Former CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza said Friday that even if President Donald Trump’s tariffs cause significant damage, Democrats still have dismal odds of retaking the Senate in 2026.
U.S. stocks plunged Thursday and Friday after Trump on Wednesday unveiled a slate of tariffs on the world. A viewer asked Cillizza on his livestream about whether “the tariffs backfir[ing] as badly as some economists are saying they could” might provide Democrats with the chance to win the Senate, but the former CNN analyst explained why that would be unlikely.
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“They need to net four seats, okay, because JD Vance is the vice president, president of the Senate breaks ties, so you got to have a clear majority if you’re Democrats. You can have 51 seats. There are 22 Republican seats up to 13 Democratic seats. Of those 22, 21 of them are in states that Donald Trump won last November so it’s not a great playing field,” Cillizza said. “The only one that’s in a state [former Vice President] Kamala Harris won is in Maine, Susan Collins, and she’s going to be a huge target. So the problem becomes, it’s like you have to fish in waters that are not super friendly to your party.”
“So like, one example, North Carolina. Thom Tillis is running. I could see that being a real race because I think Roy Cooper, the popular former Democratic governor, is probably going to run. So I think that that’s a race. It is a state Trump won, but that’s a real race,” he continued. “It starts to get dicier after that. Remember, they need four. So let’s assume they don’t lose any of their own, which, look, Georgia is going to be a big race for Democrats, so is Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire maybe, but Georgia and Michigan are going to be huge, huge races that they’d have to hold.”
Cillizza said even if Democrats are able to secure Maine and North Carolina, they still do not have strong chances of gaining a majority.
“I guess the next one would be in Ohio, where John Husted is the appointed senator. Ohio’s a tough state — maybe. Okay, that’s three. Now you have to find me another winner out of this group,” he said. “I’m going to go in alphabetical order: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”
“I mean, Iowa’s probably the best bet there, maybe Florida. It’s just the map is not great for them. It just isn’t for Democrats,” Cillizza concluded. “And so it’s like, could I think of a path? Sure, but man, you got to go through some pretty red states to get there.”
Cillizza also previously argued in March that Democrats face an uphill battle to regain Senate control after Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s announcement that she would not seek reelection. Her announcement followed similar announcements by Democratic Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Tina Smith of Minnesota.
“Even if we don’t see another retirement in the Democratic side, these three retirements already, I think, have crushed the hopes of Democrats who wanted to try to win back the Senate in 2026,” Cillizza said at the time.
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