The average of the polls published just before this Tuesday’s legislative elections in the United States gives the Democratic Party control of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, and a certain superiority in the battle for the Senate. Nevertheless, the Republicans could still retain the upper chamber if they manage to match their participation levels from the 2024 presidential election.
The overall picture reflects a clear tilt toward the Democrats, visible in the so-called "generic vote": voters’ preference for one party or the other without getting into specific names. According to the average of polls, the Democrats now lead the Republicans by eight percentage points (51% to 43%), a difference that also appears in individual polls from conservative media such as Fox News. Even polling firms traditionally close to the Republican Party, such as Rasmussen Reports, place the conservatives at a five-point disadvantage.
As for the specific scenarios, the most probable projection collected by RealClearPolitics places the Democrats with 241 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, compared with 194 for the Republicans. This would mean that the Democrats would gain 26 more seats compared with the last legislative elections of 2022. In the Senate, the estimates currently give them a majority of 52 or 53 senators, compared with the 47 or 48 that their Republican opponents would achieve.
To reach that range of seats in the upper chamber, the Democrats would have to prevail in six key states that will attract attention tonight: North Carolina, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, Texas, and Alaska. Although their candidates start with some advantage in all these territories, no pollster takes it for granted that they will prevail in all of them and the margins are within the margin of error, which leaves open the possibility of a reversal in favor of the Republicans when the count concludes. The situation is reversed in Iowa, where the Republican candidate, Ashley Hinson, holds a minimal lead of just two-tenths over her Democratic rival, Josh Turek.
These unknowns will begin to be resolved from midnight onward (Spanish mainland and Balearic time), when the first vote projections are released. The estimates for North Carolina and Ohio will be known at 01.30; those for Maine and Texas, at 02.00; and Iowa, Kansas, and Michigan will arrive one hour later. Alaska will be left for the final stretch, with forecasts at 07.00 on Wednesday morning.
It is worth emphasizing that the projections do not provide definitive results. Usually, it is necessary to wait between two and three hours to know the winner of each contest, although there are relevant exceptions and Alaska is a clear example: in 2022, the winner in this state was not known until six and a half hours after the release of the first estimates.