Midterms 2026 · Lead story · 5 Nov

Weight
Transfer

The national margin is the balance point of every group's vote. In two years it moved 15 points. Here is who moved it.

Read the story All five stories

House voteD+12–14Widest midterm margin since 1974

House seats256–6043 flipped to D, 2 to R

Senate54–567 Republican seats flipped

Turnout48.8%Second only to 2018 in a century

Trump approval37%Lowest midterm approval since 2006

Preliminary, 4–6 Nov 2026. Every figure carries a receipt: its source and a content hash. Methodology

Five stories

Each unit you see is a real thing

Groups · tipping scaleWeight TransferUnder-30s swung 33 points; white voters moved the national balance nearly three times as far.

Motive · the billThe ReceiptDemocracy cost Republicans 23.9m net votes; immigration won them back 13.6m.

Seats · the waveThe Blue WaveEvery Republican seat Trump won by under 10 went under. Six of eight beyond +15 were in redrawn states.

Place · TexasThe BorderlandsAll 254 Texas counties moved left. Starr County swung 72 points.

Turnout · the hallWho Won the ConventionAbout six points of the margin came from who showed up.

What the news covered

90 days of US coverage, collected by Brantopic

Cost of living39,954 articles Tariffs24,391 articles Iran war26,215 articles Immigration10,213 articles Democracy5,712 articles Corruption10,515 articles The midterms43,584 articles

Brantopic flagged these spikes the day they happened. Get the same alert when coverage of your brand jumps past its normal range.

Brand Truth · run by Brantopic

A referendum on the president's economy that every group joined, won by who showed up and who crossed over.

We took twelve things outlets reported about the election and checked each against the facts behind our charts. A claim stands only if a fact supports it with confidence above 0.6.

9claims stand

2contradicted

1weak evidence

See every claim and the fact it was checked against →

Free Brand Truth snapshot

We checked 12 claims about the midterms. Check 5 about your brand.

Brantopic matches what is being said about you against the evidence, and keeps a receipt for every verdict.

Carried into the Senate

Each walker is 100,000 votes

Poster portrait of James Talarico — **Texas**
James Talarico def. Ken Paxton · D+12.1

Poster portrait of Roy Cooper — **North Carolina**
Roy Cooper · D+19.6

Poster portrait of Sherrod Brown — **Ohio**
Sherrod Brown · D+4.9

Poster portrait of Annie Andrews — **South Carolina**
Annie Andrews · D+4.5

Poster portrait of Josh Turek — **Iowa**
Josh Turek · D+4.1

Poster portrait of Adam Hamilton — **Kansas**
Adam Hamilton · D+5.0

Poster portrait of Troy Jackson — **Maine**
Troy Jackson def. Susan Collins · D+6.4

Margins and votes from Wikipedia's 2026 race pages, 6 Nov; preliminary until certification. Portraits posterised in code from Wikimedia Commons photos: Talarico by Antonioaesparza and Cooper by NetwonsBucket (both CC BY-SA 4.0; these posters are shared under the same licence); Brown, U.S. Senate Photographic Services (public domain); Andrews, York County Democratic Party (CC BY 4.0); Turek, Iowa General Assembly (free use); Hamilton by Leoniceno and Jackson by ArenLeBrun (CC0).

Receipts on every number

Each figure is stored with its source, the query that produced it and a content hash, so anyone can recompute it. Read the methodology.

Our sources

Exit polls (NBC News/SSRS, AP), Decision Desk HQ, The Downballot, CBS News, AdImpact, and GDELT collected through Brantopic.

Neutral by method

Blue and red mark the parties' data, nothing else. Claims from every side go through the same Brand Truth check.

The Receipt, a weekly data brief from politic.design. One chart, one sourced finding, every Friday.

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