2026 is here.
While predictions are a storied tradition for some political journalists, we here at The Long Run have learned to avoid baseless prophesying (I frequently remind myself that, by the time 2024 rang in, I had believed that there was no hope Joe Biden would leave the Democratic ticket).
Instead, I want to reflect here on the key questions I will be watching going into this year — the political and policy issues that will drive the country’s and the Democratic Party’s direction in 2026.
Will Democrats reach 26 governor’s mansions?
The last time members of the Democratic Party comprised a majority of the nation’s governors was during the early years of Barack Obama’s first term in office. In 2010, Republicans won a majority, and they have stubbornly clung to it ever since. The gap between the parties has narrowed significantly since the late 2010s, when Republicans held a 33-16 advantage. While the split only means so much — Democratic governors still have the advantage in raw population — it does hold symbolic value, especially for a party that needs to be able to secure majorities in more states if it wants to win Senate seats moving forward.
This cycle might be their shot: Once Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill are inaugurated in January, Democrats will hold 24 governorships, the closest they’ve been to a majority in a decade and a half. Whether they can get over the final hump will be a key question this cycle. But at least one party leader is optimistic: When I asked DGA chair Andy Beshear about the prospect this winter, he confidently predicted to a room full of reporters that Democrats will hold 26 governorships after November’s elections.
Who will become California’s next governor?
Besides the president, no person in the country has as much power as the governor of California. For the past quarter-century, the state, which now boasts the fourth-largest economy in the world, has been led by larger-than-life figures: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown, and Gavin Newsom. All of them became both national and international figures, leveraging their position into global influence. Newsom is term-limited this year, and, at a crucial time for the Golden State, it’s unclear if the next governor will have the same stature.
On the Democratic side, the packed primary includes Rep. Eric Swalwell, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former representative Katie Porter, former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former HHS secretary Xavier Becerra, and billionaire Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer. The field is generally united on broad policy strokes, especially when it comes to fighting the Trump administration. But there are enough differences to make the race’s outcome significant, particularly given what California has come to mean for the Democratic Party.
Over the past decade, the state has become an emblem of blue states’ failure to address problems of rising costs and public disorder — from homeless encampments and public drug use to high taxation and population decline. Conservatives have found a potent weapon in California’s struggles, even in the state itself; as I’ve noted here before, the state gave Trump his fourth-largest improvement in 2024. The next leader of the Golden State will inherit a $4 trillion economy, a population of 40 million, and a microcosm of Democrats’ broader challenges. Two people will advance from the June 2 jungle primary to the general election. Whoever ends up victorious will become a key figure in the party’s future.
How much further will redistricting go?
When Texas fired the first shot in the gerrymandering wars in June, there was no guarantee how Democrats would respond. The past six months have given a clear answer: full-out escalation.
As of the end of 2025, more than a dozen incumbent members of Congress from both parties have been doomed by the gerrymandering wars. 2026 will bring even more turmoil, with two states at the center of the drama. Florida is widely expected to try to net Republicans two or three seats by making additional tweaks to its (already partisan) map. Virginia could go even further: In a genuinely surprising move, Democrats in the state are threatening to redraw the state’s districts — currently represented by six Republicans and five Democrats — to create a 10-1 Democratic advantage. Incoming governor Abigail Spanberger, who ran as a mainstream consensus seeker, has tacitly endorsed the effort, another marker of just how much Trump’s second term has altered the Democratic Party’s DNA.
Virginia and Florida are not the only states to watch when it comes to redistricting. Wisconsin, where liberals regained control of the state’s Supreme Court in 2024, could also be forced to redraw its districts: The court’s justices have been widely expected to strike the current map, though time is running short ahead of a March 1 deadline.
In the background of it all: The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on a major case concerning the Voting Rights Act. While it’s unlikely, the justices could potentially deliver a verdict that would lead to the elimination of scores of majority-minority districts around the country.
What will Maine’s Senate race tell us?
For 40 years, one thing has remained true in American politics: When a sitting governor runs for Senate, they can at least be expected to make it to the general election. That streak might end in 2026.
Sitting Maine governor Janet Mills is mounting a campaign for Senate that is under siege from an insurgent progressive challenger, oyster farmer Graham Platner. Platner boasts support from progressive leaders like Bernie Sanders, while Mills is backed by party leadership and heavyweight establishment organizations. The latter group used to be the decisive voice in Democratic primaries for Senate in top races, with the ability to clear the field for the candidates perceived as most electable. That is one of many longstanding political assumptions being tested in this race; even just a few years ago, the revelations about Platner’s past would have been campaign-ending.
Ambitious potential 2028 contenders, too, are treating the race as a proxy battle: Govs. Gretchen Whitmer and Andy Beshear are backing Mills, while Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Chris Murphy are boosting Platner. On the far side of the Democratic primary is a general election battle with Susan Collins, an incumbent Democrats are desperate to beat and whom they must defeat if they have any hope of retaking the Senate in 2026 or 2028. If Mills were to go down, she’d be the first incumbent governor to lose a Senate primary since 1986, an embarrassing outcome that would underscore grassroots Democrats’ dissatisfaction with their leaders. The high stakes of the race makes the June 9 primary a crucial day in the battle over the party’s direction.
Can governors still defy gravity?
2025 saw the country reach new heights of political polarization. The current U.S. Senate, for example, has the fewest number of split delegations (meaning one Republican and one Democrat representing a single state) since the direct election of senators began — evidence that states are increasingly ossifying into hard partisanship. Governors remain the slight outlier to this trend: Whereas only one senator, Susan Collins of Maine, holds a Senate seat in a state that the opposing party has won in every presidential election featuring Donald Trump, there are six current governors boasting that distinction.
That’s especially significant for Democrats: Because most states lean more conservative than the country as a whole, the movement toward straight-ticket voting has disproportionately benefited Republicans in national elections. That governors can still outrun national political trends is a ray of hope for Democrats, who need to win majorities in more states if they hope to secure control of the Senate or presidency in the future. So the extent to which the 2026 gubernatorial candidates are able to defy political gravity is a crucial question for the coming year.
So far, the marquee races of the cycle match up almost exactly with the core swing states of the last presidential election: Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. But Democrats have signaled ambitions to contest even redder territory. The open governorships in states like Kansas, Iowa, and Ohio will be key tests of that goal, and, given that the Democratic Governors Association is now led by a red-state governor, there’s extra pressure to deliver. How Republicans fare in defending their seats in New Hampshire and Nevada will be similarly telling.
Which 2028 contenders are welcome in tossup races?
Whom candidates call in for help in close races has long been a reliable thermometer of national figures’ electoral appeal. 2018, for example, provided clear proof of Joe Biden’s popularity: Democrats from the Rust Belt to the suburbs invited him to join them on the campaign trail. That was crucial fuel for his case in the 2020 primary contest that he had the best chance of defeating Donald Trump.
The 2026 elections will be our first significant sign of who among the potential 2028 contenders are — and are not — perceived as helpful spokespeople by Democrats in tough races. The gubernatorial elections this year proved to be a bit of a dry run for this concept: People like Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Govs. Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro were welcomed by Spanberger and Sherrill. By contrast, Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Gov. Gavin Newsom were all notably absent. Who is invited to stump in Georgia, Arizona, or Michigan next September will tell us a lot. I’ll be paying particularly close attention to the schedules of blue-state liberals like Newsom and JB Pritzker.
Where does AI regulation — and backlash — go?
In the final weeks of 2025, the Trump administration began to carve out a clear stance on regulation of artificial intelligence: It would do everything in its power to keep states from imposing even modest limitations on AI companies and infrastructure. The president has signed an executive order seeking to preempt “onerous” state regulations, and Cabinet officials are trying to prevent states from regulating the explosive growth of data centers.
The controversy surrounding AI puts the country on a political collision course in 2026. Two states, Colorado and California, have major AI regulation laws coming into effect in the coming year, and several more are actively considering them. As I wrote last week, there are mounting signs that an AI backlash is brewing. The technology is not quite as deeply unpopular as some think (or want), but polls show that Americans do have growing concerns about its effects on society and view its impacts with increasing negativity. And, with electricity prices soaring, data center regulation may look more appealing to many governors. Democrats are eager to shore up their populist credentials, and many progressives believe a battle with Big Tech is the way to do it. How the issue plays out this year — both in state capitols and on the campaign trail — will go a long way toward demonstrating its potential potency in 2028.
Can education be saved?
When the full history of the COVID pandemic is written, 2025 may be seen as a crucial year in the nation’s recovery. Crime dropped substantially nationwide. Traffic fatalities plummeted. Overdose deaths continued to decline. Public transportation use hit all-time highs in cities like New York, Miami, and Washington, D.C., and Amtrak had its best year on record. Cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Denver closed in on pre-pandemic tourism and foot traffic numbers. The biggest outlier: education.
Data this year showed that students in primary and secondary schools continue to lag far behind pre-COVID metrics in math and reading, showing stubbornly little improvement after scores cratered during the pandemic. The numbers around literacy in particular are alarming given how central it is to basic adult functioning. Increasingly, governors are signaling they agree. In recent weeks, Republicans Spencer Cox and Mike DeWine embarked on tours focused on the literacy crisis, while Gretchen Whitmer promised it would be her “number one priority” in her final year. Whether they make tangible strides or not, the next year could prove pivotal for efforts to rectify the country’s schooling.
Altogether, 2026 will be a hinge year, one in which the trajectory of the next decade could begin to come into focus.
In thinking about what this coming year will tell us, I often return to the 2014 midterm cycle (incidentally the last midterm under a lame duck president) — so much of what has defined the last decade of politics was either set in motion or first began to emerge that year. Democrats narrowly lost multiple Senate races, allowing Republicans to keep a Supreme Court seat vacant and create a conservative supermajority. The GOP made enormous inroads in states like Iowa and Ohio, presaging their sharp right turn in 2016. And the full extent of conservative voters’ anger over immigration and cultural change was laid bare.
2026 will give us a similar sense of direction. We’ll see where it points us.
On a personal level, a highlight of my year was certainly the beginning of this newsletter — and the fast number of you who have chosen to subscribe. I’m very grateful.
See you in 2026.
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