10 Senate seats most likely to flip on Election Day

Election Day has arrived and Democrats are now projected to take control of the Senate if voters behave as polls predict.

Polls show a blue wave is forming that could flip as many as eight Senate seats from Republican to Democratic control.

President Trump’s sliding job approval rating and voter anger over rising prices, the war with Iran and the rise of AI-driven data centers have created major political headwinds for GOP candidates.

Yet Senate Republicans and allied outside-money groups have vastly outspent their Democratic counterparts and many of the battleground states historically have been favorable ground for Republicans.

Democrats also have had to worry about internal party divisions in Michigan and the fallout from a public corruption scandal in Minnesota that may give Republicans a chance to steal two Democratic-held seats.

Many of the key races are within the polls’ margins of error. This has Republicans hopeful they will keep their Senate majority despite indications that Democrats have the momentum heading into election night.

Here are the 10 Senate seats most likely to flip:

Everything has gone right for Democrats in the Tar Heel State.

Democrats got their top-recruit candidate — North Carolina’s former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) — and the state’s savvy two-term Republican senator, Thom Tillis, suddenly announced his retirement in June of last year after clashing with Trump over big cuts to Medicaid.

GOP candidate Michael Whatley, who is also the former chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, has had to struggle with having a much lower name ID across the state than his Democratic opponent.

It became clear over the summer that the race was slipping away from the GOP and Senate Republican super PACs canceled millions of dollars in television ad reservations in September.

Trump won North Carolina by slightly more than 3 percentage points in 2024. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates North Carolina as a “likely” Democratic win.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) scored another impressive recruiting win in Ohio by persuading former three-term Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who was once considered a promising presidential or vice presidential candidate, to run for the seat.

Brown — who narrowly lost his reelection race to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R) in 2024, a year when Trump carried Ohio by 11.2 percentage points — is viewed as the favorite over incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted.

Brown and his Democratic allies spent heavily on ads attacking Husted’s past support for data centers, which spurred the incumbent senator to become the lead sponsor of the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would prod states to come up with laws to protect taxpayers from data center-associated costs.

Brown leads Husted by an average of 2 percentage points, according to a compilation of recent polls by Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ).

Democrats cheered when former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) decided to challenge low-profile Sen. Dan Sullivan (R), as the party saw Peltola as representing their best chance to knock off a two-term incumbent in a GOP-leaning state.

Peltola has shown she can win statewide in Alaska. She was elected to succeed longtime GOP Rep. Don Young after he died in 2022.

She beat former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) in that year’s runoff special election and then won a full term in the 2022 general election.

Sullivan has been battered by the impact of high gas and diesel prices on Alaska’s residents, who pay more per capita for diesel and home heating oil than voters in any other state.

Democrats have bashed Sullivan for rising health insurance costs due to the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies and Alaskans losing coverage because of Medicaid reforms Republicans enacted last year.

Peltola leads Sullivan by about a percentage point and a half, according to an average of recent polls compiled by DDHQ.

The race was thrown into turmoil last week after The New York Times published an investigative report alleging that Peltola’s campaign was aware of the work by a Democratic operative who recruited little-known candidate Daniel J. Sullivan to run for Senate in a bid to siphon away votes from the Republican incumbent with the same name.

Peltola has denied any involvement in the dirty-tricks campaign.

Trump lost Maine to Democrats Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the last three presidential elections, which should make veteran GOP Sen. Susan Collins’s seat a likely pickup opportunity for Democrats.

But Collins has shown throughout her 30-year Senate career that she knows how to win tough races and how to defy the polls.

Surveys showed Democratic Senate candidate Sara Gideon comfortably ahead of Collins in the final weeks of the 2020 election, but Collins wound up winning by nearly 10 percentage points.

Maine Democrats were rocked when progressive candidate Graham Platner dropped out of the race in July due to sexual assault allegations, but the party quickly coalesced behind Troy Jackson (D), who previously served as president of the Maine state Senate.

Collins has worked diligently to distance herself from Trump on big issues. She voted against the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and his most controversial Cabinet nominees.

She has touted her ability to deliver for Maine as chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and her ability to win exemptions for critical goods from Trump’s global tariff policies.

Jackson leads Collins by an average of nearly 6 percentage points, according to recent polls compiled by DDHQ. Even so, Collins has defied the polls before, and she is viewed as probably the best GOP Senate candidate in any of this year’s battleground races.

The Texas Senate race has been one of the most closely watched contests of the 2026 midterm elections because of nasty intraparty squabbling among Republicans and huge Democratic voter enthusiasm for progressive candidate James Talarico.

Democrats may be on the cusp of electing a candidate from Texas to the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1988 if the polls are accurate due to Republican divisions, a decisive shift of Hispanic voters toward Democrats and the state’s changing demographics.

Talarico’s lead over Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton is no big surprise to Senate GOP leaders who warned for months that Paxton would be a weak general election candidate.

Talarico leads Paxton by an average of 3.5 percentage points, according to recent polls compiled by DDHQ.

Wealthy GOP donors have poured massive amounts of cash into the race, spending an estimated $300 million to prop up Paxton.

Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, has spent nearly $170 million alone to support Paxton, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Strategists on both sides say the race is extremely close in a state that Trump won by nearly 14 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) warned on his podcast that early voting by Democrats has swamped that of Republicans and that Republicans could lose every statewide race in Texas.

“Texas is excruciatingly close. Understand we could lose Texas,” he warned. “Not just the Senate race. We could lose every single statewide race in Texas. That’s how close these numbers are.”

Michigan is a Democratic-leaning state that Trump narrowly won in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, but where Republican statewide candidates have struggled in recent years.

GOP candidate Mike Rogers’s recent internal polling showed him tied with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. And Republicans have tried to stir up voters’ fears about electing the first Muslim to the U.S. Senate by warning of El-Sayed’s alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

El-Sayed’s strong criticism of Israel and the support of pro-Palestinian advocates such as left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has made him a divisive figure, especially among centrist Jewish Democrats.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who lost a tough-fought race to El-Sayed in the Democratic Senate primary, roiled the race by unexpectedly endorsing Rogers on Sunday.

But Stevens’s decision to back Rogers after she and El-Sayed clashed over campaign strategy may not have much of an impact coming so late in the race.

Schumer called Stevens’s endorsement a “despicable betrayal” and most other Democrats are unified behind El-Sayed, who is the favorite heading into the final day of the race.

El-Sayed leads Rogers by an average of 3.5 percentage points, according to DDHQ.

Democrats have a chance to win in Iowa because the state’s agriculture-reliant economy has been hit hard by Trump’s global trade policies, which have shrunk the export market for corn and soybeans — two major Iowa commodities.

Iowa farmers are also furious over the high price of diesel, which they blame on the eight-month war with Iran, setting up a perfect opportunity for Democrats to win a Senate seat in a state that Trump carried by 13.2 percentage points in 2024.

Former President Obama carried Iowa in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, and former liberal Sen. Tom Harkin (D) represented the state in the Senate for 30 years.

The Republican candidate, Rep. Ashley Hinson, is well-regarded among GOP aides and strategists, and she has scrambled to distance herself from the president amid voter anger over fuel and food prices.

Schumer’s allies were heartened when Democratic candidate Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist in basketball and a state legislator, emerged as the victor in the Democratic primary over more progressive Iowa state Sen. Zach Wahls (D).

Polls show the Hawkeye State’s Senate race is closer than the contests in North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, Texas and Michigan, where the Democratic candidates have bigger leads.

But agriculture plays a bigger role in Iowa’s economy than just about any other state, and farmers aren’t happy about being squeezed by low commodity prices and high fuel costs — giving Democrats a chance to win.

Kansas is another farm state that has been hit hard by the president’s trade wars and high fertilizer and diesel prices linked to the war with Iran.

Democrats haven’t elected a candidate from Kansas to the U.S. Senate since 1932, and Trump won the state by 16 points in 2024.

Yet Democrats have shown some signs of life in the Jayhawk State in recent years.

Democrat Laura Kelly has served as the state’s governor since 2019, and Kansas voters in 2022 voted decisively to defeat a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have declared that residents did not have any right to an abortion.

GOP strategists began raising alarms about Republican Sen. Roger Marshall’s reelection prospects months ago, warning that he wasn’t popular among independents or Democrats and that even Republican voters have mixed opinions about him.

Marshall, one of the president’s most loyal allies, has had to battle negative publicity after The New York Times reported that the incumbent senator, who is a doctor and co-owner of an OB-GYN medical practice, sued 700 patients for medical debts.

He is running against Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton, a popular megachurch pastor who has a knack for getting his message across and has pledged he will not support Schumer for Democratic leader but instead work with fellow centrists to get things done in Washington.

The Cook Political Report rates the Kansas Senate race a “toss-up,” and Hamilton has a narrow 2-point lead in recent polls, according to the DDHQ average.

South Carolina was expected to be a slam dunk for Republicans until the sudden death of longtime Sen. Lindsey Graham (R), which set up a contentious battle for the Republican nomination between his sister, Darline Graham, who had Trump’s backing, and conservative Rep. Ralph Norman.

Like in Texas, bruised Republican feelings haven’t healed in the aftermath of the race as Norman recently panned Graham, telling CNN that she was “propped up by special interest groups.”

Graham has a famous last name but not much experience in policy and politics.

She stumbled at a Republican debate in August when she admitted that “I’m not that informed on national security” — a shocking admission from a candidate whose late brother was a preeminent voice on defense matters in Congress.

Graham was tagged by opponents in the Senate GOP primary as a mystery candidate who couldn’t be counted on to deliver on a conservative agenda if elected to a full term. But she has had Trump’s strong support, and that means a lot in a state the president won by nearly 18 percentage points in 2024.

Democrats think that their nominee, pediatrician Annie Andrews, presents a good contrast with Graham because she can talk about how the expiration of expanded health insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and cuts to Medicaid will impact children and families.

A recent New York Times/Siena poll of 707 South Carolina voters showed the race deadlocked, with Graham and Andrews each having 48-percent support.

The Cook Political Report rates the race as “lean Republican.”

Minnesota has been a reliably Democratic state over the years. The last Republican from there to win election to the U.S. Senate was Sen. Norm Coleman in 2002.

Republicans think they have a great candidate in former journalist and sportscaster Michele Tafoya.

Democrats had to coalesce after the hard-fought primary contest between Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, the progressive, and Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), the centrist.

Democratic sources said the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee initially viewed Craig as the stronger candidate in a general election.

Republicans may have a better chance of swiping the Minnesota Senate seat, held by retiring Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, because of lingering fallout over the $250 million to $350 million public benefits fraud scandal that happened on Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s watch.

Even so, it would be a major upset for Republicans to win the Senate race in Minnesota when Trump’s job approval rating in the state is 37 percent and his disapproval rating is 62 percent, according to a recent KSTP/Survey USA poll.

The Cook Political Report rates Minnesota as “lean Democrat.”