John,
This week, Swing Left announced some big news: We’re expanding our 2026 map of swing districts that’ll be key to flipping the House, adding 11 competitive districts where updated analysis shows our collective time and money can make a meaningful difference.
In total, we’re now targeting 33 swing districts for the midterms: 14 must-hold Democratic seats and 19 Republican-held seats to flip, which together form the clearest path to winning back Democratic control of the House of Representatives.
Our swing district targeting is guided by four primary inputs:
Given the Democratic momentum shown in last month’s elections, you might be wondering why we’re not going wider. Swing Left takes a ruthlessly pragmatic approach to choosing targets. We don’t spread resources thin or chase long shots. This expansion reflects seats where redistricting and electoral movement have created real openings, while avoiding places where Democratic gains are unlikely to translate into wins.
Put simply, we aren’t going to waste your precious resources, be it time or money. We also don’t want to help Democrats only overperform in a bunch of races. We want them to win.
With just a few weeks left until 2026, this is the moment to pool early money for Democratic campaigns and support early organizing work in these districts. If you can, consider making a donation today to be split between Swing Left and the future Democratic nominees in each of these 33 target districts.
Your contribution supports Swing Left’s national organizing work, including our innovative voter contact program, Ground Truth. It also allows campaigns to go on offense on day one of the general election: hiring staff, running ads, and reaching voters sooner before Republicans go on the attack.
For the 2026 midterms, our targets are split into must-hold seats and flip seats.
Must-hold seats are districts that are currently represented by Democrats that we must defend. Our original criteria focused on vulnerable freshman members, specifically those who won in 2024 by less than 3%, or those who won in districts where Trump also won.
Now, we’ve expanded our criteria to include districts Democrats won by 4.5% or less, districts Trump won by 5.5% or less, and districts with a Partisan Voter Index (a measure of how much an area favors one political party over the other compared to the national average) of D+1 or less.
As a result, we’ve added six new districts to our must-hold list:
Flip seats are Republican-held districts where we have a strong opportunity to flip the seat blue. Our original criteria included Republicans who won by less than 4% in 2024 or who won in districts where Kamala Harris won.
We’ve expanded our criteria to include districts where Trump won by 6.5% or less, or districts with a Partisan Voter Index of R+3 or less.
By expanding our criteria here, we added these five red-to-blue pickup opportunities:
Because of California’s new congressional map implemented after the passage of Prop 50, we have also removed California’s 27th, 41st, and 47th Districts from our target list, as the new map makes these districts less competitive.
Our goal remains ensuring your time and money go where they’ll have the biggest impact on helping Democrats win critical races that will unseat Republicans and swing the national balance of power. We’ll continue watching the political landscape and make changes to these targets when necessary to ensure we’re doing just that. You can find the full list of target districts here.
Winning a Democratic House majority is our biggest opportunity to put a check on Trump and unified Republican control of Washington in 2026.
We’ll be following up soon with additional information on some of our new House targets, so keep an eye out!
Thanks for all that you do.
— The Swing Left Team
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Since 2017, Swing Left has channeled the energy of grassroots volunteers and donors to elect Democrats, up and down the ballot, focusing on the most competitive races that can swing the national balance of power. Right now, Swing Left is investing in early grassroots organizing in key swing districts and initiatives across the country to lay the foundation to win back the House in 2026. If you’d like to help support our work, you can make a donation using this link. |
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Paid for by Swing Left, swingleft.org, not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
