Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast for Monday, February 9th, 2026. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanero, senior political editor and correspondent.

And today on the show, a midterms temperature check. We are just somehow only a month away from the first primary elections of

this midterm season. And already a record number of House lawmakers have decided that they are not

running again. So, Domenico, I want to start big picture here. Lay out the landscape for the

Senate and the House right now as we see it. Well, you know, there are, you know, about third of the

Senate is up every two years. They have six-year terms, but only about 10 seats this year that are

truly competitive. And, you know, because of some Democratic recruiting targets, they feel a

little bit better about their potential capability of being able to take over the Senate.

But it's really a long shot at this point because Republicans have a three-seat majority.

And Democrats would need to pick up a gain of four seats to be able to take control of the Senate because Trump is president.

And J.D. Vance as vice president comes in to break ties.

Okay. So they would need to win basically every seat they currently have and then pick up four other Republican seats to pick up the Senate. Is that right?

They need a net gain of four. So between wins and losses of their own and wins and losses of Republicans, they need a net gain of four.

And what about the House? Well, the House, you know, it's a razor-thin majority for Republicans

right now. You know, Republicans can only afford to lose two seats before they're looking at being

back in the minority. And that goes a lot more with the national mood. Republicans have had a huge advantage because of gerrymandering over

the years where a lot of the districts in the country lean a little bit more toward the right,

but that gap has actually been closing in recent years. So that gap is not quite as big,

but we have fewer and fewer competitive districts. So the universe of competitive seats is smaller than it ever has been. But long story short, things are starting to tip in Democrats' direction because midterm elections are usually a referendum on the president. Trump has had a really bad month. He's been under 40% for his job approval rating in our NPR PBS News

Marist poll since November. Affordability is still a big issue in the country. People feeling

like Trump is not focused on that as much as he should be. That has a tendency to depress the

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