We’ve seen a surge of post-Labor Day polls over the last two weeks. If there’s any term to describe their findings, it’s that Democrats seem poised for a wave election. I used the term myself in my write-up of our latest Times/Siena poll.
So what is a wave election? Why do the polls show it? And what would one mean for November?
There is no formal definition of a wave. The term mostly evokes the feeling of a sweeping victory, one in which a party wins all the usual battlegrounds while toppling some of the opposing party’s typically safe districts and longtime incumbents.
To get that “wave” feeling on election night, two things need to happen.
Most obviously, a party needs to win big. If a party wins by, say, at least five percentage points in the national vote, that party will have an advantage in most of the usual battleground states and districts.
Less obviously, it matters how much better a party does than in the last election. A five-point victory may not feel like a wave if the same party won by four points in the prior election.
If you can picture a “wave” in your head, you can think of a party’s national vote as the height of a cresting wave, with the last election result representing the base of the wave.
By both of these measures, the latest polls suggest the 2026 election has the potential to be a “blue wave.”
On average, Democrats lead by more than eight points among likely voters on the generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they intend to support for Congress in their district. If Democrats win by that margin in November, it would essentially match the 2018 blue wave and exceed other wave elections, like those in 1994, 2006 and 2010.
More recently, the high-profile national polls have shown Democrats faring even better. The Times/Siena poll showed Democrats up by 8.5 points, while Quinnipiac University, Marquette University Law School and YouGov/Economist all gave Democrats double-digit leads.
One factor helping Democrats: After Labor Day, many pollsters begin reporting results among those likely to vote in November, not just the broader group of registered voters, and the polls have shown Democrats doing better among likely voters.
The Marquette and YouGov/Economist polls, for instance, found Democrats faring a whopping six points better among likely voters than among registered ones. The Times/Siena poll found Democrats with a more modest two-point advantage, but either way it’s helping Democrats.
Importantly, the Democratic lead isn’t just big. It also represents a substantial improvement over the party’s showing in 2024, when President Trump won by 1.5 points and Republicans won the national House popular vote by almost three points. So the Democrats’ 8.5-point lead in our latest poll represents an 11-point swing.
In this respect, the 2026 wave implied by recent polling wouldn’t be the biggest one in memory. That distinction belongs to 2010, when a G.O.P. wave followed a Democratic landslide — a 17-point swing toward the Republicans. But it would be comparable to years like 2006 or 2018.
As a result, many states and districts where Mr. Trump or Republicans won easily in 2024 would be expected to come into play. If Democrats lead the generic ballot by about 8.5 points — reflecting a 10-point shift from Mr. Trump’s 1.5-point victory in 2024 — they should be very competitive anywhere Mr. Trump won by 10 points or less.
It’s too soon to say whether and where that big Democratic “generic” advantage could translate into actual breakthroughs. But at least in this past week’s state and district polls, the answer seems to be “nearly everywhere a poll was conducted.” The Democrat James Talarico led in every public Senate poll released in Texas in this period, including one by our colleagues at Siena in partnership with ReconMR. Democrats also led high-quality Senate polls of Alaska and Kansas.
There were only a handful of bright spots for the G.O.P., and they were almost entirely in Northern, traditionally Democratic-leaning states like Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine and Michigan. The Democrats usually led these Senate polls in the past week — though surprisingly, there was a nonpartisan poll showing a tied race in Minnesota — but they didn’t scream “wave.”
Historically, it’s not unusual for the winning party to struggle in some places, even as it wins or even excels elsewhere. Individual candidates and campaigns can matter a lot. This year, the Democratic Party’s gains among Hispanic voters create an additional wrinkle. Polls show Democrats making major or even enormous gains among Hispanic voters, which could translate into disproportionate gains in heavily Hispanic areas. That’s a major reason Democrats seem to be faring so well in Texas, which has one of the largest Hispanic populations in the country.
On the other hand, Democrats might make smaller gains in places where Hispanic voters represent a smaller share of the electorate. And indeed Hispanic voters represent only a sliver of the electorate in the blue states where Democrats are underperforming.
If there’s any good news for Republicans, it’s that a wave doesn’t necessarily guarantee a flip of Senate control. Back in the 2010 red wave, Republicans fell short of winning the upper chamber. That was mostly because there just weren’t enough seats up for grabs in Republican-leaning areas — only one-third of the Senate is in play in any given year — and in part because Republicans nominated weak candidates in several states.
As a consequence, Republicans failed to win states that were seen at the time as typically Republican-leaning — like Colorado and Nevada — even as the G.O.P. won in solidly blue Illinois and, at the time, Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania.
This cycle, Democrats face a similar challenge. With only one-third of seats up for grabs, Democrats will need to fare extraordinarily well to retake the Senate. They would need to flip at least two states where Mr. Trump won by at least 11 points. But remarkably, this week’s polls showed Democrats ahead in at least four such states. Pulling it off would still be a tall order, even in a wave, but it’s the kind of thing that happens only during a wave election.
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