How is the midterms popular vote calculated?

From the U.S. House races, because they're the only races on every ballot in a midterm. Senate and governor races are held in only some states, so they're left out. Add up the votes for every Democratic candidate, every Republican candidate and everyone else across all 435 House districts, then take each party's share of the total. 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, and the national popular vote is simply that race's total. 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 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. That makes the House total the closest a midterm gets to a national popular vote:

1. Take each district's result, as published by the state's election officials. 434 of 435 districts have votes in this count so far, 112,030,655 in all.
2. Add up the votes for Democratic candidates, Republican candidates and everyone else (third parties, independents and write-ins).
3. Divide each party's total by all votes cast. The margin is the Democratic share minus the Republican share.

A few rules decide edge cases:

• Uncontested seats with no votes on the ballot add zero. Nothing is imputed for them.
• In New York and Connecticut, a candidate’s fusion lines are added together and credited to the candidate’s major party.
• Maine and Alaska use first-round ranked-choice totals.
• Same-party races in California and Washington count toward that party.
• Georgia and Louisiana count the November round. Louisiana held an open primary on Nov. 3; seats where no candidate won a majority go to a Dec. 12 runoff.
• Write-ins and third-party candidates count as Other.
• Shares are computed on total votes, Other included.
• There are no polls, forecasts or models anywhere in this count.

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. Democrats lead the 2026 House popular vote by 12.4 points, 62,109,867 votes to 48,253,691.

Does the 2026 midterm election have a popular vote?

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