Midterm Elections 2026 Predictions: Trump Rallies in Sioux City as Rove and Axelrod Map the Key Races
Less than two weeks before the November 3 midterms, President Trump told Iowa voters to pretend he is on the ballot and warned the Iran war could resume after the election — while Karl Rove and David Axelrod laid out their predictions, with the Texas Senate race in the middle of the map.
SIOUX CITY, Iowa — President Donald Trump rallied supporters at Sioux Gateway Airport on Thursday night, urging Republican voters to turn out as if his own name were on the November 3 ballot. "Pretend I'm on the ballot, because if you get out, we're going to win big," Trump told the crowd gathered in an airport hangar, Reuters reported. The Midwestern stop is part of the president's push through states Republicans usually expect to win, where polling now points to tight races: Republicans are defending an Iowa Senate seat, three House districts and the governor's office, and U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who addressed the rally, is in a close Senate race against Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek.
Trump told the crowd the war with Iran would be finished "very soon" — "one way or the other" — while warning it could resume after the midterm elections, according to CNN and the Des Moines Register, and he announced that his administration would use the Defense Production Act to release $150 million to expand domestic diesel and gasoline refining capacity. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the money would be used with private industry to bolster existing energy infrastructure. Reuters reported that some Republicans Trump is trying to help have broken with him over the Iran war, as higher fuel and grocery prices deepen voters' economic worries, and Hinson herself has called for an "immediate end" to the war.
The forecasters' map is the other half of the midterm picture. Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, and David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist, sat down with PBS NewsHour's Lisa Desjardins to give their predictions for 12 key midterm races, in a conversation that also covered election security. Rove has said he is voting for a Democrat this year, PBS reported, and the Texas Senate race ran straight through the discussion: it covered whether Rove will vote for Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, and Rove has warned in published reporting on the race that Paxton risks losing if he does not debate his Democratic opponent, James Talarico. Their predictions are reported here as their map, not this station's conclusion.
Underneath the rallies and the forecasts, the voters are already moving: millions of Americans have voted early, NPR's Friday brief reported, and Bexar County is running at a record pace — more than 176,000 people voted in person in the first four days of early voting here, after a record 42,776 ballots on the first day, this station has reported. Early voting in Bexar County runs through Friday, October 30, ahead of Election Day on Tuesday, November 3.
