The 2026 Senate elections
35 Senate seats are on the ballot on November 3, 2026: the 33 seats of Class 2, plus special elections in Florida and Ohio to fill vacancies. Every seat is simulated from live reporting below.
Each seat is the model’s reading of live reporting on that race, summed. Not a poll. The full board, with every race and its sourcing, is on the Midterms 2026 tab of the homepage; the methodology says what the total is and is not.
How the 2026 Senate map works
Senators serve staggered six-year terms, so roughly a third of the chamber is elected every two years. The 2026 cycle covers Class 2, which leans heavily toward the South and the Mountain West, and both parties are defending seats they cannot afford to lose. Special elections in Florida and Ohio add two contests outside the regular rotation, each filling the remainder of an unexpired term.
Each race page below carries the race basics, current reporting pulled from live sources, and an AI simulation of the contest that is always labeled as a simulation, never as polling.
What a Senate majority controls
The Senate is the chamber that confirms: federal judges, Supreme Court justices, cabinet secretaries and ambassadors all require its consent, and none of those confirmations involve the House at all. It also ratifies treaties, and its rules give a determined minority far more leverage over ordinary legislation than the House minority ever has. A majority therefore shapes the federal judiciary for decades beyond the term in which it was won.
Because every state elects two senators regardless of population, the map matters as much as the national mood. A cycle whose seats fall mostly in one region hands that region outsized say in which party holds the chamber, and 2026's Class 2 leans toward the South and Mountain West. Both parties are defending seats they cannot afford to lose, which is why individual state races draw national money.
How to read a Senate race
Statewide contests are decided by different arithmetic than House districts. There is no favourable district to retreat into: a candidate has to assemble a majority across a whole state's metropolitan, suburban and rural populations at once, which usually rewards candidates who can hold their own coalition while sounding plausible to the other. Incumbency, statewide name recognition and the state's own economy tend to matter more than national party branding.
Each race page below carries how the state votes, what the seat itself decides, current coverage from live sources, and an AI simulation of the contest. Simulations are labeled as simulations throughout; they are not polling and not predictions.