Allan Lichtman has delivered a grim forecast for Donald Trump’s Republican Party in the approaching midterm elections.
The American University historian, 77, who has correctly called nine of the last eleven presidential races, said that Democrats hold better than a 90 percent chance of seizing the House of Representatives and a 67 percent shot at flipping the Senate. His remarks landed as both chambers hang in the balance and Trump struggles with historically weak approval numbers for a president at this stage.
Lichtman pointed to a structural edge for Democrats in the lower chamber. Republicans currently cling to a razor-thin House majority, meaning Democrats need minimal gains to install Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, 54, as the next speaker.
“Democrats need so few seats to take the majority. I give it over a 90% chance,” he said.
The Senate math runs steeper but still favors a blue shift, according to the historian. He projected a likely 51-49 Democratic majority, which would require flipping four of the GOP’s current 53 seats. He singled out Texas, Ohio, Maine, and North Carolina as the most probable pickups, while also flagging Alaska’s at-large House seat as a possible Democratic hold through Rep. Mary Peltola.
Lichtman’s model also found Democrats surprisingly viable on Republican turf. He cited competitive Senate races in states Trump carried comfortably, including South Carolina, where the former president won by 18 points in 2024.
“It’s amazing that Democrats are competitive in South Carolina, which Trump won by 18 points,” he said.
He added two more historically lopsided states to the watch list. “Kansas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since the Great Depression in 1932 and yet that’s a neck-and-neck race, as is Iowa,” he continued.
The driving force behind this landscape, Lichtman argued, is an enthusiasm gap favoring Democrats. Republican voters typically outperform Democrats in midterm turnout, but 2026 appears to break that pattern.
“Usually Republicans turn out at a higher rate but this time it looks like the Democratic enthusiasm is higher,” he said.
Trump’s own standing compounds the headwinds. Lichtman noted that presidential approval ratings at this level have historically triggered massive congressional losses for the sitting party, though he framed this as historical pattern rather than formal prediction.
“When the approval rating for a president is as low as Trump’s, on average The White House party loses 40 House and six Senate seats,” he explained. “It’s not a prediction, that’s just showing how heavily the winds are blowing against Republicans.”
The Michigan Senate race has already exposed Democratic friction. Former Democratic candidate Haley Stevens stunned party leaders by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers over primary winner Abdul El-Sayed, a left-leaning figure. Some observers read the move as tension between centrist and progressive wings, though Lichtman still projected a Democratic hold there.
Beyond the congressional map, Lichtman floated the possibility of a second Trump impeachment if Republicans suffer a sweeping defeat, raising the stakes for a president already shadowed by legal battles.
Lichtman developed his predictive system, known as the “Keys to the White House,” in collaboration with Russian earthquake prediction specialist Vladimir Keilis-Borok in the early 1980s. The model tracks thirteen historical indicators rather than polling data, and its record includes correct calls on Trump’s 2016 victory and Biden’s 2020 win, though it misfired on Al Gore’s 2000 popular-vote triumph and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 popular-vote edge. He has since applied the framework to congressional races with the same historical methodology.
The 2026 midterms will test whether Lichtman’s congressional extension matches his presidential track record when voters head to polls nationwide.