Despite their relentlessly negative coverage of President Trump and the Republicans, the corporate “news” media have largely failed to damage either. Not only does Trump enjoy a higher job approval rating among voters than did former President Obama at this point in his presidency, but congressional Republicans are also viewed more favorably than their Democrat counterparts, according to numerous polls.
Naysayers might retort that Republicans have spent years doubting the accuracy of polls. True enough. But for those who prefer more tangible evidence of the GOP’s ascendancy than public opinion surveys, the Republican Party is also clearly outperforming the Democratic Party in cash contributions and voter registrations – two other key metrics of party strength.
Money talks, to coin a phrase so that we will begin with the story of the latest Federal Election Commission (FEC) disclosures for each of the two parties. The Republican National Committee (RNC) had $72 million in reserves, according to an FEC report released on June 21, 2025. The Democratic National Committee (DNC), on the other hand, had a mere $15 million in cash reserves according to an FEC report released on the same day.
The RNC, having nearly five times as much cash on hand as the DNC, is a story in its own right. But according to The New York Times, it’s not just that the DNC is lagging the RNC – the party is now so broke that it may well need to borrow money to stay afloat:
“Six people briefed on the party’s fund-raising, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its finances frankly, said big donors — who are an essential part of the party’s funding — had been very slow to give to the party this year … Senior D.N.C. officials have discussed the possibility of borrowing money in the coming months to keep the operations fully funded, according to two people with direct knowledge of the private discussions who insisted on anonymity.”
Unsurprisingly, the Democrats have spent more money than they took in this year. The FEC report indicates that, since the beginning of 2025, the DNC raised $60 million but spent more than $67 million during the same time period. Consequently, their cash reserves shrank from an already anemic $22 million on January 1, 2025, to the even more sickly $15 million disclosed in their latest filings. No wonder big donors, who tend to be very sophisticated about finances, are reticent about throwing good money after bad.
Unfortunately for the Democratic Party, this cash shortage is not their only problem. According to a recent NBC report, the percentage of registered Democrats in states and territories that publish the partisan affiliation of voters has also decreased from 44 percent to 37 percent since 2000.
This decline is more dramatic than it may appear at first glance. Expressed as a percentage of 44, this seven-point decline means the Democratic Party has lost 16 percent of its registered voters – millions and millions of people. Most switched their registrations to Independent. Meanwhile, the percentage of registered Republicans has decreased by two points during the same 25-year time period. As NBC explains:
“The analysis shows the increase in the share of independents has come at the cost of the Democratic Party. Except during former President Barack Obama’s 2008 election, the share of registered voters made up of registered Democrats has declined every year since 2000 across jurisdictions with data. The decline has accelerated in recent years, as the party’s share of the registered voters in jurisdictions with available data fell 1.2 percentage points from 2024 to 2025.”
Evidence that the migration of Democrat voters to the Independent column is an ominous sign can be found in the results of the 2024 presidential election. Edison Research, which conducted exit polls of 22,900 voters, found that Democrat turnout decreased by 11.2 million from 2020 to 2024 while Independent turnout increased by 11 million. From 2020 to 2024, Donald Trump closed the gap among these voters by almost exactly that amount. In 2020, Joe Biden won Independents by 13 percentage points nationally. In 2024, Kamala Harris won them by only three percentage points nationally. Can that have been a mere coincidence?
Trump’s performance among Independent voters was even more startling in the crucial battleground states. He won Independents outright in the must-win states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. In Nevada, he and Harris split their vote evenly, and in Wisconsin, she was only able to eke out a winning margin of one percentage point. There is no doubt that Independent voters drove Trump’s clean sweep of the battleground states. Thus, it’s not too much to say that they put him over the top in the Electoral College. Yet the usual media suspects, like CNN, are producing polls purporting to show that Independents are now unhappy with the President.
But the corporate “news” media have pronounced President Trump politically dead countless times. Meanwhile, they have ignored the increasingly obvious fact that the Democratic Party is moribund. Its disgruntled donors are sitting on their wallets, and its disgusted voters are changing their registrations.
We will know “the Party of Jefferson and Jackson” is a goner if it fails to win back at least one house of Congress in 2026. History suggests that this should be easy. The average midterm loss in the House for the President’s party is between 20 and 30 seats. Yet, this President routinely defies the odds. It’s not wise to bet against Trump.
Democrats’ Challenges Often Become Wins
Things are about to get much more challenging for Senate Democrats.
On January 6, 2021, buried under the mountain of headlines on the Capitol riot, came a political shocker: Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won their respective runoff elections as U.S. senators from Georgia. This came as a surprise to many in Washington and essentially handed Democrats control of the Senate from 2021 until 2025. Unfortunately for Democrats, however, this development may have been a mirage that only brought about a sense of complacency within the party.
In the 2024 elections, Democrats lost the last three Senate seats they held in solid-Republican States — Jon Tester in Montana (R+11 Cook Partisan Voting Index Score), Sherrod Brown in Ohio (R+6), and Joe Manchin III in West Virginia (R+22). They also lost Bob Casey’s seat in swing-state Pennsylvania (R+2).
As much as Democrats lamented the outsized influence that Manchin wielded upon President Biden’s agenda during Biden’s first two years, it was a miracle that they even had a Democrat representing such a state.
Now, with a minority of 47 out of 100 seats, the Senate’s Democratic caucus faces near-insurmountable odds to retake the chamber anytime soon.
One-third of total seats are up for grabs every two years; each cycle presents a different opportunity for each party. The next election does not look promising for Democrats to regain control of the chamber.
In the 2026 midterms, Democrats would need to win four seats to win outright control of the chamber, since JD Vance could cast tiebreaking votes in the event of a 50 to 50 tie. Their only obvious pickup opportunities — seats in states with a partisan lean towards Republicans of less than R+5 — are in Maine and North Carolina.
On the other side, Democrats will have to defend seats in several swing states. Two-term Democratic Sen. Gary Peters recently announced his retirement, providing a Republican pickup opportunity in Michigan (R+1). Republicans are also eagerly eyeing seats in New Hampshire (D+1) and Georgia (R+3).
Although Republican prospects in Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico, and New Jersey are more remote, and each has political dynamics that are advantageous to their Democratic incumbents, these states may also be in play given their shrinking Democratic margins in recent years.
Some political analysts, such as Charlie Cook, have suggested that midterm dynamics might give Democrats a boost, as they typically favor the party out of power. Nevertheless, the most realistic positive scenario for Democrats would be a two-seat gain in Maine and North Carolina, and no losses elsewhere. This would make them a 49-seat minority in the Senate.
However, political insiders should remember well that Sen. Susan Collins of (R-Maine) outperformed Donald Trump in the state’s 2020 election by more than 7 points, winning by an unexpectedly large 8.6-point margin. Collins’s victory came after Democrats outspent her two-to-one, with around $100 million invested in the race, and nearly every major poll had her trailing her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon. Democrats should be wary as they eye this seat.
Many Democrats will look toward 2028, a presidential year, for additional Senate pickup opportunities in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and maybe even Iowa or Ohio (neither of which has voted for a Democratic president since 2012). At the same time, Democrats will be defending vulnerable seats in the perennial swing states of Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona. Indeed, Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) only won reelection in 2022 by roughly 8,000 votes, or 0.77 percent.
Given the inherent inertia in Senate control, it is a major accomplishment for Republicans to have flipped four seats last November. Unless new states suddenly come into play for Democrats, they would need a near-clean sweep of all toss-up races in both 2026 and 2028 to win an outright Senate majority. Relying on a lucky hand to eke out a threadbare majority is not a viable long-term strategy.
A win in the House of Representatives in 2026 for Democrats, which seems much more likely, may mask the party’s woes in the upper chamber. It may be easy to forget that Senate margins were not always so thin. It was not long ago that Barack Obama won an election and very briefly had a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. Indeed, he even came within 3,000 votes of winning the now solid-Republican state of Missouri.
Rural states with low populations having two senators tend to shift the balance of power in the chamber towards Republicans. Times have shifted and the country has become more polarized. However, the Democrat Party cannot continue to try to win back the Senate with one hand tied behind its back. The party needs to shake up the current political dynamics that rule Senate races across the country. They need to put states that have drifted towards Republicans back into play.
As little as 10 years ago, Senate seats in Ohio, Iowa, Florida, and even Alaska were considered competitive. Today, they are not. Unless Democrats change their game, they risk being shut out of power in the upper chamber for a very long time.
