Cost-of-living pressures and polling uncertainty are among the key factors to watch in the Nov. 3 midterm elections, a panel of political journalists, academics and a pollster said during a virtual lecture hosted by the Maxwell School.

Titled “The 2026 Midterms: Issues, Vibes, and Vote Counts,” the event was the latest installment in the Campbell Public Affairs Institute’s State of Democracy Lecture Series that brings together Maxwell scholars and outside experts to discuss some of the nation’s most timely topics. The Oct. 14 event was organized around the question, What's really driving the 2026 midterms and who ends up controlling Congress?

Chris Faricy, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and Hicker Family Professor of Renewing Democratic Community, opened the event by noting that the midterms will decide which party controls the House of Representatives and Senate as well as governorships in 36 states. “History offers that the party in power has little comfort in midterm elections,” he said. “They’ve long been a referendum on the performance of the White House with the president’s party losing 20 of 22 midterms since the late 1930s.”

Faricy said rising disapproval of the president’s performance, the Supreme Court’s reshaping of the Voting Rights Act and a declining number of competitive seats in the House of Representatives have made outcomes difficult to predict in an election with sprawling consequences.

Faricy co-moderated the discussion with Margaret Talev, Kramer Director of the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship. They were joined by Grant Reeher, professor of political science and senior research associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute; Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor at the School of Information Studies (iSchool); Kadia Goba, politics reporter for The Washington Sun; Chris Jackson, senior vice president and Civil Society Division lead at SSRS, a nonpartisan polling and research firm; and Marc Caputo, senior political reporter for Axios. Mike Allen, Axios cofounder, joined after Caputo left to handle a breaking story.

Panelists generally agreed that turnout, which is usually far lower in midterms than in presidential elections, would be central in determining who controls Congress. They emphasized different factors, however, and offered different views on which would have the greatest impact.

Goba believes many Republican voters feel let down by the administration, pointing to a war after promises of no wars, and high gas and grocery prices, and that many have been threatening to stay home rather than vote for a Democrat. Republicans are working to turn those voters out, she said.

“Republicans certainly have a lot of money to invest on that part—to get people out,” Goba said. “Whether that motivates people is a different story. But I will say that Democrats, if anything, are extremely motivated, and…we’ll see that in the poll numbers as people come out for early voting.”

Caputo said inflation is what matters most to voters, with gas prices the most visible measure. He noted that President Trump campaigned on no new wars, lower mortgage rates and cheaper gas.

Faricy noted that inflation figures released before the event showed prices up 3.7% from a year earlier, and Allen said the president has argued that keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon matters more than the price of gas.

“There’s a scoreboard,” Caputo said, later adding, “If you happen to live in a place that needs gasoline, the gas marquee tells the story. All of a sudden everyone’s now an expert in diesel and its effect on the economy, which most people didn’t know before.”

Panelists also differed on how much campaign messaging matters. Reeher said Democrats have offered few specific alternatives, instead running against the president’s policies, while Stromer-Galley, who studies candidates’ social media, said Democratic candidates are promoting economic visions that include health care.

Later, Jackson said voters respond more to the messenger than the message, and Stromer-Galley said the two “cannot be disentangled.” Asked which Senate races they are watching, panelists named Texas, Michigan, Maine, Ohio and Florida.

Allen called Maine Republicans’ “last redoubt,” saying Republican Sen. Susan Collins could hold her seat even in a strong Democratic year. Reeher said Michigan could show how divided Democrats are over Israel and the Middle East.

Challenges with polling have made elections increasingly hard to predict. Jackson said it is hard to find and recruit people for surveys because people communicate in many different ways, from landlines to messaging apps like WhatsApp, and may not answer calls or texts. He said polling error could run in both directions: Nonresponse among Republican-leaning voters might be causing an undercount of Republican support of about 3 points, while some analysis shows Democrats performing 3 to 4 points better when polls name individual candidates rather than ask a generic ballot question.

Polls should be read as directional guidance, not exact predictions, Jackson said. Directionally, he said, they are signaling a Democratic-friendly environment. He said leads of 4 or 5 points should be treated as toss-ups once the margin of error and design effect are factored in. “So, you should really be thinking of a 4- or 5-point margin as the safe zone for your polling data,” Jackson said. “If you’re seeing an 8- or 9-point lead, that’s probably telling you something real, though it could still end up being a 2-point win.”

Toward the end of the discussion, a viewer asked about the possibility of legal challenges to the election and of Congress being prevented from convening on Jan. 3.

Jackson said lawsuits are likely but probably without much merit, because the people who run elections are professionals. Reeher said he considers the worst-case scenario unlikely. “I’ve been accused of being too optimistic in the past, so maybe I’m being too optimistic here, but I would say that the—what’s the polite way of saying this?—The real disaster that they’re worried about is extremely low probability, but if it happens, it’s a real problem,” Reeher said. “And that’s my big worry about the midterms. It’s personally something that’s going to keep me up at night.”

Finally, panelists offered scenarios for after Nov. 3.

Allen expects the president to feel emboldened regardless of the outcome. Reeher said his hunch is Republicans will see a narrow victory to hold the Senate, and that if they do, he can imagine a “bizarre scenario” in which Trump strikes a grand bargain on immigration reform. Jackson described a divided Congress in which Democrats control the House of Representatives and the Senate is evenly-split, adding that a Democratic House could check some administration policies, such as tariffs, and paradoxically help the president’s standing if gas prices fall.

“Maybe it’s a loss, technically, and that’ll hurt him for a little while, but if gas prices come back down, that’s going to help him, right?” Jackson said. “And if the tariffs go away, and it allows the economy, particularly in the upper Midwest, to renew, and our trade war with Canada comes to an end, that’ll help him, too, right?”