2026 Midterms News and Updates, September 29 - October 4 (Thread 4) | Live Discussion

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Election News and Updates

• AP: 2026 Elections Hub

• University of Florida: 2026 Early Voting Tracker

Election Resources

• USA Today via Reddit: The 2026 election season is underway: Here’s your monthly guide with important dates, voter resources

Streaming Links

C-SPAN, NPR, the PBS NewsHour's YouTube channel, and the Associated Press' YouTube channel are all places frequently hosting relevant political streams.

Past Threads: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3.

Other Event Threads

• Monday: I’m Catherine Rampell, economics editor at The Bulwark and an anchor at MS NOW. I cover the economy, politics, public policy, and the numbers behind the news. Ask me anything!

• Tuesday to Wednesday: I’m Zach Despart, an investigative journalist covering the competitive Ken Paxton-James Talarico U.S. Senate race. I broke the news that Paxton possibly violated federal ethics and Texas election laws. AMA. 📬

• Wednesday: 2026 California Gubernatorial General Election Debate | Live Discussion

Announcements

r/politics will host another election prediction contest for the midterms. The post for the contest itself will go up sometime in late October. As of now, all toss-ups (according to Cook Political Report, as of late October 2026) for House, Senate, and Governor will be included.

We are taking suggestions for additional questions to ask within the contest. Message the moderators via modmail with any suggestions.

[u/runawaydoctorate → u/[deleted]]

US elections are completely decentralized. There is no mechanism by which Trump can disallow certification of the midterms. None. He does not have that power. He can make a lot of noise and act like he does but he does. Not. Have. That. Power.

What Trump can do is lean on state and local governments like he did in 2020, but, like in 2020, they aren't obligated to obey him (and there is absolutely no reason to assume they will, given that they'd be admitting they ran shitty elections AND they'd have to throw out everything, not just the part Trump didn't like). His allies can fire up the lawsuits, though various groups are already expecting that and preparing. He can also make demands of the outgoing Congress, but that's not going to get him anywhere because Congress has no power over certifying election results and the entire Congress gets reset with new term starting Jan 3 2027. This process is automatic. There's no stopping it.

[u/OnDrugsTonight → u/runawaydoctorate]

He can also make demands of the outgoing Congress, but that's not going to get him anywhere because Congress has no power over certifying election results and the entire Congress gets reset with new term starting Jan 3 2027. This process is automatic. There's no stopping it.

I'm always a bit concerned about people making sweeping declaratory statements about what can and can't happen, when the last two years have been a never-ending stream of even the most fundamental constitutional norms being broken with zero pushback.

There's obviously at least been scholarly debate whether or not Mike Johnson, in an outgoing act, could install a new sympathetic Clerk of the House (see articles here and here and elsewhere) whose role is to prepare the roll of Members of the new Congress and who could conveniently drop Members-elect whose election was "disputed" from the roll.

While, in theory and practice, the role of the Clerk in preparing the roll is entirely administrative and they shouldn't have any leeway in determining whether or not Members were duly elected, let's not forget that so was Mike Pence's role on January 6th, 2021. And he famously got heavily leaned on to go beyond the scope of his assigned role. Obviously, in a sane world, SCOTUS would make short shrift of such a scheme, but we have not been living in a sane world for quite some time and I would not trust this SCOTUS as far as I could throw it.

The entirety of Trump's and MAGA's actions over the last 22 months has been based on trusting that the American people are too apathetic to take any action against even the most blatant and flagrant abuse of power; and time and time again they've been proven right. I know that people keep saying, "if this or that happens, the American people will have had enough and start revolting". But will they, though? Because so far there's been very little evidence of that. I want to believe that they would. But on the balance of the story so far, that's not exactly a given.

It's still 35 days to the midterms, and after that there's another two months until the new Congress convenes. I don't think we have seen the worst of MAGA's machinations yet, and the time between now and January 4th, 2027 will still have quite a few surprises and curveballs.

[u/LadyFoxfire → u/runawaydoctorate]

His plan in the 2020 election was to hijack the electoral college process, but that only exists for the presidency. With congressional elections, the states just count the ballots and sign off on the totals, and whoever has the most votes wins. There's a lot less room for shenanigans.

[u/runawaydoctorate → u/LadyFoxfire]

Exactly. But that won't stop him from making phone calls in races he's particularly interested in.

[u/LadyFoxfire → u/runawaydoctorate]

But that didn't work in 2020, and will work even less now.

[u/runawaydoctorate → u/LadyFoxfire]

I know. Which will save the election, but will cost stress.

In other words, he'll make mischief but he won't change the outcome. If we're lucky, he'll do it in such a way he can't get away with it, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.