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The aftershocks of last week’s midterm elections are still being felt by Senate Republicans, but another political reality is beginning to set in: The GOP may not regain control of the chamber for years to come.
This year’s Senate map was, initially, favorable to Republicans in their quest to maintain and possibly grow their 53-seat majority in the Senate. But the next election cycle’s map in 2028 is tough, perhaps even insurmountable, for Republicans to conquer.
The Senate GOP’s newly minted campaign chief, Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, acknowledged that the map to reclaim the majority in 2028 is “very tough.”
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, walks into the Senate Reception Room in the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 29, 2026. (CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
Democrats only have three incumbents up for re-election in battleground states, while Republicans have to defend seats in a slew of once-safe, deep-red states, including both Carolinas, Kansas and Iowa, among several others.
His home state, which just turned a shade of purple with Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown’s victory over Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, is in play again, too.
Moreno, when asked to sketch a 30,000-foot view of what the future fight for power would look like, told Fox News Digital that Republicans had “dealt with tough situations before.”
“Look, it is an absolutely brutal map, but, politics, things change pretty quickly,” Moreno said. “So we’ll see how it is, but we’re gonna be extraordinarily disciplined, we’re gonna be extremely honest with our data. We [will] make certain that we hold our incumbents and our candidates accountable, and we’re gonna make an appeal to donors as to how we should win.”
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Others were less optimistic.
Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2024 campaign, when Republicans flipped the Senate, compared the situation to getting down early in a baseball game: Republicans would have to “chip away” at Democrats’ lead, but it would take time.
“Now the Democrats can’t help themselves, but they’ll overreach in the next couple of years,” Daines told Fox News Digital. “They’ll be out of step with where America is, and they’ll provide an opportunity for us to win some Senate seats. But I think this will take a few cycles before we’ll probably get back to the majority if I have to honestly interject and look at it.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who had just secured his position as the incoming minority leader after weathering a marathon venting session from Senate Republicans who are disgruntled and frustrated after the midterms, agreed that Democrats could overreach and create a “different shooting match” for Republicans.
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Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2024 campaign, when Republicans flipped the Senate. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
But history has a way of repeating itself.
Thune shared the anecdote of how when he first arrived in the Senate in 2005, Republicans had clinched a 55-seat majority — “the high watermark for Republicans in the Senate, historically,” he told Fox News Digital.
“We were very bullish about getting to 60 for the first time and having a filibuster-proof majority for the first time ever for Republicans in the Senate in 2006,” Thune said. “And by 2006, we were back in the minority.”
“The map matters for sure, but the mood of the country also really matters,” he continued. “And there are a number of races this next cycle that have historically elected Republicans. Now there’s Democrats sitting in those seats now, but every cycle is a little bit different, and as we saw this time around, the mood was moving against us.”
The blowout losses across the map for Republicans do open up an opportunity for the next two years: running for their states and themselves, not for Trump, given that his time in office is winding down.
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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., whose home state flipped after his decision to retire last year, and who has become a vocal critic of the administration, argued that 2028 was likely out of reach for Republicans and said the environment wouldn’t be ripe again until “at least 2030.”
When asked if during the meeting that led to the eventual re-election of Thune as leader there was any reflection on the impact that Trump and his administration’s unpopularity with voters had, Tillis said, “I think there’s probably a growing awareness of what I warned folks about in April of last year.”
“And it wasn’t really having that feedback loop,” Tillis told Fox News Digital. “And I think we’ll probably see a much healthier, more productive, more beneficial to the president feedback loop, where these people realize their performance is going to be what’s going to be the driving force behind their re-elect.”
“That’s for the ones here,” he continued. “And absent that, you know, I don’t see any pickups. So I think everybody has to be realistic.”