Democrats are seeing a “huge rebound” in some of the nation’s largest and most consequential states, according to new polling highlighted by CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten.
Newsweek has contacted the White House and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for comment.
Why It Matters
After months of overperformance in special elections, Enten says fresh numbers from New York, California and Texas suggest that the political environment heading into the 2026 midterms has shifted sharply toward Democrats—enough to threaten the GOP’s fragile House majority.
What To Know
Citing polling data from Siena and CNN, Enten said Democrats led the 2026 generic House ballot in New York by 27 points, roughly double Vice President Kamala Harris’ 13-point statewide margin in 2024, which was an unusually narrow Democratic margin in one of the party’s strongest states.
“Look at that wide, huge advantage,” he said.
That scale of movement, Enten noted, is especially dangerous for Republicans like Representative Mike Lawler in the Hudson Valley.
Democratic House majorities are often built by wiping out the handful of Republicans who manage to win seats in deep‑blue states.
These numbers, he said, should make the GOP “really worried” in New York.
Enten said a similar “big rebound” appeared in California, where Democrats led the 2026 House ballot by 28 points, which he contrasted with Democrats’ 20-point 2024 presidential margin there, citing PPIC and CNN data.
The Enten Scale host added that the new 2026 House ballot looks “a whole heck of a lot more like 2020.”
That rebound, he explained, is exactly the sort of margin Democrats need if they hope to eliminate the remaining Republican seats in the state—especially after recent redistricting battles in which Democrats have tried to squeeze out GOP representation.
Historically, big Democratic waves such as those in 2006 and 2018 were powered by sweeping up these leftover Republican districts in blue states.
In Texas, long a pillar of GOP strength and the focus of Republican redistricting efforts, Enten said the 2026 generic House ballot showed Republicans ahead by only 1 to 2 points, a shift he described as echoing the 2018 environment when Democrats made major House gains.
Enten went on to link the new numbers to the recent special election in Texas’s Ninth District, saying the result “did not happen in isolation.”
According to data from CNN and the University of Texas, Trump won Texas by 14 points, but the generic House ballot now shows Republicans ahead by just 1 to 2 points—a dramatic tightening.
That small GOP edge, Enten said, contributed to Democrats’ competitive showing in the special election and mirrors the environment of 2018, when Republicans only narrowly carried the national House vote.
Taken together, he argued, the swings in blue and red states alike could allow Democrats to “wring out a lot of seats” in 2026.
Enten also said prediction markets have recently raised the chance of Republicans winning fewer than 193 House seats to 26 percent, up from 8 percent three months earlier, framing it as evidence of growing downside risk for the GOP.
In other words, the markets are not just pricing in a Democratic takeover of the House—they are increasingly entertaining the possibility of a major Republican collapse.
Separately, Enten highlighted Gallup findings—reported via AOL—showing a 50-year high in Americans identifying as liberal within the Democratic Party and a Democratic advantage on the national congressional ballot reading last quarter.
What People Are Saying
Enten said: “[President] Donald Trump made huge gains in 2024 versus 2020 in New York. But now we’re looking at a huge Democratic rebound.”
He added: “This looks a whole heck of a lot more like 2020 than it does like 2024 with Democrats up by 28 points on the House ballot [in California]…
“Now we’re talking about a Republican advantage [in Texas] of just 1, 2 points…the environment has shifted so much to the left…
“You put this together and all of a sudden you can see how Democrats can really wring out a lot of seats from the big states, the blue ones in California and New York, and, of course, the red one, historically, in the state of Texas.”
White House spokesman Kush Desai told Newsweek on Wednesday: “Nearly 80 million Americans gave President Trump a resounding Election Day mandate to end Joe Biden’s economic disaster and immigration crisis. The Trump administration remains laser-focused on continuing to cool inflation, accelerate economic growth, secure our border, and mass deport criminal illegal aliens.”
The DNC said on Saturday: “In red, blue, and purple communities, voters are souring on Donald Trump and his disastrous, billionaire-first agenda that is raising costs on working families.”
What Happens Next
If the state-level House polling holds, Democrats will focus on unseating Republicans in New York and California districts that flipped in 2022 and 2024 while targeting newly competitive seats in Texas.
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