Jessica Taylor: A First Look at the 2026 Senate Map

First Person is a series of quick videos from the Cook Political Report editors exclusively for our premium members.

This week, Jessica explains why the 2026 Senate map presents significant challenges for Democrats. This episode was filmed on Tuesday, February 11, 2025.

Transcript:

Hi. I'm Jessica Taylor. I'm the senate and governor's editor here at the Cook Political Report, and we have released our twenty twenty six senate ratings.This is a map that when we look at it overall, Republicans are defending more seats than Democrats, twenty two to thirteen. But that's a little bit misleading because this is still a very difficult map for Democrats when we look at which seats are up. And it really looks hard for them to be able to get the four seats that they need in order to win back the majority in twenty twenty six. Now, of course, midterm elections, this history tells us that this midterm should be more favorable to Democrats.But even with sort of the wind that they're back, it's still very hard. That's because the only two