Things are looking up for Democrats ahead of the midterms. This week, the Cook Political Report shifted four Senate races in their favour, moving North Carolina and Georgia from toss-up to “lean Democrat”, and Ohio from “lean Republican” to toss-up, while even solidly red Nebraska was downgraded to “likely Republican” amid signs of GOP softness.

The map now offers Democrats a plausible path to a majority: holding Georgia while flipping North Carolina and Ohio would net two seats, and if they also capture Maine and Alaska while defending their own incumbents, they would reach 51 seats. That improving outlook is reflected in the latest prediction markets.

However, there is also evidence that the blue wave may not be as comprehensive as Democrats hope. Primarily, this is because it’s still not clear that growing disapproval of Trump is translating into support for the other side. For instance, even as his approval rating has ticked inexorably downward since the start of his second term, Democrats have not seen a corresponding rise in their standing on the generic congressional ballot. In fact, their current five-point advantage over Republicans trails their 2018 performance (-3 points) and their 2006 performance (-6), the last two “blue wave” midterm elections. According to polling analyst Nate Silver’s data, Democrats would likely need another five-point shift in their direction by Election Day to have a shot at flipping enough Senate seats for a majority.

Relatedly, Democrats’ own favourability is far lower today than it was in previous midterms when they experienced a “wave” election. A CNN poll this month found that just 28% of respondents — including a mere 18% of independents — held a favourable view of the party, the lowest since CNN began tracking the question in 2002. Moreover, Democrats’ net favourability is -28%, a massive drop from the 2018 midterms when that figure was roughly even. By contrast, Republicans’ net favourability is -23%, marking a change from 2006 and 2018 when Democrats performed better on that metric ahead of the midterms.

Democrats are also trying to defy recent history. Since the start of the Trump era in 2016, in both midterm and presidential elections, neither party has won a Senate seat in a state that the other party won in the previous presidential election by 10 or more points. This year, the only two Republican-controlled seats which don’t fit that description are Maine (Harris +7) and North Carolina (Trump +3). To get to 51 seats, Democrats would need to buck this trend by flipping at least two of the following seats that Trump won by double digits in 2024: Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, or Texas.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that the six-year itch around Trump’s second term will result in a strong Democratic performance in November. After all, the midterms are historically a referendum on the president’s party, which almost always sees seat losses down the ballot — especially in a second term. And winning the Senate in the face of the aforementioned history would be an especially impressive feat.

However, in a scenario where Democrats do extremely well, the data is likely to still show that a good chunk of the voters who backed the party’s candidates don’t have a favourable view of it and aren’t necessarily a lock to support it in 2028. On the contrary, Democrats still face an array of structural issues, including losing the voter-registration battle to Republicans as well as chronic underperformance with working-class and rural voters who are overrepresented in institutions such as the Senate and Electoral College and tend to show up more in presidential years than in midterms.

In the recent past, the party has had a tendency to overlook these factors when they perform well in an election. But assuming that backlash to Trump will be enough to buoy them to future success would be a grave mistake, and likely to invite heartbreak in 2028 and beyond.

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Michael Baharaeen is chief political analyst at The Liberal Patriot substack.

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