Senate candidate Roy Cooper, with his wife, Kristin, at a Democratic primary watch party in Raleigh, North Carolina, on March 3. (Jonathan Drake/Reuters)

By Henry Olsen, senior fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center

With the midterm outlook darkening for Republicans, the central question has shifted from the House to the Senate. Can the GOP, which currently has a three-seat majority, hold on to the upper chamber? Here’s my ranking of the seats that are most likely to change hands.

1. North Carolina

North Carolina unsurprisingly tops my rankings. The Tar Heel State leans Republican in federal elections and has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Kay Hagan in 2008. But most statewide races there are close, and the Democrats nominated popular two-term former governor Roy Cooper, who has led in polling all year. Some of that lead — he’s ahead of GOP nominee Michael Whatley by eight points in the RealClearPolitics average — is certainly because Whatley is still largely unknown to about a third of voters. But RCP has Cooper at 49.3 percent, and as long as he remains around the magic 50 percent mark, it will be hard for Whatley to win.

2. Ohio

Democrat Sherrod Brown appears on track to reenter the Senate two years after he was defeated by Republican Bernie Moreno. Throughout his career, Brown has run ahead of the Democratic trend, and polling has consistently put him ahead in this race by three to eight percentage points. Like many states with large agricultural sectors, Ohio seems to be swinging against Republicans this year. Husted is losing badly among independents and not getting the 90-percent-plus support he needs from Republicans to offset that. Brown seems to be in the driver’s seat given his historic strength and a good — maybe great — year for Democrats.

3. Maine

Republican Sen. Susan Collins remains popular with the state’s independents, which explains why she only trails by two points in the RCP average. Her problem is demographic: Collins has survived in this blue state only because she attracts many Democratic voters. She certainly can win again, but Trump’s low popularity will be a barrier to the levels of ticket splitting she needs, and this week brought a bombshell ProPublica report that until 2025 she had been a subject of an FBI bribery investigation (her office strongly denied any impropriety by the senator). The polls here were epically wrong in 2020, when she was projected to lose by a wide margin but won by over eight points. One to watch, but Democrat Troy Jackson is the favorite.

4. Michigan

Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s well-known weaknesses give Republican Mike Rogers a shot to pull off a blue-to-red upset. Michigan has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1994, but Rogers came close in 2024. The big unknown: Will Michiganders who vote Democratic in other races abandon El-Sayed knowing his defeat could cost the party control of the Senate? It’s a good sign for El-Sayed that his support has been steadily rising since he won his primary on Aug. 4, but the race is far from over.

5. Alaska

It may surprise some readers to see Alaska this high on the list. But here’s another case of a good Democratic candidate combining with a good environment. Former congresswoman Mary Peltola beat a flawed Republican nominee and showed her crossover appeal by running five points ahead of Kamala Harris even when she lost in 2024. The race has not been heavily polled, and the two most recent ones send conflicting signals. Republicans are worried enough, however, to have committed nearly $15 million, a huge sum for a state with such a small population. They wouldn’t be doing that if they thought Sen. Dan Sullivan had reelection in the bag.

6. Texas

Democrat James Talarico has been ahead in the last nine polls, but his lead still averages under three points. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the scandal-scarred GOP nominee, is flawed in the extreme. Will Republicans and GOP-leaning independents vote party over person? This is the flip side of the question animating the Michigan race. The fact that Texas is much more Republican than Michigan is Democratic is why I rank it here.

7. Iowa

According to the polling, the race between Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek is a dead heat. Hinson does not seem to be suffering as much GOP voter defection as other nominees, and she trails among independents by a smaller margin than her more endangered colleagues. It’s still a toss-up, but I join most raters in thinking Hinson is likelier to prevail.

8. New Hampshire

Republicans have reason to be excited about New Hampshire, where polls consistently show former senator John E. Sununu running ahead of expectations in this light-blue state. Three respected race raters have moved this one into their toss-up category. The fact remains, however, that New Hampshire is a highly educated, moderate state that has only elected one Republican to the Senate (Kelly Ayotte in the GOP wave of 2010) since President George W. Bush’s first term. It would be extremely strange if Sununu, who lost his reelection bid in 2008 to outgoing senator Jeanne Shaheen, can buck that trend in a such a Democratic year.

9. Minnesota

Recent polling shows Minnesota close. The Democratic candidate, Peggy Flanagan, is very progressive, and as the sitting lieutenant governor she can be tied to the benefits-fraud scandal that destroyed Gov. Tim Walz’s career. Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter, is a talented campaigner, and one cannot entirely rule out an upset. But it’s very rare for a candidate from a party likely to do poorly in a midterm to capture a seat in the opposing party’s column.

10. Georgia

Georgia rounds out my top 10. After a narrow runoff win in 2021, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has turned himself into a fundraising powerhouse and dark-horse presidential contender. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Mike Collins has had trouble raising money and has been stalked by a series of controversies involving problematic staffers. Georgia is Republican enough that the GOP is spending to try to elevate Collins, but don’t be surprised if he gets cut off — triaged, in political parlance — in October.

Poll watch

Presidential job approval is a key signal ahead of the midterms. But overall job approval doesn’t tell the whole story, and many aggregators wind up overestimating Trump’s political weakness. Margin of Victory is tracking a better indicator: approval among registered and likely voters. No change again this week.

I’ve got my eye on

Where will the parties spend?: “Watch what they do, not what they say,” is sound advice in life and politics. Spending by party committees and their super PAC allies is the single best indicator of the direction of the campaign. Parties don’t spend big where they don’t think they can win. Analyst Rob Pyers, who tracks the flow of campaign cash, finds that 59 House races have attracted some outside funding, but only in 20 of them have both parties spent at least $1 million.

Midwest problems for the GOP: Republican nominees in Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin recently made news by calling for an end to the Iran war. Add that to significant polling weakness in other Midwestern states such as Nebraska and Kansas, and it suggests the rise in diesel and fertilizer costs due to the war is having an outsize impact in these agriculture-heavy states. If that continues, a localized anti-GOP trend could deliver some big Election Day surprises.

Where are Republican internals?: Both parties leak internal polls in an attempt to shape the campaign narrative. If one party is doing most of the leaking, it’s usually a sign the other one is seeing bad news. So far, we haven’t gotten many internal House polls from Team Red. It could just be early — House races usually break later than Senate ones — but I’m looking to see if House Republicans start to drop some polls in seats like Mike Lawler’s New York District 17 or María Elvira Salazar’s Florida District 27. If they don’t do that by mid-October, we’ll all know what it means.