The Republicans Announce Their 2026 Senate Targets
By Adam Turner | 6:15 AM on April 08, 2026
Well, the Senate Leadership Fund has spoken, so we know which U.S. Senate seats the GOP plans to target.
The top Senate GOP super PAC is laying down a massive $342 million ad buy in an aggressive push to help Republicans maintain control of the Senate, reserving airtime in eight battleground states in this year’s midterm elections. The Senate Leadership Fund, a group with close ties to Majority Leader John Thune, announced the plan Monday.
The SLF is playing mostly in Republican-held territory: 1) Ohio = $79 million; 2) North Carolina = $71 million; 3) Maine = $42 million; and 4) Iowa = $29 million. But it also is targeting three Democrat-held seats: 1) Georgia = $44 million; 2) Michigan = $45 million; and 3) New Hampshire = $17 million.
This breaking news makes it a good time for one of my periodic examinations of the 2026 Senate races.
Currently, the Republicans have a 53 to 47-seat majority in the Senate. There are 35 seats up for grabs in 2026. The Democrats need a net pick up of four seats to win control of the chamber.
The MSM has been endlessly hyping Democrat chances to win control of the Senate. But the central problem for them is that only two Republican seats – Maine and North Carolina – are in competitive states. The other 20 GOP seats are in states where the Republicans have a big edge, with Donald Trump winning them by double digits. That almost never happens in Senate elections, let alone twice. In the 2025 Virginia elections, the Democrats won a landslide, but they still didn’t carry a single district where Trump won with that margin.
The Democrats also must not lose any of their own competitive seats. And in the blue wave of 2018, the Democrats still lost in an upset of their incumbent in Florida.
more
https://redstate.com/adam-turner/2026/04/08/the-republicans-announce-their-2026-senate-targets-n2201031
