Fuelling up
High petrol prices could hand Democrats a mighty midterm victory
Our model gives them a record chance of claiming both the House of Representatives and the Senate
AMERICAN POLITICAL lore holds that general-election campaigns begin in earnest after Labour Day in early September.
Donald Trump’s political-action committees have noted the calendar, booking $138m of spending in competitive midterm races after mostly sitting out the summer.
Yet rather than showing a tightening race, polls so far this month have shifted further in Democrats’ favour.
Our midterm forecast now gives the opposition a 93% chance of flipping the House of Representatives, up from 77% in mid-July, with an expected 238-197 majority.
Their chance of taking the Senate has risen from 45% two months ago to a high of 59%.
One factor causing this shift is “generic-ballot” polling—a common survey question asking respondents which party they plan to support in congressional elections.
During the past week Big Data Poll, Marquette Law School and The Economist’s own survey conducted by YouGov have given Democrats eye-popping leads of 12-13 percentage points.
A poll by the New York Times and Siena University showed a lead of 8.5.
Some of Democrats’ apparent gains are caused by firms starting to apply likely-voter screens, which boost the party whose supporters are more energised.
But our model’s generic-ballot average, which accounts for such filters, still shows Democrats’ margin rising from 6.1 points on September 9th to 7.4 today.
Polling for the party out of power usually improves over the midterm cycle.
In 2026, however, there is a much more immediate explanation for Democrats’ move into landslide territory: petrol prices.
So far Democrats’ generic-ballot lead has closely tracked prices at the pump, with about a two-week lag.
This suggests that Democrats’ edge should continue to grow: a simple model based on the year-to-date relationship predicts that it will reach 7.7 points on October 1st.
A recent, unsuccessful push from some Republican members of Congress to suspend the federal tax on petrol until 2027 shows that the party is well aware of the toll Mr Trump’s war in Iran is inflicting on their prospects.
The Senate presents a far tougher lift for Democrats than the House.
Assuming that the party can hold all its seats—which is far from guaranteed—it still needs to win four additional Republican seats, including at least two in states Mr Trump won by double digits in 2024.
That may be possible.
Our model does not rely solely on polling averages, but blends them with states’ voting histories and data on candidates.
It puts Democrats’ probabilities of winning these contests at 60% in Alaska, 61% in Texas—long seen as Democrats’ white whale—and a striking 70% in Ohio.
Even if Democrats falter in these races, they have a plausible path through the Great Plains.
Our model gives the opposition a 35% chance of winning Iowa, a 30% shot in Kansas and a 19% probability in Nebraska (where an Independent is challenging a Republican incumbent, with no Democrat in the race).
These neighbouring states are demographically alike, so one falling domino could take the rest with it.
That would enable Democrats to lose Maine or Michigan and still secure a majority.
Hope of victories on such incarnadine terrain may make Democrats shudder with déjà vu.
Polls at this stage of the race overestimated their final vote margin for Senate races by three to four points in 2020, 2022 and 2024.
In 2018—the previous midterm under Mr Trump—Senate polling averages in September were unbiased overall, but still displayed a pronounced imbalance, underestimating Democrats in blue states but overestimating them in red ones.
A similar pattern this year would all but ensure a Republican-controlled upper chamber until 2029.
Even with their favourable odds, Democratic operatives may be the only Americans with reason to want higher petrol prices.
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