political Report says there are 17 toss-up races in the midterms. That includes two seats in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa, as well as one each in California, Colorado, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Trump, of course, is not up for re-election—but his prospects would be horrendous if he were. A CNN poll found this week that Trump’s approval rating among independents, who delivered him the 2024 election, is now 38 points underwater.
Trump’s overall approval rating—now just 40 percent, according to The Economist—has not been over 50 percent in over a year.
