1. How high will turnout get? Trump-era elections have consistently produced unusually strong voter engagement. The national turnout rate in both 2020 and 2024 exceeded 64 percent of eligible voters, the highest participation rate since 1908. The 2018 election hit 50 percent of eligible voters nationwide—a level not reached in a midterm since 1914—and 2022 was only a bit lower at 46 percent (other than 2018, the highest midterm mark since 1970). Republican leaders are worried this year about signs of lagging turnout in early voting across deep red rural counties in Texas and Georgia, and potentially lower participation rates among younger independents and casual Republican voters who mobilized in large numbers for Trump in 2024 but have soured on him since. But early voting numbers are not always a reliable guide to what happens on Election Day. If overall turnout drops a bit from 2022 because Republicans are less mobilized than before while Democrats remain energized, such an asymmetry would compound Republicans’ problems this year.
2. Some analysts have suggested that emerging signs of strong black turnout in several Deep South states represent a backlash to the Supreme Court’s recent decision narrowing the scope of the Voting Rights Act. This is a fascinating theory that will be worth investigating further once the final results are in. Even if black turnout is unusually high, it could also reflect more general partisan dynamics (most black voters are Democrats, and Democratic engagement is on the rise) or the candidacies of black Democratic nominees for U.S. senator in Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; for governor in South Carolina, Georgia, and Arkansas; and for state supreme court justice in North Carolina.
3. Democratic candidates (including nominal independents unofficially supported by the party) without previous political experience but with attractive professional backgrounds like doctor or pastor have demonstrated the ability to compete effectively with Republican incumbents in traditionally red states like Kansas, Nebraska, and South Carolina. If any of these candidates wins, or even comes within a point or two of winning, Democratic Party leaders are likely to take a lesson from this result for the future. Normally, Democrats have been more likely than Republicans to prefer congressional nominees who have previously served in elective office, but they may conclude that there is a benefit to the “accomplished outsider” persona—especially in constituencies where their nominees need significant appeal beyond the party base to win.
4. The prospect of Democrats gaining control of the House of Representatives has been treated as such a foregone conclusion that attention shifted mostly to the Senate months ago. But the size of the incoming House majority will be very important for the 2027–28 session of Congress, and is well worth monitoring as the results come in. As we’ve seen over the last four years, a single-digit margin greatly complicates the Speaker’s freedom of movement to manage the floor—and may even complicate the speakership election itself—by empowering small blocs of disaffected members. Hakeem Jeffries has strong personal as well as partisan reasons to root for the largest possible blue wave next week.
5. Congressional and gubernatorial races are always the headliners, but the thousands of other contests to be decided on Tuesday are also revealing and consequential. Elections for state constitutional offices and legislative chambers can often be an especially valuable indicator of partisan trends and alignments. This year, it’ll be fascinating to see how far Democratic success in Georgia, Arizona, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, and North Carolina extends down the ballot, and the possibility of unified Democratic state government for the first time in decades in Pennsylvania, Arizona, or Wisconsin carries significant policy implications. Do Americans continue to become more and more likely to vote the same way in state and federal contests, or are there important cases of ticket-splitting that reflect the enduring importance of electoral considerations besides the party label?