The 2026 midterm elections are going to answer several open political questions, for the next few years at least. The answers to these questions might wind up being murky -- with some outcomes and evidence pointing one way, and some the exact opposite. The narrative of this election hasn't been defined by the pundits as of yet, but likely will be after the vote-counting is done. What is the conventional wisdom going to be, come mid-November? That will all depend on the results, of course, but for the moment we can at least identify some of the big questions.

The most interesting questions are all about the political landscape itself and how the nominees from both parties will do with the voters. Will Democratic progressives (and even Democratic Socialists) prove that they can indeed be electable in places that are not big Democratic stronghold cities or districts that are already deep blue? Will there be a "blue wave," and how high up the beach will it get? And will all the gerrymandering the Republicans did wind up helping them or will some of it actually backfire on them?

The biggest progressive race of the cycle is, of course, the Michigan Senate contest. Will Dr. Abdul El-Sayed manage to beat Mike Rogers to keep the seat in Democratic hands (the current senator is retiring)? So far, the polling has been pretty positive -- but not overwhelmingly so. Right now, El-Sayed is up by about two points in the polling average, but that is well within the margin of error and Michigan is known for very close Senate races. El-Sayed is running an impressive campaign (from all media reports) and just got a big endorsement which might help him out with Black voters. Will this be enough to overcome the losses he is expected to have among Jewish voters for El-Sayed's stance on Israel? Will Republicans stay at home and not vote (because Donald Trump's job approval rating is so low), or will they turn out in a big way because the race is expected to be so close?

No matter how the race turns out, one Democratic faction or the other is going to loudly proclaim: "See? We told you so!" afterwards -- that much seems guaranteed. Either the progressives will be elated that a very progressive candidate won in a very purple battleground state, or the establishment Democrats will be rending their garments and saying that they've been right all along and moderate, run-of-the-mill Democratic candidates are the way to go in very close states. This will likely influence a lot of primary races in 2028, no matter which way it goes. If El-Sayed loses and as a direct result the Democrats do not succeed in wresting control of the Senate away from the Republicans, then this will be one of the major stories of the midterms and will cause a lot of anguish within the Democratic Party.

At this point, all signs point to a blue wave developing. The president's job approval ratings are dismal (averaging just at or below 40 percent, and down to 33 percent in some individual polls). Voter enthusiasm is through the roof on the Democratic side, while Republicans are demoralized and not all that enthusiastic to go vote in November. Gas prices are still sky-high (especially diesel, which could be a deciding factor out in farm country), and Trump has no clue how to end his war of choice with Iran -- meaning the stalemate could drag on and on and on. Plenty of swing voters will be casting their vote on this issue alone.

This has all led Democrats to start getting optimistic about some very deep red districts and states. Democrats are spending money in races that would normally not have even been seen as remotely competitive -- states and districts where Trump won by double-digits in 2024. It's not just the battleground states where Republicans are now in a defensive crouch, it is House districts and Senate races that normally would have been considered completely safe for them.

Another tangential question to this is whether Republican mid-decade gerrymandering is going to work out the way they had planned or not. They did win the gerrymandering battle -- they redrew more districts than Democrats managed to, so on paper at least they've got a net advantage of at least a handful (and possibly as high as 10) newly-redrawn districts. But those new district lines were drawn by Republicans who made certain assumptions about voting patterns and demographics that may prove to be completely wrong. In a lot of these, the Republicans based their calculations on the turnout in the 2024 election -- when Trump won (or did a lot better than historical norms) with groups Republicans don't normally do well with (Latinos, Blacks, etc.). A lot of those voters may turn out to be one-time GOP voters and revert to historical norms, though (especially Latinos, and especially in Texas). Many of these one-time Trump voters now feel either disillusioned with Trump's broken campaign promises (on the price of gas, for instance) or downright betrayed. If they come flocking back to the Democratic Party, then even House districts specifically designed to flip to Republicans might wind up backfiring on the GOP by electing a Democrat.

So how far up the beach will that big blue wave get? The biggest question of all is whether Democrats will indeed take back the Senate or not. They have to flip a net four seats to do so, which may be hard for them to accomplish (which could depend on close races in states Democrats already hold, like Michigan and New Hampshire). And to effectively control the Senate -- which means being able to ignore a single Democratic primadonna senator -- the net number of flipped seats should really be seen as five, not four. This is a very tall order indeed. But if the blue wave is of tsunami proportions, it could actually happen.

I saved one of the most sobering questions (for Democrats to contemplate) for last, though -- the question of money. Republicans have a lot more of it than Democrats. And they're dumping it into a multitude of races in the final weeks, in a very big way.

Republicans outraised Democrats on both the Senate and House sides of the Capitol. They also have Donald Trump's massive $400 million super PAC as well as Elon Musk, who are both willing to dump a bunch of money (to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars) into various races. Trump had been worrying his fellow Republicans because he hadn't spent any of his campaign warchest at all until Labor Day, but since then he has turned the money spigot on. Here's just one measure of the onslaught Democratic candidates are about to face:

In total, Republicans are set to spend around $140 million more on ads than Democrats are in the nine most competitive Senate races in the final weeks of the campaign, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. The disparity is especially yawning in the Senate contest in Texas, where Republicans have reserved $39.6 million in ads and Democrats have reserved just $5.1 million.

The question of how much good this is going to do for Republicans, however, is an open one. Over the course of the past decade or two, money in politics has become increasingly separated from the actual outcomes. It used to be almost guaranteed that if one candidate outspent the other by multiple factors (twice as much, five times as much, etc.), then they could be reasonably assured of winning the race.

But it doesn't always work out that way anymore. There's an advertising rule-of-thumb that says it doesn't matter how much you spend on ads, if the dogs won't actually eat the dogfood then your company isn't going to sell a whole lot of it. Hillary Clinton outspent Trump in 2016. Kamala Harris outspent Trump by over 2-to-1 (she dropped an astounding one billion dollars in her three-month run for the presidency) but she wound up losing all the battleground states. In the primaries this year -- on both sides of the aisle -- candidates who had been outspent by factors as big as 10-1 wound up winning their races.

There are many reasons for this increasing decoupling between how much is spent on a race and the outcome. The first is it is a lot harder to buy ads, because there are so many places to advertise. There are broadcast and cable television networks (the traditional places where candidates used to spend a lot of money). There are also now streaming services and YouTube videos and podcasts and social media and a myriad of other ways people consume information and entertainment. There are influencers whose endorsement can be bought. There are even-more-traditional methods such as radio and direct mailings. The universe of ways to reach people with a political ad or message has exploded -- which means strategic decisions must be made by campaigns.

There is also the fact that we're pretty late in the game now. The Republicans have largely been keeping their powder dry for the sprint from Labor Day to Election Day, which is one big reason why the numbers are so skewed now. But spending late sometimes winds up being "spending too late." Once the electorate has formed a solid perception of a candidate, a flood of negative ads might not be all that effective. This is the argument for spending early instead of late. And in one race in particular -- the Senate contest in Texas -- the Democratic candidate has been flooding the airwaves for months while the Republican didn't have enough money to run any ads (he had a primary runoff election which drained his resources, among other hurdles). Now that the GOP is going to boost his chances with big ad buys it's an open question of whether it'll do much good or not. If the voters have already formed a solid opinion, sometimes all the money in the world can't change it.

There is also the decreasing relevance of political ads. Who actually watches political ads anymore? Who watches them unmuted? Who watches them with an open mind, having not already decided on a candidate to vote for? The answers to all of these questions is the same: "far fewer people than there used to be." Political ads just don't have the impact they once did. And flooding the airwaves can lead to a backlash -- people get so disgusted at seeing the same ads over and over again that they can form a negative view of the candidate running them. Especially if the opposing candidate is decrying all the "out-of-state money" being spent (which is an incredibly effective tactic in certain places).

It should also be mentioned that there are many other things for campaigns to spend money on than just advertising. The ground-game "get out the vote" effort can be decisive -- but it costs a lot of money to launch an effective one (just to note one of the most important of these other expenses). Decisions have to be made as to what percentage of the campaign warchest will be spent on ads and how much will be spent on other things -- and mistakes can be made.

To sum all of this up: we are currently 43 days out from the midterm elections. That means that six weeks from tomorrow night, the votes will start to be counted. That is not a lot of time. At this point, the Democrats certainly look like they still have the wind at their backs. Trump is massively unpopular, he doesn't seem to care about anything that the voters really care about (such as inflation and the affordability crisis), and almost all of the Republicans are trapped into standing by him (because they fear Trump's wrath more than they fear actually losing the race). Those are all positive signs for Democrats. Democratic candidates seem a lot more engaged and in a mood to fight than they were in 2024. Democratic voters are ready to crawl over broken glass to get to the voting booth, while Republicans are demoralized and disenchanted. But that's all before the blitz of GOP ads gets underway -- and things in politics can always change, very quickly at times.

But I for one remain cautiously optimistic because of the one metric I have been paying the closest attention to all year long: The average nationwide price of gasoline is $4.45 today, and the average price for a gallon of diesel is a whopping $6.51 -- an all-time high. We'll see what effect that has, in 43 days.

[Editorial Note: There is one very big question I did not address here: "Will the 2028 midterm elections be free and fair, or will Trump and the Republicans cheat and try to rig it by any means necessary either before, during, or after the voting happens?" That is a subject worthy of its own column, which I've been thinking about for a while. But it was too big a subject for me to tackle here today.]

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant