Why is the American midterm election this November such a big deal, and what does Trump mean by 'it's all about 35 races'?

The November 2026 midterms matter because voters can change who controls Congress while Donald Trump is president. That can decide whether his administration has a Congress willing to advance its plans or one able to block them, hold hearings, and investigate its actions.

When Trump says “it’s all about 35 races,” he is referring to the 35 Senate contests scheduled for this election: 33 regular elections and two special elections. It is a shorthand for the fight over the Senate, not a count of every race on the ballot. The phrase also isn’t an official name for the midterms.

The stakes extend beyond those contests. Every one of the all 435 House seats is up for election, along with many governor and state-level races. If one party wins the Senate but loses the House—or vice versa—Congress can be divided, making major legislation harder to pass.

So the 35 Senate races are a major piece of the story, but not the whole election. The result will shape the balance of power in Washington for the rest of Trump’s term and affect how much room his administration has to govern.

Midterms decide who controls Congress, and Congress decides whether a president can pass laws, get budgets through, or face serious investigations. With Republicans holding both chambers by narrow margins, and the president's approval numbers sagging under an unpopular war and voter unease about the economy, control of the House in particular is up for grabs.

Trump's '35 races' comment, made at a Rose Garden dinner for vulnerable Republicans this week, is actually a fairly accurate description of how the House works. Most of the 435 seats are safe for one party or the other. The outcome comes down to a few dozen competitive districts, and that is where he says he will campaign in the final thirty days. His argument to those lawmakers was that they should run on his record rather than distance themselves from him.

The strain is visible. Some battleground Republicans decline to say whether they want him campaigning in their districts. A midterm convention in Dallas next week, billed as a celebration of the president, has a lot of candidates quietly finding other commitments.

There are also legal fights with real consequences: the administration is asking the Supreme Court to let a new Postal Service rule on mail-in ballots take effect, and the Missouri Supreme Court just threw out a Republican-drawn congressional map. Those rulings could shift a handful of seats, which in a 35-race election is everything.