By every conventional historical measure, the Republican Party’s governing trifecta, control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, will come to an end in January 2027.

With few exceptions, the general trend of midterm elections for several decades has been that the party in the White House loses seats in the House of Representatives, as voters express their displeasure with various aspects of the chief executive’s agenda.

In fact, heading into every single midterm election cycle since 1994 save one, a party in control of a governing trifecta has subsequently lost it. The lone exception came in 2002, when Republicans, riding on post-9/11 goodwill for then-President George W. Bush, actually gained seats in the House and in the Senate, strengthening a governing trifecta they would not lose until the 2006 midterm elections.

But an uncomfortable truth for the Democratic Party and a welcome one for Republicans is that the 2026 cycle is already shaping up to be quite different from previous midterm elections. Of course, this hardly means that Republicans will maintain control of the House and their governing trifecta. But, less than a year and a half before the midterm elections, the party in power appears to have as good a shot as any to defy history and keep its Democratic rivals shut out of power for the duration of President Donald Trump’s term in office.

There are three primary reasons that the GOP can pull off this upset: the district map, fundraising, and public support for the two major parties. While all three come with an accompanying asterisk that the elections are still more than a year away, these trends seem to be more locked in than not.

When Republicans flipped the House of Representatives in 2022 by a meager five seats, there was a sense that the party left a lot on the table. A promised red........

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