Incumbent presidents are notoriously vulnerable to losing control of whatever House and Senate majorities they might come to power with. It’s one of those near-iron laws of American politics from which few chief executives have managed to escape. Remember Barack Obama in 2010? He wowed the entire electorate in 2008, handily defeating maverick Republican John McCain for the presidency, but two years later, Democrats lost a whopping 63 seats in the House as the surging Tea Party movement rebelled against the two parties, demanding an end to high deficits.

The magnitude of that shift may have been unprecedented – but not its direction. Ronald Reagan’s GOP lost the House to Tip O’Neill’s Democrats in 1982, while Bill Clinton, elected overwhelmingly in 1992, lost the House in 1994 to Newt Gingrich, who imposed a “Contract with America” on the new president, much of it drawn from Reagan’s 1995 State of the Union address, and written by the Heritage Foundation.  It was the first time in 40 years that the GOP earned a House majority and it illustrated the deep divisions in the US electorate that seem to portend these partisan pendulum swings between presidential elections, regardless of the sitting chief executive’s own popularity.

But there’s strong reason to believe that the 2026 midterms could defy this pattern.While the Democrats’ senior leadership continues to insist that Trump’s popularity is fading – and say they’re poised to reclaim the House next year – the math doesn’t yet add up. Parties that reclaim power typically exude unity thanks to forceful and disciplined leadership, but the Democrats in 2025 are badly splintered and their leadership widely perceived – even by their base – as weak and ineffectual. While the progressive left – led by democratic socialists like Sanders, AOC and now Mamdani – is gathering steam, it is still just ascendant, and far from hegemonic. If it continues its current trajectory, it could well start to galvanize the party around a sweeping pro-working class, anti-Big Capital agenda, but it’s unlikely to cohere fast enough to make a real difference, except on the margins, by 2026.

The Democrats’ hopes to flip the House reside largely on the assumption that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will prove unpopular in key competitive districts – and of course, given early opposition to the bill, which passed just narrowly, there is good reason to make that case. Elements of the bill, especially to Medicaid are not, on their face, popular, but a lot will come down to messaging by Democrats and the president. And the fact is, Democrats in Congress have their lowest approval rating in more than three decades – just 27% compared to 35% for the GOP. While the public despises the current state of gridlock in Congress, it tends to favor Trump’s presidential leadership, even with caveats, far more highly.  Health care as a midterm issue has not generally gone well for Democrats – in 2010, a grassroots backlash to Obamacare actually helped the GOP. And the Democrats’ lack of unity, and overall low favorability rating, is going to cost them when it comes to messaging effectively against the White House in 2026.

Trump may also have an ace up his sleeve. The conservative -dominated US Supreme Court is about to take up a challenge to section 2 of the Civil Rights era Voting Rights Act. Section 2 allows state legislatures to create voting districts that consolidate the power of ethnic minorities, especially African Americans, into “majority race” districts. Naturally, right-wing conservatives consider this “adjustment” to be at odds with stricter so-called “color-blind” standards that leave ethnic minorities to vote their actual numbers in whatever cities and towns they reside. The issue has been simmering on the backburners for years, in part, because even conservative-led state legislatures have tended to go along with these race-sensitive redistricting rules, especially in the Deep South, where the GOP generally rules the roost anyway.

But last year, a class action suit by non-White voters in Louisiana, challenging the state’s redistricting rules, came to the attention of the Supreme Court. The challenge didn’t just deal with section 2 rules and the Court, for some reason, decided to set the issue aside temporarily. But suddenly, last week, in a little noticed order, SCOTUS asked the appeals party and the state to re-argue the case, based specifically on section 2. The appellant is arguing that section 2 violates the “equal protection clause” of the 14th amendment, banning race-based discrimination in voting among other matters, as well as equal rights protections contained in the 15th amendment. In other words, SCOTUS, without much fanfare, is preparing to issue another major constitutional decision, probably early in its next term, which could end up affecting the voting balance in the 2026 midterms.

What kind of effect could it have? A dramatic one. While the SCOTUS case focuses on Louisiana, at least two dozen other seats currently held by Democrats across the country could well be flipped if additional majority Black voting districts formerly mandated by Section 2 are eliminated – more than enough to ensure a GOP victory that preserves the current Republican House majority – now a margin of just 5 seats – in 2026.

Naturally, this latest sly SCOTUS maneuver comes just as Democrats and Republicans are preparing to engage in a huge “redistricting” battle to try to capture additional congressional seats in the run-up to 2026. Last week, the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) convened its annual meeting and much of the focus is now on launching an aggressive redistricting campaign in selected Blue states to create a more favorable map for Democrats. But the new effort faces legal obstacles, including the presence of independent redistricting commissions that constrain the ability of Democrats to gerrymander with the same freedom Republicans do. Republicans, meanwhile, may have fresh opportunities to redraw state voting maps in at least six Red states, including most notably, Texas. California governor Gavin Newsom has just announced his intent to bring a ballot initiative forward in his state this November to allow for more aggressive gerrymandering there. It’s just one state – a blockbuster  – but it will likely spark fresh Democrat efforts, spurred on by the DGA, to try to match the GOP’s effort state for state.

And that’s why the latest SCOTUS maneuver could prove decisive, if the court ends up ruling against section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as it well might. It’s not quite clear who on the Court is expediting a fresh fight on the issue, and how it will eventually play out (In fact, the Court could well be split, as it was back in 2022). But it’s clearly another “Trump” card, and a sign of just how powerful the Court can be in advancing the president and his party’s agenda, when it so chooses.

Who was the last president to avoid the mid-term curse? George W. Bush in 2002. Normally, it takes a massive new wave of support behind the incumbent, as Bush enjoyed in the aftermath of 9/11. Bill Clinton enjoyed a mini-wave after his landslide reelection in 1998, when Democrats also picked up five seats. But, despite their ineffectual whimpering, there’s no wave in sight for the Democrats now – not even a trickle.

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