The last time voters had their say, Donald Trump won the congressional district home to the University of Kentucky by 15 points, and the area’s Republican congressman coasted to an even larger victory than the once and future president.

Almost two years later, Kentucky’s 6th District is a possible, if difficult, pickup opportunity for Democrats in a midterm campaign that has warning signs of a blue wave. Their House playing field is expanding deeper into Trump country. Seats that once looked reliable for Republicans are competitive.

The question is how big that wave could get, or how high it may be, if it actually materializes.

Republicans’ House majority is so thin that Democrats need to have a net gain of only a few seats to take control. But the map, and the money being spent all throughout it, threatens to spoil Democrats’ aims.

More than $1 billion is being put towards House races around the country between the start of September and Election Day, data from AdImpact shows, with Republicans having the financial advantage at this point.

Nearly every district former Vice President Kamala Harris carried in 2024 already has a fellow Democrat representing it, meaning that most of the seats the left is chasing are ones Trump won two years ago, some by double digits. Mid-decade redistricting complicated things further. Several of the most competitive races in North Carolina, Texas and Florida are in Democratic-held seats that Republicans redrew to flip, where a blue win would protect someone already in their ranks rather than add one in Washington.

Kentucky’s 6th District has the potential to be telling. Polls close early in the night there, and Democrats pulling off a surprise against conservative former state Sen. Ralph Alvarado would mean swaying the kinds of voters that the national party has struggled with, especially in redder parts of the country. Democrats are underdogs there, even after the party’s Gov. Andy Beshear won the area in his off-year re-election bid three years ago.

“Trump is old news,” said Zach Dembo, the Democratic nominee for the central Kentucky seat and a former Beshear staffer. “I think certainly there are folks who voted for Trump and feel betrayed by him. There were things he said that I was in favor of, like no more endless foreign wars. He’s clearly betrayed that promise. But really, I think we win or lose based on whether they feel that a candidate is going to stand up for them and stand up to corruption we’re seeing not just from the White House, but from both parties.”

During Trump’s first midterm, in 2018, Democrats netted 41 seats, retaking the majority they had lost in 2010. In 2006, during George W. Bush’s second term, they netted about 30 seats to flip the chamber. In both years, Democrats started with about 200 seats or fewer. This year, they already have 215.

Two years after Trump helped carry Republicans down the ballot on his way back to the White House, his determination to stay at the center of the campaign risks becoming a defining liability for GOP candidates, or what helps his party avoid the rebuke voters usually deliver to the president’s party in a midterm.

In Arizona’s open 1st District, which Trump won by about three points, former NFL kicker Jay Feely is running to keep the seat in Republican hands, and has noted his ties to the president. At the midterm convention Republicans held at Trump’s urging last month, Feely told MS NOW “people know that he endorsed me. They know that we’ve been friends for a couple of decades. I think that’s an asset.”

His Democratic opponent, Amish Shah, lost a 2024 race for the seat to the Republican incumbent, who is not seeking reelection. “I can say, hey, I respect the fact that you are an ER doctor, that you committed your life to saving people,”  Feely said about his rival. “…I’ve committed my life to trying to save this country.”

Even the mid-decade redistricting push Trump galvanized to protect the GOP majority hasn’t gone as planned. Republicans redrew maps in Texas, Florida and several other red states to make Democratic-held districts friendlier to the president’s party. Democrats’ counter effort has been limited to redrawing five Republican-held seats in California. With early voting underway in parts of the country, many of the districts that were drawn to help Republicans remain competitive.

MS NOW’s race ratings show how far the field has spread. Of the 22 House races rated toss-ups, eight are in districts Trump won by double digits. Several of those are seats Republicans redrew specifically to oust Democratic incumbents.

Six Republican-held seats now lean toward Democrats, almost all Trump carried by single digits. One belongs to Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., the last House Republican seeking reelection who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; California Democrats redrew his district in an attempt to unseat him. And more than half of the nine Republican-held seats rated as leaning Republican are districts Trump won by double digits.

“There certainly are seats that Democrats are positioned to aggressively compete in and win on November 3rd that many people on the other side of the aisle did not think would be competitive” after the 2024 election, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters recently.

What could limit Democrats’ gains is a shortage of easy opponents. Outside of redistricting, only three Republican-held districts voted for Harris in 2024. One is an open Omaha-area seat that Democrats are well positioned to win. The other two belong to Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., bipartisan-minded incumbents who are tough opponents and have spoiled Democrats’ drives before. Democrats also risk losing Maine’s 2nd District, a Trump-won seat, after centrist Democratic Rep. Jared Golden decided not to seek reelection.

Democrats came out of 2024 with a damaged brand, and it remains a liability. But frustration with Trump is a potent force, and Republicans have bound themselves to him more tightly than ever. At last month’s convention, Trump made his legacy a central theme of the fall campaign and urged supporters “to pretend I’m on the ticket.”

In the Trump-won districts that will decide the House, that’s exactly what Democrats are counting on.

As voters make their decisions, neither party has been getting high marks from the public. And Trump remains omnipresent in American politics, whether candidates, and the people deciding their electoral fates, like it or not.

“Both sides want to nationalize the election,” Darrell Issa, a California Republican congressman who chose to retire rather than run for re-election after Democrats redrew his district, said on Capitol Hill before the GOP midterm convention. “So there really isn’t going to be a choice. The Democrats have made it all about Trump, and the president’s willing to run on a record of both trying hard and achieving much.”

Gabe Borelli contributed reporting to this article.

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