2026 United States elections

Elections in the United States were held on November 3, 2026. In these midterm elections, which occurred during the non-consecutive second term of incumbent Republican president Donald Trump, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate were contested to determine the 120th United States Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial U.S. gubernatorial elections, attorney general elections, and numerous state and local elections were also contested. The Democratic Party won a majority of seats in both houses of Congress and state governments across the United States. Trump called on Republican-led states to enact rare mid-decade redistricting to boost the party's chances of holding power ahead of expected historical losses for the incumbent party during midterm elections, which prompted reciprocal redistricting. In April 2026, the Supreme Court, in Louisiana v. Callais, narrowed the circumstances that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applied to racial vote dilution. The Trump administration used over $20 million in government funds to fund pro-administration advertisements, including $10 million after claiming they would switch to using funding from Trump's Super PAC. Trump and Republicans made false claims of widespread voter fraud leading up to the elections, but ultimately accepted the results. The lead-up to the elections was marked by an inflation surge amidst an affordability crisis, particularly on gas, healthcare, and food prices, exacerbated by the Trump administration's tariffs and the Strait of Hormuz crisis caused by the war in Iran. There were also concerns about AI-induced mass unemployment, its environmental impacts, and mass surveillance. Income inequality, democratic backsliding, corruption, and foreign policy were also major issues for voters in exit polling. The results were labeled a "blue tsunami" by Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, NBC News, and NPR. The Economist described it as "the biggest congressional landslide in 50 years". Florida's Republican Governor, Ron DeSantis, called it "close to an extinction-level event for Republicans". Various journalists described it as a rebuke of President Trump's agenda and further AI development, while Vice President JD Vance blamed the result on the war in Iran. Democrats won the largest popular-vote victory in the House of Representatives since 1976. Democrats won Senate seats previously belonging to Republicans in Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, Maine, Kansas, North Carolina, and Texas, the last two by double digits; seats in Alaska and Mississippi remain uncalled by major media outlets as of November 5, with Democrats favored to win both elections. They also flipped at least five governorships, giving Democrats a majority of governorships for the first time since 2010.

Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0