Does the 2026 midterm election have a popular vote?

Not in the presidential sense, because no single race is on every ballot except the U.S. House. All 435 House seats are elected in every state, while Senate and governor races are held in only some states. So the House popular vote, every House vote added up by party, is the best stand-in for a presidential-style national vote. So far, Democrats lead the 2026 House popular vote by 12.4 points.

In a presidential year, every voter in the country votes in the same race. A midterm has no race like that. Senators serve six-year terms, so only about a third of the states elect a senator in any midterm. Governors are elected in 36 states in 2026, and the rest of the ballot (state legislatures, local offices, ballot measures) differs from state to state.

The House is the exception. Every seat is up every two years, so every voter in every state has a House race on the ballot. Adding up the votes for each party's candidates across all 435 districts is the closest a midterm gets to a national popular vote. It isn't perfect: where a seat is uncontested, that district adds little or nothing for one side.

No government body adds these votes up on election night. The official national totals come later, when the Clerk of the U.S. House publishes its Statistics of the Congressional Election after every state has certified its results. This site keeps the count in the meantime, summing the district results published by state election officials. Democrats lead the 2026 House popular vote by 12.4 points, 62,109,867 votes to 48,253,691.

Is there a Senate popular vote?

Counts as of Nov. 6, 2026, 12:14 p.m. ET.