Mary Peltola is the only Democrat to win a statewide federal race in Alaska in fifty years. She won a 2022 Congressional special election and lost by only two and a half points in 2024. Ranked-choice voting keeps this seat live in a way it otherwise wouldn't be.

She is Yup'ik, from Bethel, and served ten years in the state House before running for Congress. Her brand is fisheries and subsistence rights — cross-partisan issues in Alaska, where hunting and fishing are economic infrastructure, not hobbies. She is running an explicitly non-ideological campaign: exempt Alaskans earning under $92,000 from federal income tax, ban price gouging during emergencies, break up grocery consolidation, plus congressional term limits, a stock-trading ban for members, and overturning Citizens United.

• Partisan Lean: R+8 PVI; rated Lean Republican, trending toward Toss-up

• Key Issues: Cost of living and shipping costs, fisheries and subsistence rights, resource development and permitting, anti-corruption reform

Josh Turek is a Council Bluffs native born with spina bifida after his father was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. He went through 21 surgeries by age 12, then played in four Paralympics and won two golds and a bronze in wheelchair basketball. In the legislature he represents the reddest seat any Iowa Democrat holds. He wins where Trump wins.

Joni Ernst's retirement created Iowa's first open Senate race since 2014. Turek beat Zach Wahls in the June primary and now faces Rep. Ashley Hinson, backed by a $29 million commitment from the GOP Senate committee. A Fox News poll had Turek up 50 to 46, and he outpolls Hinson on favorability. No Democrat has won a Senate race here since Tom Harkin in 2008 and we can flip this seat now!

• Partisan Lean: R+6 PVI; rated Toss-up (moved from Lean Republican)

• Key Issues: cost of living, tariffs and the farm economy, health care, the Iran war

Sherrod Brown held this seat for three terms on a labor-populist message. He lost by three and a half points in 2024 while Trump carried Ohio by eleven — he ran roughly eight points ahead of the top of his ticket. Brown is betting a midterm electorate without Trump on the ballot closes that gap.

The message hasn't changed in thirty years: trade deals that gutted Ohio manufacturing, the dignity of work, and going after banks and drug companies. He chaired the Senate Banking Committee, wrote the pension rescue that saved benefits for roughly 100,000 Ohio retirees, and has the endorsement record with building trades and the UAW to back the rhetoric.

• Partisan Lean: R+6 PVI; rated Toss-up

• Key Issues: Trade and manufacturing jobs, health care costs, tariffs, union rights, pensions

Troy Jackson became the nominee on July 25 in the most unusual circumstances of any race this cycle. Maine Democrats built a nominating convention from scratch and gave Jackson 566 of 571 delegate votes.

He is a fifth-generation logger from Allagash in Aroostook County — the far northern part of the state that most statewide campaigns write off. He worked in the woods before politics and still does. He served as Maine Senate president and has spent his legislative career on labor law, forestry, and rural health care. That biography is why the party moved to him fast: he holds working-class, anti-establishment appeal, with two decades of public record behind it. He has about 100 days and started from a standing stop.

• Partisan Lean: D+2 PVI; rated Toss-up

• Key Issues: Health care and Medicaid, labor and forestry jobs, shipbuilding at Bath Iron Works, rural broadband and hospitals