Yesterday, I wrote a very optimistic column which looked forward to the 2028 presidential election landscape. Today I’m going to do the same thing for the 2028 Senate elections. I should mention that I was inspired to do so by a Washington Post article earlier this week which takes a deep dive into what the 2028 Senate races might look like.
Next cycle there will be 35 Senate seats up for grabs. This includes one repeat from this year, since Sherrod Brown’s win in Ohio was only for a partial term (he ran for the seat that JD Vance left in order to become vice president). If Brown wins again in 2028, he won’t have to run for another six years after that. This total also includes one special election, in Tennessee, where one of their sitting senators just got elected governor. Marsha Blackburn will assumably appoint a Republican to take her seat, but the seat will be up for election in 2028.
Let’s start with a map of which states will have Senate races two years from now. I am using the site 270ToWin once again, although they didn’t seem to have a prepared map for the 2028 Senate contests yet, so I will be mapping everything out on their presidential interactive map. Just ignore the count of Electoral College votes at the top of each map, as they are meaningless when talking about the Senate races. Here is the map filled in with which party currently holds each seat.
Democrats hold 16 of these seats, while Republicans will be defending 19. This gives the Democrats more chances to pick seats up, obviously. So let’s take a look at a few different scenarios for how the 2028 Senate elections might play out.
Cut and paste
Republicans will not only be defending more seats in two years, they will have few chances for pickups. Of the blue states on that map, there are only perhaps three or four where Republicans are likely to even have a shot at flipping. I would expect them to heavily contest the races in Ohio, Georgia, and New Hampshire. Nevada might also be a possibility for them as well, but all of the other states seem pretty solidly blue.
There are two wildcards, though. Mark Kelley will be up for re-election in Arizona, but he may decide to run for president instead. Or perhaps “in addition”… he may wind up running for both offices (to give himself a fallback if he doesn’t win the Democratic presidential nomination). Arizona has been trending blue, but Republicans there could have a shot if they purge their party of the cranks and nutjobs that they’ve been nominating for roughly the past decade or so. All of these nutjobs have gone on to lose, so sooner or later they may learn their lesson and wise up.
The other wildcard is Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman will be up for re-election. Because Democrats won such a large Senate majority this time around, Fetterman likely won’t be changing parties any time soon, but he may decide to try to hold onto his seat by running as a Republican in 2028 (since he probably doesn’t have a very good shot at being renominated by Pennsylvania Democrats, after all his shenanigans). So I am assuming that Pennsylvania stays blue, but with a different Democratic senator (one not named Fetterman).
Democrats, on the other hand, have more opportunities for flipping seats. Before I get to a more-reasonable layout, let’s first make a totally wild comparison. Let’s take all the states (there are six of them) where the Senate delegation is split and assume that Democrats flip all of them to being solidly blue in the Senate.
This would mean Democratic wins in Alaska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, South Carolina, and North Carolina. I realize this would be a pretty steep hill for Democrats to climb, but let’s just take a look at what that map would look like, as a baseline.
This would represent a six-seat pickup for Democrats, which would give them either 61 or 62 total seats (depending on the outcome this year in Alaska, which has still not been called yet). If the Republican does win Alaska this year, then we’d have to take it off that list, so the lower boundary would be 60 seats (55 current seats plus only five pickups). Any of these options would give Democrats a filibuster-proof majority, which is a rare (and powerful) thing to have.
Small gains
But let’s try being not quite so optimistic. Democrats seem to have a very viable chance in at least two and possibly three states, while I will be generous and spot the Republicans one pickup state as well.
This map shows Democrats picking up North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Iowa, while Republicans take a seat in New Hampshire. All of these states are essentially purple, at this point, where either party really has a shot at winning. New Hampshire usually goes for the Democrat in presidential years, but they also have a wide independent streak when it comes to other statewide elected offices. North Carolina is getting bluer and bluer every year, so if Democrats recruit a good candidate they have an excellent chance of winning the second Senate seat there. Wisconsin is similar, although Wisconsin races are almost always very close. The current Republican senator, Ron Johnson, may decide to retire rather than run again, which would make Wisconsin an open race (which might be easier to win). Iowa may be too optimistic on my part, but both Iowa and North Carolina didn’t just flip one Senate seat this year, they flipped all kinds of other offices (both state offices and House of Representatives seats). So once again, if Democrats can find a candidate who is a good fit for Iowa’s electorate then the chances of victory have to be seen as pretty good. And it’s almost a certainty that the Iowa race will be for an open seat, as Senator Chuck Grassley will turn 95 a few weeks before the election in 2028.
I thought about also giving the Republicans Pennsylvania (with the scenario of Fetterman running as a Republican and winning re-election), but somehow I just don’t think that’s in the cards. Pennsylvania’s governor is likely to run for president and even if he doesn’t win the nomination this will likely give Pennsylvania Democrats a boost with the voters.
This map would give Democrats a net gain of two seats, giving them (depending on Alaska) either 57 or 58 Senate seats in 2028. This is short of a filibuster-proof 60, but not by much.
Bigger gains
Getting a wee bit more optimistic gives us a bluer map. In this case, I have given New Hampshire back to the Democrats and added two more states to the mix.
I had my doubts that Kansas was even in play this year, but the voters proved me wrong. Kansas has a historic streak of electing “prairie populists,” and I think that if Senator-Elect Adam Hamilton does a good job and the voters back home approve, then it could easily be in play in 2028. As with Iowa, Democrats would need a candidate who is a good match for the state’s values, but they’ve already proven that they can do so once. And Kansas is another state with a sitting Republican (Jerry Moran) who will be 74 in 2028 and may decide to hang up his spurs rather than run again.
The other state I flipped on this map was Alaska, which has always had a wide independent streak of its own. Lisa Murkowski is well-liked in Alaska, so this one would be a tough contest — unless she decides not to run again. She will be 71 years old two years from now, so she might decide against another term.
This would represent a four-state pickup, which might or might not get Democrats to the magic 60 filibuster-proof seats (again, it depends on this year’s still-uncalled race in Alaska).
Insanely optimistic
And finally, let’s just go hog wild, shall we? If Democrats have just as big a blowout year next time around, then all kinds of states could be up for grabs. With the newfound power of Black voters in the South and the new economic populism out on the plains, the sky could be the limit for Democratic gains.
I didn’t go completely crazy with my final map, but it is still pretty insanely optimistic. Starting with the previous map, I have added three more states as Democratic pickups: Louisiana, Florida, and Indiana. Both Louisiana and Florida came very close to electing a Democrat to the Senate this year, and now that Southern voters have seen the power they can wield, if turnout goes through the roof then both of these states may actually be opportunities for Democrats. Indiana is a tougher contest, but also not entirely out of the question.
There are even other states that could flip if another blue tsunami appears on the horizon in two years. South Carolina already will have one Democrat in the Senate, so why not two? If Mississippi can elect a Democrat, then why not Alabama too? Kentucky has had a Democratic governor for years now, so Democrats can indeed win statewide elections there. Missouri or the Dakotas could be possibilities as well.
But I stopped where I did because it was all looking just too rosy-tinted. With the three pickups I added, Democrats would wind up with a net gain of eight seats — which as we’ve seen this year is not out of the question. This would give them a majority of either 63 or 64 seats, which wouldn’t just be filibuster-proof but it would be very close to veto-proof.
Conclusion
What the midterm blowout of 2026 showed us all is that many more things are possible than we used to think. Of course, this could all be a one-time phenomenon, a combination of anger at high gas prices, anger at Donald Trump’s obliviousness, and a big turnout by Southern voters who were beyond angry at the Supreme Court watering down their voting rights. This cycle also saw so many excellent Democratic candidates it’s hard to even count them all.
None of that might be true in 2028. The voters could revert to form, and Democrats might be lucky to only pick up one or two seats, at best. They could lose seats that they now hold. The political atmosphere two years from now is anyone’s guess, really, but it probably won’t match what it was this year in significant ways.
Even so, last week’s midterms has inspired a lot of very optimistic thinking among Democrats. Next time around, some races that would previously have been seen as unwinnable might attract a lot more attention and a lot more funding for the candidates. If 2026 does prove to be a true realignment of American politics, then Democrats will start competing hard for states in the Deep South, out on the plains, and pretty much everywhere else. And who knows — they might win more of these races than anyone would have thought possible before last Tuesday.
— Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant