Trump's midterm election push loses in court as Democrats eye red-state Senate seats

Courts keep blocking the president's election push

For most of the past year, President Donald Trump has pursued a multifront campaign to rewrite the rules for the 2026 midterms, and courts have so far stopped most of it. Democrats and activist groups have mobilized hundreds of lawyers to challenge last-minute efforts to influence voting in key states and congressional districts. Norm Eisen, head of Democracy Defenders Fund, is organizing a $20 million effort called Project 126, which aims to double the 63 court wins that stopped Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Eisen summed up the approach in an interview:

We've sued them before, and we've beaten them before.

His list of ten midterm threats includes purging voter rolls of supposed noncitizens, new mail-in voting rules, federal agents at polling places, seizures of ballots or voting machines, and intimidation of election officials. In September the Supreme Court halted Trump's plan to give the U.S. Postal Service authority over the design of mail-in ballot envelopes, and in an unsigned order it said he was "unlikely to succeed on the merits."

Warnings of a challenge to the results

Trump has warned that the country's election systems are vulnerable to foreign meddling, and federal agents are scouring state rolls and federal databases for noncitizen voters. The homeland security chief has also asked the Justice Department to examine whether a commonly used voting machine can be trusted. Election officials and Democrats fear these moves lay the groundwork to contest November results by citing administration findings that the vote is tainted. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he worries Trump may cite foreign interference to seize voting machines, pointing to dubious claims the president made about election defenses in a July speech.

At a rally in Wasilla, Alaska, Trump urged voters to "follow" their votes, and about 20 minutes later he said:

They rigged the election, and this crooked guy came in.

Voters want change and fewer 2020 arguments

Polling points to a restless electorate. A Fox News poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans rate the economy negatively, and an Economist/YouGov survey conducted 10 to 12 October found seven in ten voters feel things in the country are out of control. AP/NORC polling found eight in ten want either "substantial change" or "complete and total upheaval" in how the country is run, including 58% of Republicans. The POLITICO Poll found pluralities of Democratic midterm voters (49%) and Republican midterm voters (44%) say democracy should be a central part of a candidate's campaign. Only 30% of Republican voters say democracy is more threatened than ever, against more than half of Democratic voters. Majorities in both parties, 56% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats, want candidates to stop talking about the 2020 election.

Trump's ratings and the House vote

Fox News put Trump's overall job approval at 36%, a new floor in its surveys for either term, and his approval on inflation at 22%, a new low.

Fox says the drop is driven largely by voters under 45, those with household incomes below $50,000, non-white voters and those without a college degree. In the same poll, 54% of voters said they would back the Democrat in their House district, against 45% for the Republican, a wider Democratic lead than in an earlier Fox survey.

AP/NORC found 47% of respondents pessimistic about the Democratic Party's future, against 21% optimistic. About half are pessimistic about the Republican Party's future, while around 23% are optimistic.

Senate battlegrounds

Trump's low approval has given Democrats a chance in Senate races in red states including Alaska, Iowa, Texas and Kansas, a opening not seen in a generation. Democratic Senate candidates are leading in Kansas, which Trump carried by 16 percentage points in 2024, as well as in Alaska, Iowa and Ohio, according to Nate Silver's polling average. In Alaska, Democrats are also pointing to the scarcity of salmon on the Yukon River.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed still faces resistance from some moderate and Jewish voters in his race against former Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican, after one of the most hostile Democratic primaries of the year. In Maine, Troy Jackson, who stepped in as the Democratic nominee in July after the implosion of Graham Platner's campaign, trailed Senator Susan Collins in the latest New York Times/Siena University poll. In Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is dogged by the state's fraud scandal in her race against Michele Tafoya, a Republican former sports broadcaster.

Matt Bennett, co-founder of the moderate think tank Third Way, put the concern bluntly:

But they are weaker nominees than we had hoped there would be

Republicans, trailing in the polls, are abandoning some races while pouring resources into others, and Trump is campaigning almost daily in deep-red territory. The election is on 3 November.