Last Monday — the day before the midterm elections — I wrote out my predictions for who would win each Senate race. I tried to be very cautiously optimistic, so of course my predictions did not match all that well with the actual results. In my own defense, I was not alone in this timidity — very few people foresaw the jaw-dropping magnitude of the Democratic “bluenami” that was coming.<\/p>\n
In any case, just for fun, today I’d like to instead give in to the impulse to not be cautious and instead take a very wild-eyed optimistic look at the future, based on the 2026 results. This is going to require two columns, I should mention. Today’s will be a gleeful look at the 2028 presidential race, and tomorrow I plan to do the same for the 2028 Senate map.<\/p>\n
Of course, it’s impossible to predict much of anything this far out. We’ve got two years to go before the next election, and anything could happen (and probably will). Also, mapping a midterm election’s results onto a presidential contest isn’t all that valid, since more people will turn out to vote in a presidential year. This year’s result might prove to be based just on Democrats being incredibly fired up to vote while Republicans were gloomy and depressed. That might not be true next time around. There are plenty of caveats to what I’m about to do, but what the heck, I’m in an optimistic mood so let’s just have some fun today, shall we?<\/p>\n
I’m going to look at a couple of different scenarios, all of which will use the 270ToWin<\/a> website, which has an easy-to-use map where you can easily count up Electoral College votes by pointing and clicking. The links below should (hopefully) send you to the correct map for each scenario.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cut and paste<\/strong><\/p>\n The easiest map to put together is one where you just cut and paste. I started with the actual results of the 2024 election and then added to the Democratic side all the states where they just won the 2026 Senate midterms. I should mention that as of this writing, the races for Mississippi and Alaska have not been called yet, but in both races the Democrat is not only ahead but has been widening their lead for the past few days (they are both currently up by over 4,000 votes), so I just went ahead and counted them as Democratic wins. Here’s the map<\/a> I came up with.<\/p>\n As you can see, it’s a blowout. Kamala Harris won 226 Electoral College votes, which are shown in dark blue. The states where Democrats won their Senate races last week add up to another 134 Electoral College votes (shown in light blue), for a total of 360. That is 90 more than the minimum 270 needed to take the White House, and would represent the biggest Electoral College landslide in decades (probably since Ronald Reagan, but I have to admit I haven’t checked that).<\/p>\n This is not a very realistic map, though, because there are states marked in red that almost certainly would vote blue in an election that was this much of a blowout for Democrats. Which brings us to our next scenario — the rosiest one of them all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Insanely optimistic<\/strong><\/p>\n If you take the previous map of Harris-plus-2026 and then make a few reasonable assumptions, you come up with the most insanely optimistic map imaginable. Well, I guess you could get even more insane and start adding in states like Louisiana and Florida (both of which were very, very close last Tuesday), but I tried to keep things within the bounds of the possible here.<\/p>\n This is the map<\/a> you come up with when you flip four additional states to the Democrats — states which have gone for Democratic presidential candidates in recent years that would almost certainly also vote blue in such a wipeout year. Marked in very light blue are 46 more Electoral College votes, from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. This brings the Democratic total to a whopping 406 Electoral College votes. This would be a historic landslide of an election, obviously. But it’s not completely out of the question, given the 2026 results.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Texas factor<\/strong><\/p>\n There is one big factor in all of this that is making Republicans nervous (and Democrats hopeful), and its name is Texas. Texas is second only to California in the number of Electoral College votes it has (40), and thus would be critical in any presidential race if it is truly up for grabs.<\/p>\n First, let’s look at a map<\/a> which just flips Texas and adds it in to the total Harris managed to get. All other battleground states (the ones from 2026, at any rate) have been left blank. Democrats in this scenario have 266 Electoral College votes. All they would have to do is add one more state to that total to get over the finish line (except for Alaska, which would result in a perfect 269-269 tie and thus still need one more state for a Democratic win). For Republicans to win the White House without Texas, they’d need to sweep the board of all<\/em> of those battleground states. No wonder some Republicans are so nervous!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Texas-plus<\/strong><\/p>\n Filling in the rest of the map (with Texas in the blue column) shows how plausible it would be for a Democrat to win with the Lone Star State in the blue column. Here is one example<\/a>, with three more of the battlegrounds marked in blue (Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan). This results in 313 Electoral College votes for Democrats, which seems pretty reasonable. This map assumes that the Democratic wins in six other states were nothing more than a historic fluke, as they all revert to voting for Republicans (South Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, and Alaska).<\/p>\n Here is another example<\/a> — one that seems (to me) to be the most plausible outcome if Texas did flip. In this case, all the “big blue wall” states go for the Democrat, with Ohio being the only Rust Belt state to turn red. Both Iowa and Kansas could, in such a scenario, be in play (Iowa especially, where Democrats had a phenomenal night last week), but they wouldn’t be needed, they’d just be icing on the cake. In this case, Democrats win 342 Electoral College votes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Texas reverts<\/strong><\/p>\n A more realistic map<\/a> might be one where almost all the battleground states — including Texas — revert to form and vote Republican. It is essentially that last map, just without Texas, and would result in Democrats winning with 302 Electoral College votes.<\/p>\n