Republicans got a fresh dose of bad news on Tuesday, as the renowned Crystal Ball at Larry Sabato's Center for Politics at the University of Virginia announced a set of rating changes — all in favor of Democrats, and many of them in red states.
In Senate forecasts, the key battleground contest in Michigan was revised from Toss-up to Leans Democratic. "We continue to believe that progressive Abdul El-Sayed (D) will underperform what a Democratic Senate candidate could or should get in Michigan in a year like 2026," wrote Kyle Kondik. "Yet we still have viewed him as a soft favorite to win, and we’re going to formalize that by pushing his race to Leans Democratic. Polling has generally pointed to El-Sayed, but just narrowly, with a Suffolk University poll showing him up 47%-40% released this morning a positive outlier for him."
Meanwhile, the Senate race in Iowa was shifted from Leans Republican to Toss-up, and the Senate race in Kansas from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.
In gubernatorial races, three out of the four shifts were in red states. The high-profile Texas and Florida contests were shifted from Likely Republican to Leans Republican, with Kondik noting "possible exhaustion with long periods of Republican leadership may make both of these races fairly close," while those in Ohio and Nevada were moved from Leans Republican to Toss-up.
Iowa's 1st Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks is fighting for her life, also got a shift from Toss-up to Leans Democratic, while Florida's 27th District, home to the increasingly embattled María Elvira Salazar, went from Likely Republican to Leans Republican. Perhaps most surprisingly, Texas' 9th District, an open and newly-created seat in the Houston area designed by a Republican gerrymander to be an automatic seat for them, has been shifted to just Likely Republican.
"2018, the last most comparable election, was a bad year for Republicans," wrote Kondik, despite "no real economic or inflationary headwinds for Republicans ... this year, the president’s credibility on the economy is shot, and has been shot for the bulk of his term; the decision to strike Iran has become so unpopular that top GOP Senate candidates, such as Mike Rogers in Michigan and Ashley Hinson in Iowa, are calling on the president to end the war. Based on these big-picture factors, why shouldn’t 2026 be as bad or even worse for Republicans than 2018 was?"