Larry Sabato, co-author of Campaign of Chaos, analyzes 2026 election trends, citing Trump’s 36–42% approval (Gallup/Nov) and Democrats’ 14-point generic ballot edge (Marist NPR/Nov). Virginia’s legislative shift—51 to 64 seats—and redistricting risks favor Republicans, with a potential 10-seat gain if the Supreme Court weakens minority protections. Sabato defends U.S. election integrity despite calls questioning turnout margins like North Carolina’s 100,000+ vote discrepancies, attributing down-ballot losses to voter "falloff." The episode underscores how early polling and legal battles could reshape 2026’s political landscape, with partisan narratives clashing over fairness and strategy. [Automatically generated summary]
You always want to look first and foremost at the presidential approval rate.
What is the job approval of the incumbent president?
And that is scoping in lots of things, such as the condition of the economy, whether people are happy or unhappy with living conditions domestically.
If there are any really major international operations that directly affect and involve American troops, these are things that have an impact on the vote.
Well, if that was the job approval on Election Day 2026, next November, then Democrats would almost certainly take over the House, regardless of what happens with redistricting in all of these states.
And they'd actually have a shot at the Senate.
It would be difficult, but not impossible.
So obviously, Republicans have to hope that isn't the number then.
And of course, let's remember now, Gallup is a very good pollster, been around a long time, gold standard, but that is just one poll.
And the average of the polls that are considered nonpartisan right now has Trump at 40, 41, 42%.
That isn't good either, but it's a lot better than 36%.
So a lot can change, and you also have to remember to use polling averages.
I've seen Democrats doing better in what's called the generic ballot.
If the election were held today, would you vote for a Democrat or Republican in your district or for the House of Representatives or your state for the U.S. Senate?
That's generic ballot without using names and bringing in personalities.
Yes, that has been trending toward the Democrats.
They started very low, actually, at the beginning of Trump's term.
Republicans, if anything, were a little bit ahead.
But it's been trending Democratic.
I wouldn't say massively so.
On average, right now, it's about 4% in the Democratic direction.
That's good, but not great.
It certainly isn't enough to win the Senate.
It may be good enough to win the House, depending on how the balance of power turns out with all these state re-redistrictings.
Well, it's going to make a big difference if the election is close and competitive, all right?
Because we're talking about the advantage for one side of maybe an additional five to ten seats.
Part of this also is how the Supreme Court rules on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
If they implode or explode Section 2, which tends to favor Democrats and incumbent Democrats who are minorities, then Republicans could gain another 10 seats out of that.
So I'm not saying this couldn't add up to determine the results.
On the whole, though, Democrats have had a fight-back strategy that has minimized so far the Republican advantage in re-redistricting.
I would say Republicans have an advantage, but it's maybe three, four, five seats, whereas it could have been 10-plus seats so far.
The good polling, the nonpartisan polling, showed the Democrats winning, showed certainly Spanberger in Virginia winning by a very wide margin.
Less so for the Democrat in New Jersey, clearly ahead, but not ahead by as much as Spanberger.
Well, they both won in landslides, unpredicted by the polls, and they had coattails that were substantial.
In Virginia, for example, Democrats went from a bare majority of 51 seats in the lower house of the state legislature to 64 seats in the lower house of the state legislature.
They haven't been there since the late 1980s, back when Democrats used to run the state legislature easily.
But the second most important thing that often is revealing or more revealing than who wins is what's the margin and how has the margin for the winner changed since the last presidential election just a year ago?
Now, Trump won easily throughout Tennessee.
It was an overwhelming victory for Trump.
And in that particular district, Tennessee 7, he won by 22 percentage points.
So we're all going to be looking at the results.
I tend to think, I wouldn't put a lot of money on it, but I think the Republican will keep that seat.
But we're looking to see, is it 22 points or is it 11 points or is it five points?
Is it a squeaker?
That will tell you more about the environment today than anything else.
But let's always remember the election, the midterm election is a year away.
A million things can and will happen, and people have to be patient.
I think C-SPAN probably should have a guy called Nathan Taylor from, I don't know if you're familiar with Election Truth Alliance, but he has been doing statistical research and models from countries that manipulate elections.
And it shows like for all the swing states he's been doing statistically, it seems like North Carolina, for instance, he said like 100% of all the counties had a higher turnout for Trump than anything else.
Is there something that should be looked into?
Because it seems like it seems that like who's also doing something about telling you like voter like hand counts versus the regular computer manipulation, things like inconsistencies.
But if you look it up, if you're not familiar with him, it's Nathan Taylor from Election Truth Alliance, because, you know, states like North Carolina, like if you look, he was saying something about, like, if you look at the past elections, like 2016 and 2020, the difference between the governor and the final count, the governor and the presidential, it's like maybe 20 to 30,000 votes between 2016 to 2020.
And this last election was over 100 and some thousand difference less.
Look, I start from this premise, and I really do believe it.
And it's not simply a pro-American position, but we have the best election system in the world.
And I'm not forgetting about places like the UK.
We've worked harder at it for longer.
I have more confidence in the systems that we use, the machines we use, the methods of involving both parties or multiple parties, depending on the state or locality, in supervising the elections and counting the ballots and all the rest.
That's not to say that there is never any instance of fraud, but on the whole, we have a very solid system that people can and should have confidence in.
Now, as to your question here, it's always worth examining.
And I welcome, I think most people in this field welcome people examining the statistics of the election, the way they're conducted.
There are always improvements that can be made.
And you look over the course of American history, we've had tremendous improvements.
There was once very substantial fraud in some areas of the United States.
You couldn't really trust the election results.
I don't think that's true anymore, at least in the vast majority of places.
So that's the point I want to make to you and everyone else.
Have confidence in your election process.
If you see a problem, whether it's individual to a precinct or it's something you question about a statewide vote, make that known.
There are plenty of ways to do it.
There are more ways now than there ever have been because of social media.
If there's substance to your complaint, I believe that changes will be made.
Reforms will be made.
So we need to have confidence in our system overall, even as we question parts that we think can be improved.
Now, as to the specifics of that gentleman's suggestion, I'll look up the person he was referring to.
One thing that he did mention that I recognize is that people voting for governor versus people voting for president.
You have something called ballot drop off, sometimes called ballot falloff, in which people come into the ballot place and maybe they only want to vote for president.
And you have a percent or two or three that just vote for president and they leave.
They don't vote for governor.
They don't vote for Congress.
They don't vote for Senate.
They don't vote for sheriff.
Probably sheriff's the most important thing you can vote for if you're interested in your own welfare.
And that is a consistent phenomenon.
We've seen this for decades and decades and decades.
I don't encourage that.
I want people to vote for everything on the ballot.
On the other hand, if they haven't studied the races and the candidates, in some cases, maybe it's better if they don't participate.
But do your homework in advance of voting, and that way you can vote for every available office.