Showing new optimism, Schumer says Democrats have a path to take back Senate majority this year

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats have a path to reclaiming control of the U.S. Senate this November, even though "a year ago no one thought so."

A changing political and economic climate under President Donald Trump is altering the 2026 Senate campaign landscape, Schumer says, and Democrats no longer will accept gaining a few seats as a moral victory if that means falling even one short of the majority.

"We want 51, OK?" Schumer (D-New York) emphasized in an interview with Newsday, meaning a net gain of at least the four seats necessary to retake control of the 100-member chamber Democrats lost in 2024.

Schumer identified GOP-held seats in North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska as key, and said that other seats are also coming more into play.

The Senate has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two Independents who both caucus with the Democrats, effectively making the split 53-47 in favor of the GOP. Thirty-three Senate seats will be contested this fall.

But Schumer’s revved-up optimism about the November Senate elections flies against past results in some states and skepticism from some non-partisan political analysts.

There are significant opportunities for Democrat pickups of seats in Maine and North Carolina, analysts say. But elsewhere, Democrats will need to flip seats in states Trump won by double digits in 2024.

"No senator currently represents a state that the other party’s presidential nominee won by double digits," note Jacob Rubashkin, with the non-partisan political handicapper Inside Elections.

Adding to the 2026 map’s wrinkles is that Democrats still face tough battles in Georgia and Michigan, just to keep from surrendering seats they hold now that Republicans are targeting as vulnerable.

Making Democrats' case

But Schumer pointed during the interview with Newsday to Trump’s slumping poll numbers and said a big political shift already has been teased in Democratic victories in this past November’s elections.

There’s rising voter anger, he said, over higher cost-of-living issues that stretch from energy to health care, housing and groceries — worsened by tariffs.

Schumer said Democrats have been disciplined in pounding away on affordability and other issues important to Long Islanders and other Americans, including Republican refusal to prevent the Affordable Care Act's expanded premium subsidies from expiring at the end of last year.

"It sets a political atmosphere where even in states where you might not think you can win a year ago, we think we’re in good shape now," Schumer said. "And we are going to be pounding away at this cost issue over and over and over again."

Add to all of this, Schumer said, that, "People don’t like the chaos throughout the cities, what he’s doing with ICE," through a massive immigration crackdown that has included the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by a  federal immigration officer.

Experienced candidates

At last year’s start of this two-year congressional session, Senate Democrats acknowledge, they had only two clear top offensive targets for 2026 in Republican seats in North Carolina and Maine.

But in the interview, Schumer beamed about major candidate recruiting successes since then.

Former senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio is running to unseat Republican John Husted in an election for the remainder of Vice President JD Vance's term. And just this past week, Mary Peltola, a former House member from Alaska, announced a bid to unseat Republican Dan Sullivan.

"The argument I made to each of these candidates is your country needs you right now. Democracy is at risk," Schumer said. If Democrats lose the Senate by a single seat, he said he told them, they wouldn’t be happy with whatever they decided to do instead.

"We are on a front foot where we feel that we have a clear and strong path to winning the majority in 2026." Schumer said of the game plan now. "I think we will win the four states and keep our existing seats."

Schumer pointed also to what he says is more optimism for races in Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan.

Pressure on Schumer

Republican senate campaign strategists jeer at the claimed new confidence from the other side of the aisle.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Joanna Rodriguez says that, upon closer inspection, the Democrats’ Senate battleground map "is littered with the recruitment of failed career politicians no longer aligned with the values of their states."

That is a reference to Brown having lost his 2024 reelection to his Ohio Senate seat, and Peltola losing her House seat from Alaska the same year.

Rodriguez added in the same statement that the Democratic battleground map also reflects potentially "messy, nasty primaries that will leave Schumer with a majority of candidates that have all pledged to vote him out."

In fact, Schumer’s continued role as leader of the Senate has been a focus of some Democratic discussion, with some 2026 candidates saying publicly that, if elected, they’d join those who will support someone else.

Schumer, 75, who next faces reelection to his seat from New York in 2028, says he has no plan to lay low on the stump for Democrats.

"Look," Schumer said, "the bottom line is the issues that I am associated with, lowering costs, are popular in every part of the country."