Republicans have a very favourable Senate map for the 2026 midterms.
In order to take back the upper chamber of Congress, the opposition Democrats would have to flip four seats—if they were to flip three, the GOP still would have control of a 50–50 Senate with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President JD Vance.
There are two seats ‘ripe’ for flipping from red to blue: one in the swing state of North Carolina, which President Trump won by 3.2 points in the 2024 presidential election, and one in the blue-leaning state of Maine, which Vice President Kamala Harris won for the Dems by 6.9 points.
However, beyond that, the respective Democratic candidates would still need to take away two more seats from the GOP, and all the rest of the party in power’s incumbents are in states that President Trump carried by double digits in 2024. That is why Democrats are pouring in efforts in Senate races such as the ones in Iowa, Ohio, Alaska and—which has been their most prominent target lately—Texas.
The dragged-out Iran conflict, which led to elevated gas prices, is certainly helping them out in that matter.
However, even that is starting to ease. With sporadic escalations and consequent price hikes, crude oil prices on the international commodity markets have still consistently stayed well below their peaks for weeks now. As a result, the average price of a gallon of gas has also dropped, from $4.560 on 21 May to $4.290 as of today, 2 June.
What’s more, an embarrassing scandal has also erupted in the meantime, which helps the GOP in their efforts to keep Senate control.
Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Caught Up in Sexting Scandal
Graham Platner, running for Senate as a Democrat in Maine, has had some controversies surrounding him from the inception of his campaign.
In the fall of 2025, after announcing his run, he got a lot of scrutiny as a tattoo on his chest was identified as Nazi symbolism, a skull known as the ‘Totenkopf’. He responded by stating that he is tattooing over the symbol.
In part due to the fierce anti-Israel stances of the progressive left, Platner recovered from that scandal with relative ease. In fact, by April 2026, he remained the only one in the Democratic primary race, as Governor Janet Mills announced that she was dropping out.
However, this may not be working out for the Democrats.
In May, The Wall Street Journal broke the story that Platner exchanged sexually explicit texts with multiple women while married. According to the report, it was Platner’s wife herself who brought up the issue with her husband’s campaign staff, to flag a potential vulnerability for their mock opposition research.
She claimed that she had discovered the messages in the spring of 2025. She and Platner got married in 2023.
After the story broke, Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, dismissed it as ‘malicious gossip’ by a former friend. However, within a day, Platner’s campaign staff confirmed that ‘these events have occurred’, in reference to the exchange of sexual texts, in a statement to POLITICO.
The Republican incumbent in Maine, Susan Collins, was first elected in 1996, meaning that she has successfully run for reelection four times already. In her last election challenge, she outran President Trump in the state by 17.5 points: she won her race by 8.5 points, while President Trump lost Maine-at-large by 9 points to President Joe Biden.
Since then, she further distanced herself from the 45th and 47th POTUS by being one of the seven Republican Senators to vote to convict him in the Senate in his February 2021 impeachment trial for his involvement in the 6 January Capitol riots.
In other words, Graham Platner was already facing a strong incumbent with cross-party appeal even before his sex scandal.
Take Maine off the map, and regaining control of the Senate becomes a near-impossible feat for Democrats in 2026—Platner’s sexy texts may be very costly not only to his marriage, but to his party as well.
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