With 29 days remaining before the midterm elections, Republicans’ hopes of preserving their congressional majorities appear to be deteriorating. New polling and party affiliation figures depict an electorate increasingly tilted toward Democrats as the campaign enters its final stretch.

Democrats now lead the generic ballot by 8.9%, according to analyst Nate Silver. That expanding advantage is a brutal development for Republican operatives who had expected the polling gap to narrow as Election Day approached.

Instead, the available numbers have moved further away from the GOP. The worsening outlook is not confined to a single national survey, either, with newly released polling showing Democrats competitive across several Senate contests.

The New York Times released multiple surveys over the weekend showing Democrats winning Senate races in Alaska, Ohio, and Texas. The polling also showed a tie in Kansas and Republicans leading by only 1 point in Iowa.

If those results hold, Democrats would take control of the Senate, with North Carolina also slated to flip. That possibility gives the party several paths toward breaking the Republican majority rather than forcing it to depend on one isolated contest.

The national party affiliation numbers are equally grim for Republicans. Gallup’s quarterly data, released Monday, showed that 50% of the country identifies as Democratic or leans Democratic, compared with only 39% identifying as Republican or leaning Republican.

That 11 point gap is larger than the 10 point Democratic advantage recorded by the same survey in 2006. During that midterm cycle, widespread discontent with President George W. Bush helped Democrats capture both chambers of Congress.

The current Democratic advantage is also just 1 point smaller than the party’s lead in 2008. Anger over Bush’s Iraq War and the collapsing economy produced a Democratic wave that delivered 257 House seats and a Senate supermajority.

“What we are seeing now is similar to the end of the George W. Bush administration, when he was pretty unpopular,” Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told the Times in September. “Democrats had a big lead in party identification, which was then a prelude to the 2006 and 2008 elections, which were big victories for Democrats.”

President Donald Trump’s unpopularity now appears to be dragging down his party’s standing. Even Republican voters have expressed anger over Trump starting a war in Iran that spiked inflation after he promised to lower prices and keep the country out of foreign conflicts.

The political damage has put seats and states into contention that Trump carried by double digits in 2024. Republicans are now scrambling to reinforce races that were not expected to become competitive when the election cycle started.

Democrats, meanwhile, are redirecting resources into deeply Republican territory. The party hopes to capitalize on intensifying dissatisfaction with Trump and the GOP by contesting races that initially seemed safely beyond its reach.

The widening battlefield has prompted Democrats to consider an outcome that once might have looked wildly ambitious. Party officials say winning 240 House seats is not outside the realm of possibility if the current political environment carries through Election Day.

That total would be five more seats than Democrats won during the 2018 midterms. It would also come under a congressional map described as considerably more gerrymandered in Republicans’ favor than the map Democrats faced during that earlier election.

The combination of the 8.9% generic ballot lead, favorable Senate polling, and Gallup’s 11 point party affiliation advantage paints a deeply ominous picture for Republicans. Rather than tightening in the closing weeks, the political environment has continued moving toward Democrats.

Republicans therefore face danger in both chambers at the same time, including contests in states they might ordinarily expect to hold. Democrats are pressing that advantage by broadening their targets and investing in places long considered reliably Republican.

No election result is settled with 29 days still remaining, but the trajectory presented by the latest data is unmistakably punishing for the GOP. If those numbers translate into votes, this year’s midterms could become a generational Republican wipeout.