The 2026 Midterms: Blue Wave Incoming?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Michael Smerconish** (0:25)
Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:30)
I so look forward to Doug Sosnik's appearances here periodically. He was Senior Advisor to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to the year 2000 During the course of his career, has advised more than 50 governors and United States senators. And by the way, if you would like the benefit of his thinking when he publishes the slide decks, when he publishes his written memos, subscribe to his page at Substack, and you will be the beneficiary of all of Doug's insights. So he's just published a slide deck with two dozen, maybe 30 slides for the benefit of time, because believe me, I'd love to go through all of them. I've identified five, and Doug, the five that I've pulled, I think, help tell the story of a CliffsNote version.
Where are we at this moment in time, August just having begun, with regard to the midterms? So I'm going to just call out slides, and for the benefit of those who will eventually watch us on YouTube, they'll be able to see not only Doug Sosnik, but also the slide at issue. It's slide number two that I'll begin with to set the historical stage. You say the trends suggest a blue wave election in November. Talk to me big picture about us.

**Doug Sosnik** (1:51)
Thanks for having me back. So just for some quick context, we're now less than 100 days from the midterms.
And we're actually probably, I would say, around 30 days away from people starting to vote. So it's a lot closer to the election than the way people talk about it. So if you just look at historical trends, and there's some caveats to this, which we'll get to, I'm sure, about why the historical trends may not completely apply this year. By historical trends, we should probably expect one of the largest midterm blue wave elections since World War II.
You can see from the slide that the single best predictor historically has been the job approval of the president and the president's party. And you can see if you look at 94 with Clinton when I was in the White House or 2010 with Obama, two biggest midterm election sweeps since at least the 1970s. You can see that in both cases, the job approval of the president's party was about 10 points higher than Trump's today. And you can see that the massive losses that Democrats suffered in both of those elections, again, in an environment with a president that was measurably more popular than Trump.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:13)
Right. So Clinton is at 46% approval.
Obama is at 45% in 2010 And I guess 2010 was the quote unquote shellacking. Am I right?

**Doug Sosnik** (3:25)
Well, it was. And it was. If you look at the number of House seats that Democrats lost, the number of Senate seats and the governor, I don't know what other term you could use to better describe the outcome of that election.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:38)
So looking at the historical trends, one would think it's, and yeah, we'll get to the caveat. It's going to be a big year for Ds. Very next slide that I highlighted, number five. Nevertheless, it will be difficult for the Democrats to fully maximize what appears to be a very favorable political environment in November. Why? Why will it be difficult for them to maximize their advantage?

**Doug Sosnik** (4:03)
Well, we've had a political realignment in American politics that really began forming in the early 1990s and Donald Trump did not create this political realignment. But what he did do was accelerate its completion with his victory in 2016 and his time in office. So with this political realignment now, we have a sharp political polarization in America.
It's the single best predictor of how people are going to vote as a level of education.
With that in mind, as this chart shows you, we have far fewer competitive seats in American politics at every level. Starting with 39 states are controlled by one political party, 38 of those 39 states, New Hampshire is the example. The party that's in control of the state, the presidential candidate on the ballot in 2024, won that state. So as a result, with far fewer competitive seats, it's harder for Democrats in an environment like this to fully maximize our political advantage.