Here’s how MS NOW will project control of the U.S. House

MS NOW is making its own projection of which party will win control of the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm elections. It will do so by estimating a minimum number of House seats, or “floor,” Democrats and Republicans will reach after all 435 House races have been called.

MS NOW will project a winner of the House majority after one party reaches at least 218 seats — the majority threshold. The numbers for either party will continue ticking up as more data trickles in.

Why are we doing this? We are seeking to close the gap between what MS NOW knows and what you — our audience — hear, see and read. Behind the scenes, our election experts will determine each party’s “floor” well before The Associated Press — our election data provider — projects the outcome of every individual House contest.

Why are we doing this? We are seeking to close the gap between what MS NOW knows and what you — our audience — hear, see and read.

To do so, our team will analyze trends on election night to estimate how different types of House districts across the country are breaking. Our goal is transparency, both in the numbers we report and the methodology we use to produce them. We want you to have the same information as we do in real time.

So here’s how the MS NOW House estimate will work.

Our estimate will rely on two major trends that emerge once polls start closing and we begin seeing the actual vote count trickle in.

The first trend is the swing from the last election: that is, the percentage-point shift in the two-party vote margin from the 2024 presidential results. This is a good baseline, not only because we’re comparing the current results to the most recent major election, but also because that difference is something we can calculate in every single House district, including those that were recently redrawn.

Take North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, for instance, which was redrawn such that President Donald Trump would have carried it by 12 percentage points in 2024. If we hypothetically saw Republican Laurie Buckhout beating incumbent Democratic Rep. Don Davis by only 2 points this year, our estimated shift would be 10 points.

Research over several election cycles shows that districts tend to shift uniformly. In 2018, for example, the average shift in vote margin from the 2016 presidential contest was about five points toward Democrats. The vast majority of House districts saw shifts in that direction, and Democrats ended up winning the House majority. That does not mean all districts shift the exact same amount, and some may even shift in the other direction. But the average shift in partisan vote margin is a good metric that summarizes overall midterm performance and correlates well with House seat pickups.

The second major trend we will examine is how different types of House races are breaking once the actual votes are cast. Are the races we identified as “toss-ups” before Election Day breaking disproportionately for one party? That’s typically what happens in “wave” years. Are Democrats picking up some seats we viewed as leaning toward Republicans before Election Day, or are GOP incumbents holding on in these districts?

Even if we do not have final data from every district, the data we do have will give us a window into how we might expect similar districts to trend later in the night. Going category by category and estimating each party’s success rate will allow us to make informed estimates about races that have not yet been called.

Finally, we will bring it all together. Statistical modeling will enable us to combine these signals to translate what we’re seeing in the earlier results into aggregate seat totals for each party in the House.

While individual races may take several days to get called if they are close, this modeling will allow us to estimate each party’s floor before we know the outcome of every single race. There is more uncertainty about a close race for an individual seat than there is for aggregate seat numbers. And importantly, we only will use data for House districts once polls in those states are closed and voting has ended in them.

We expect the estimate for each party’s minimum House seat total to tick up incrementally on election night, as our model becomes more confident about each side’s performance.

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