ARIANNA NEVAREZ
Staff Writer
Rounding out a week of discussion on important issues in the 2026 midterm elections, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and Kevin R. Kosar contextualized the elections and analyzed possible outcomes at 10:45 a.m. Friday in the Amphitheater.
Tenpas, visiting fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings Institution and director of the Initiative on Improving Interbranch Relations and Government, focuses on presidential personnel and studies turnover rates among senior executives.
Kosar is a senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute studying the U.S. Congress, the administrative state, American politics, election reform and the U.S. Postal Service. He edits Understanding Congress and hosts the “Understanding Congress” podcast.
To set the stage, Kosar discussed the “peculiar” electoral context that makes the upcoming elections hard to predict and compare to past ones. He said this peculiarity is due to high partisan polarization and narrow margins in the House and Senate. Specifically, he said the big takeaway from looking at the numbers in Congress is that it wouldn’t take much for the Democrats to flip the majority.
Kosar also said “extreme gerrymandering” is a “feature of our current political context.”
“Each of the two parties, so desperate to eke out a win, are doing everything they can to tilt House elections their own way,” Kosar said. “… This battle is getting more intense, and the odds are going higher and higher.”
Adding to the unique aspects of the forthcoming midterm elections, Tenpas referenced the “record number of retirements in Congress.” She said these retirements create open seats and opportunities for unpredictable outcomes.
Polarization is seen through the Senate representation, according to Tenpas. She said the number of states with split delegations — a state in which both a Republican and a Democrat serve — has dropped from 27% to 4% since 1980.
Tenpas shifted to the topic of “things about the midterm elections that you didn’t know before.” She brought up the lack of competition in the House of Representatives, and said there is an “unrepresentative nature” of participation in the primary elections versus those in November. As a result, she said there are more extreme candidates on both sides, leading to increased polarization.
Low voter turnout also heavily affects the midterms, according to Tenpas. “If you think about the consequences of these midterm elections changing the composition of the majorities in the House and the Senate, and what that means for policymaking, it’s astonishing that in a democracy like ours, less than 50% of the individuals actually participate,” Tenpas said.
In a discussion about possible election outcomes, Kosar again mentioned the high number of people retiring and leaving Congress, saying, “Capitol Hill is not a fun place to work anymore due to the fact that the polarization is so intense.” He predicted that Democrats will take over the House, while Republicans will keep control of the Senate. But, Kosar said, turnout is everything.
“If we should get a flush of 60 or 70%, that’s going to change things,” Kosar said. “Let us hope for lots of turnout so that the desires of the public are better expressed in the results.”
Tenpas then brought up factors that could affect the 2026 midterm elections. She cited President Donald Trump’s approval rating and said, based on past data, no modern president has avoided losses in the House unless their approval rating was above 50%. Trump is currently at 37%, according to The Washington Post.
Republican voter fatigue and the feeling of disillusionment with the Trump administration might affect energy and turnout for November, according to Tenpas. She also said the “economic and consumer sentiment” has shifted toward disapproval in Trump’s handling of the economy.
“Trump’s rhetoric in his unwillingness to recognize the affordability crisis does not help — consider tariffs, the ongoing war with Iran, gas and diesel prices jumping,” Tenpas said. “Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, in Washington, D.C., where we live, you have the remodeling and the building of the ballroom at the White House. You have the — I’m not sure what you would call it — of the reflecting pool. And importantly, we have the renovation of D.C. golf courses, which will likely affect a small number of voters this November.”
In the final phase of their analysis, Kosar focused on hypothetical situations of what governing will look like under two potential outcomes: Democrats flipping the House and Republicans keeping control of the Senate, or Republicans maintaining a majority in both the House and Senate.
In the first scenario, Kosar said, “losing control of the House is going to exacerbate [Trump’s] weakness.” He said things like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act won’t be able to happen with the loss of the House. On the other hand, he said Democrats will be “exceedingly incentivized to fight,” and he said he believes they might investigate the Trump administration and even impeach Trump. Kosar said this clash could bring government shutdowns as well.
In the second scenario, Kosar said the Republican Party would be incentivized to do what they did at the start of Trump’s presidency: “partner with him and push things through Congress along party line votes.” He also said there will be pressure on the Republican Party to create “additional carve-outs of the filibuster” and for them to figure out ways to continue to pass legislation with the small margins in Congress.
“Under either of these scenarios, the narrow margins in the chamber of the Senate and the House are going to continue to make it difficult for Congress to move legislation,” Kosar said. “It’s just going to keep being a grind.”
Kosar said the central question is, “How do we get this republic to work as it should?” He said the
fragmentation of the constitutional system leads to complications.
To close, Tenpas addressed Trump’s Thursday evening primetime address. She said the outcome of the midterms does not matter because Trump is “not a typical president that abides by norms.” She believes in Congress, but she said they have been “asleep.” Overall, Tenpas said this is a “high-stakes” election, but she said it is “unlikely to result in a sea change governance-wise.”
“We’re going to have continued unilateral exercise of presidential powers, no doubt about that. I hate to end on a glum note, but I think there is hope for the future,” Tenpas said. “The courts are starting to issue decisions, and judges are starting to issue decisions that curb the president’s power. We’ve talked a lot about the lame duck status of a president, and it could be, depending on the outcome of the elections, that Trump is more of a bystander than he has been these first two years.”
