Citizen forecasts and the 2026 us congressional midterm elections: Do americans still expect the iron law to hold?

In American midterm congressional elections, the president's party usually experiences a net loss of seats.This generalization holds so often it has taken on the mantle of an "iron law" (Abramowitz, Cover, and Norpoth 1986).However, the 2026 election paints a complicated portrait of American elections, with fundamentals such as the economy and mid-decade redistricting creating challenges for straightforward fundamental models.Citizen forecasts, relying on asking citizens who they think will win the election rather than whom they intend to vote for, can be used in complex electoral contexts to help forecast electoral outcomes.Using four waves of citizen forecasts from September 2025 to May 2026, our citizen forecast predicts that the Democrats have a strong probability of taking control of the House in November, but that Senate is very much up for grabs.