The GOP Is Raising Big Bucks for the Mid-Terms, but Is a 100-Seat House Gain Really Feasible?

Thursday, President Trump announced he and his various campaign groups, including his Super PACs, have raised an unprecedented $1.5 billion for the coming 2026 mid-term elections.

This is all part of the Trump-Vance team campaign strategy not only to hold but to control both the U.S. House and Senate. Of course, the former chamber, where the GOP currently has a mere 220 to 215 edge, is more precarious and possibly in danger of flipping. Remember, this strategy includes:

– push GOP redistricting;

– minimize retirements;

– spend big;

– take primary challengers off the table;

– raise gobs more money;

– ramp up recruiting;

– push certain salient issues; and

– weed out and replace as many counter-productive RINOs as possible.

Trump has also set a numerical goal for the GOP in the House—picking up 100 more seats! He believes the re-redistrictings, plus stopping the use of mail-in ballots, will lead to a yuuuuuge victory. But is this possible? Well, we should be wary of using Wikipedia, but this information seems to be correct, and it avails us with a list of the elections for House seats since 1856.

Note: Only twice has one party picked up 100 plus seats—in 1894, when the out-party GOP won because of the Panic of 1893, and in 1932, when the out-party Democrats won because of the Great Depression. (Also, twice, in 1874 and in 1890, the out-party won close to 100 seats because of scandal and economic issues.)

Re-redistrictings are not going to be able to produce a 100-seat gain for the Republicans. And it is impossible to know how a change in mail-in ballot laws—if it could be accomplished—will impact the elections:

How many illegal ballots are cast in every election cycle? No one knows. Liberals assure us the number is close to zero. But how could we know that? The hallmark of a successful fraud is that it is not discovered. And in most places, little effort is made to detect voter fraud, even when that is possible. Nevertheless, there are a large number of successful prosecutions of illegal voters.

The re-redistrictings are coming along. Texas has passed its plan, which has shifted five seats toward the Republicans, assuming the GOP gains with Hispanic voters continue. Ohio will happen, too.  Also, Florida, Indiana, and Missouri are still strongly considering it. The Left is trying in California, but that is far from guaranteed. Assuming all occur, however, the starting point for the elections will leave the Republicans with roughly a 220 to 207 advantage, with 8 toss-ups. There may be other possibilities as well, especially if the Supreme Court revisits Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. So, the re-redistricting is probably going to be a net benefit for Republicans.

There has been no further word on redoing the census, however.

The fundraising part, as mentioned above, is going gangbusters for the GOP. The RNC, in particular, has a yuge edge over the DNC, the latter of which is still paying off What’s-Her-Name’s debts.

The President and the GOP are also constantly and aggressively moving to embarrass communists/globalists on the “80/20” issues, which Ed Morrisey at Hot Air, calls the “cornering strategy.” The Left, because of their hatred of Trump and their messianic ideology, cannot stop politically dying on these unpopular hills. To wit:

 – the Trump popular crime-fighting actions, especially the federal takeover of Washington, D.C., which is lowering crime;

 – threatening federal funding when [Leftists] promote ‘trans issues,’ as recently happened in Virginia;

 – still trying to deport the gang-banging, illegal alien criminal “Maryland Man,” now to Uganda, and presumably will try again to remove the terror-supporting, crazed Arab antisemitic to somewhere else, soon;

 – there are the administration’s high-profile efforts to combat antisemitism on college campuses and elsewhere; and

 – President Trump signed an executive order on flag burning, which, contrary to the conventional wisdom, is not unconstitutional or illegal.

And there are other factors of importance to consider:

 – Trump’s approval rating is pretty much hovering where it has been during the second term, now at 45.3 percent approval to 51.5 percent disapproval, with the same mix of good and bad polls in the RCP;

 – The economy still seems to be growing—“The Gross National Product has just been revised upward… and it’s a robust number;”

 – The realignment realignment is proceeding at pace, and on the whole, things look better for the GOP than the Democrats. For example, as the New York Times ruefully reports, ‘(o)f the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections—and often by a lot. That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from;’ and

 – The House is evenly divided, and has a boom or bust cycle, and the exact numbers that are won by the parties are often determined by the over- or under-exposure of the respective parties in the House. The Democrats won 41 seats in the House in 2018, then lost 14 and 9 seats in successive elections in 2020 and 2022, losing control during the latter year, only to pick up two seats in the 2024 elections (after endless, and almost surely tainted, counting in California). So, in the grand scheme of things, the GOP is not in big danger in 2026.

We know both parties understand control of the U.S. House is up for grabs in 2026. We know this because both are thinking outside the box as exemplified by the possible mid-term conventions being floated—and preparing for a tough and long campaign.