The current probabilities, based on national polling aggregates and statistical models (using artificial intelligence as a research tool), with one week to go until the November 3, 2026 United States midterm Congressional elections, seem to project a significant “blue wave”, perhaps even a “blue tsunami”, driven by slumping approval ratings for President Donald Trump and disapproval of his subordination of United States interests to Israel, especially with respect to the Pearl Harbor-like attack by the United States and Israel against Iran and United States support for Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Lebanon. The following synthesized breakdown of projections from major polling agencies, forecasters, and betting markets outlines the current expectations for both chambers. However, a caveat, rather than an exact science, polling has been largely converted into a tool for manipulation of results and thus results have, in the recent past, been wildly inaccurate.
In the House of Representatives (the “House”), Republicans currently hold 218 seats, Democrats hold 212 with one independent and four vacancies. Projections imply that after the November elections, Democrats will hold between 229 and 242 seats while Republicans will hold between 193 and 206. In the Senate, Republicans currently hold 53 seats with an additional vote by Vice President Vance in the event of a tie and Democrats and their “independent” allies hold 47. That is projected to change after the elections with Democrats expected to hold between 51 and 54 seats and Republicans between 49 and 51 but, in the event of a tie, once more Vice President Vance would cast the deciding vote. There is, however, a significant wild card, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. He is currently a Democrat but might well elect to caucus with or vote with the GOP. There are also a number of Democratic Senators with deep ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (“AIPAC”) such as Democratic Party Senate leader Charles E. Schumer, Nevada’s Jacky Rosen, Californians Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, Pennsylvania Democrats Bob Casey and John Fetterman, Montana’s Jon Tester, Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono and surprisingly, Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren (among others), who are may join Republican Senators in matters of importance to Israel, the same being true in the House[1].
The following are the latest projections by major forecasting organizations:
- As of October 26, Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) projected a 55% probability that Democrats would take complete control of both chambers (a unified Congress), with a 24% chance that Republicans would retain the Senate while losing the House and just a 19% chance that Republicans would hold on to both. The projected seat breakdown assumes that Democrats will win 238 seats in the House and 51 seats in the Senate.
- As of October 23, the Cook Political Report projected that a majority of House will be controlled by Democrats, placing 214 seats as solid, likely, or leaning Democratic—meaning Democrats only need to capture 4 out of the 17 unallocated “Toss-Up” seats to take the gavel. As to the Senate, it places 7 seats in the true “toss-pp” category: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas. To secure a 51-seat majority, Democrats must hold Michigan and successfully flip four of the remaining Republican-held states.
- As of October 27, CBS News / YouGov Poll projected that Democrats would secure 229 seats in the House, an 11-seat buffer over the required 218 threshold.
- As of October 27, PBS News / NPR / Marist Poll reflected a generic commanding 8-point lead (52% to 44%) among likely voters nationwide for Democrats in the upcoming elections. The poll highlighted strong enthusiasm indicators, with 71% of Democrats expressing high eagerness to vote compared to 61% of Republicans.
- As of late October, the Polymarket & Kalshi Prediction Markets (a gaming platform) gave the Democratic Party a 91% to 92% chance of controlling the House and a 66% chance of capturing the Senate.
The foregoing may well be impacted on a personal level by the arrogance and lack of discursive objectivity of many Trump supporting Republicans in their interaction with potential voters who are not, “dyed in the wool” Trump supporters. I am among those who have been turned off by the hubris of Trump supporters, although, in all honesty, as an independent, I would never support any AIPAC backed candidate, whether Republican, Democratic, third party or independent. Nonetheless, I am profoundly disappointed that so many United States voters who I respect and for whom I have profound affection, having studied with them or taught them, are among those who seem abysmally ignorant as to history, philosophy and international affairs and as to what communism, socialism or Islam really are, although they are totally convinced as to their expertise with respect to the foregoing. It’s true that United States citizens have always tended to be unaware of a great deal outside the propaganda they are fed (and which I was also fed, and which, for a while, I taught) but they have become significantly more aggressive, counterintuitive and, in the long term (now heading towards the short term), bellicose in a counterproductive manner. They seem trapped in echo chambers where they preach to each other as loudly and insistently as they can, disregarding contrary realities that they would need to understand in order to convince others, rather than to alienate them. Perhaps given their current perspectives, that’s a good thing.
Many such people with whom I regularly associate and, outside of politics and religion, with whom I have a great deal in common, ironically consider themselves devout Christians while concurrently avowed capitalists, not realizing how incoherently inconsistent those positions are. I am not a believer in the divinity of “Jesus” but am profoundly in favor of the doctrines which he is credited with espousing, doctrines such as “treating others as one would be treated”, acceptance of forgiveness and reformation as guiding principles and supporting the most disadvantaged among us, that, as contrasted with the intolerance and elitism favored by Saul of Tarsus who so thoroughly succeeded in distorting Jesus’ message. I am a progressive democratic socialist, like Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Noam Chomsky, Salvador Allende, Clement Attlee, Olof Palme, Jawaharlal Nehru. Mohandas Gandhi, David Ben-Gurion, Willy Brandt, Eugene V. Debs, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Helen Keller and now, Zohran Mamdani, and thus, abhor both the Republican and Democratic parties.
At any event, regardless of the outcome of the upcoming elections, AIPAC’s control over the Democratic Party’s current and anticipated leadership means that even if Democratic Party candidates overwhelm their Republican opponents by historic margins, nothing is likely to change except for the political affiliation of the victims of lawfare. That is so despite widespread voter dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party’s current leadership or with the control exercised by AIPAC over the Democratic (as well as Republican) Party. Oddly, it is GOP dissidents who have become disenchanted by the Trump administration’s betrayal of his purported America First and antiwar pledges who espouse the most progressive, anti-AIPAC messaging. People like Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Joe Kent, Senator Rand Paul, former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Representative Mark Amodei of Nevada, Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina and especially, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie. It’s ironic that GOP dissidents and democratic socialists in the Democratic Party both seem to believe that the changes they view as existentially necessary have to be accomplished through internal reform of their respective political parties rather than through an alliance between them given that they have so much more in common with each other than they do with the AIPAC controlled traditionalist in their current parties. But that’s how politics has functioned ever since the presidential election of 1860 in the United States, in the United States where democracy is quasi-legally defined as a bipartisan dictatorship through legally favored duopoly. Thus, the likelihood following the Congressional elections is, as is usual in United States politics, that the more things change, the more they either stay the same or become even worse.
Don’t forget to vote and, as president Trump privately urges, vote early and vote often.
_______
© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026 (except for the image which is the property of the New Republic); all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television in both Colombia and abroad; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
[1] In the current Congress, 247 Democrats and 268 Republicans in the House have direct financial support from AIPAC on record. Almost the entire current Senate has accepted pro-Israel PAC backing. The upcoming Congress will see a minor decline due to retirements and targeted general election dropouts where candidates have refused AIPAC alignment as a litmus test.
