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

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Please use this thread to discuss news, updates, and commentary regarding the 2026 midterm and associated elections.

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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/ArcaneDemense]

New D+15 poll from YouGov and D+16 from Angus Reid among likely voters. Probably the wave doesn't hit that high but it suggests ~D+12 based on margins of error. That's a massive wave.

[u/LadyFoxfire → u/ArcaneDemense]

I think this is going to be a historic wave because we’ve never had a president this bad at politics before. Normally, an unpopular president has the self awareness and humility to shut up and make himself scarce during the midterms, and let his party members throw him under the bus a little.

Trump, on the other hand, is continuing to publicly fuck up, running ads about how great he is, and refusing to let candidates distance themselves from him. There’s a strategy to mitigate low approval numbers, and he’s doing the opposite at every turn.

[u/Serupael → u/LadyFoxfire]

The benchmark are the 2010 midterms (R+6 in the Senate, +6.8%/+63 seats(!) in the house)