The Supreme Court, Mail-in Voting, Campaign Spending, and the 2026 Midterm Elections

The congressional midterms are now four months away. The Supreme Court this week handed down two decisions that could affect what happens on Election Day. One decision got the most attention. The other may have a greater impact.

The decision that dominated the headlines came in Watson v. Republican National Committee. On a 5-4 vote, the Court upheld a Mississippi state law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted if they are postmarked on or before Election Day and received by election officials within five days of the polls closing. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority that federal law requires “the electorate’s choice to be made on election day,” which “occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote.” Nothing in federal law, however, requires a ballot to be received or counted on Election Day.

The Court’s ruling, which applies to similar laws in thirteen other states and the District of Columbia, staved off a scramble to rewrite election protocols before November 3. The decision, however, probably will not have a major impact on election results. Historically at least, neither Democrats nor Republicans have gained an advantage from mail-in voting. Members of both parties like the convenience it offers.

President Donald Trump has never accepted that fact. He has pushed to limit mail-in voting on the grounds that it undermines election integrity, even though he has voted by mail himself. He took to Truth Social after the Court handed down the Watson decision to demand that Congress pass the SAVE America Act, which would go far beyond demanding that ballots be received by Election Day and sharply limit when ballots can be cast by mail. The prospect that Congress will pass the bill, however, remains nil.

The bigger threat to mail-in voting may come from the U.S. Postal Service. It proposed a rule last month that would allow it to refuse to distribute mail-in ballots in states that decline to give the federal government access to their voter rolls. The proposal reflected an executive order Trump issued in March directing the Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to approved absentee voters. Last week, a federal judge put the proposal on hold.

The Court’s likely more consequential decision came in its ruling in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission. By a 6-3 vote, the Court overturned a quarter-century-old precedent that limited how much each political party can coordinate with the campaigns of individual candidates. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that such limits violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.

Republicans expect to benefit from the ruling. Indeed, Trump called it “A BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS.” It is easy to see why. They have far more cash on hand than Democrats do. To cite just one example, the Republican National Committee currently has $125 million in the bank; the Democratic National Committee has more debt than cash. A cash advantage by no means guarantees victory. It matters more how wisely money is spent than how much is spent. But money can remedy a lot of ills.

The public’s assessment of Trump’s performance has ticked up slightly over the past month. An average of national polls has 39.3 percent of Americans giving him a thumbs up, compared to 38.6 percent on June 3. In comparison, 57.5 percent give him a thumbs down, which is essentially unchanged from a month ago.

Republicans have also narrowed the gap slightly on the generic congressional ballot. Democrats held a 7-point lead over Republicans in an average of national polls at this time last month. That lead is now 6.2 points.

The positive polling momentum for Republicans could be a blip or a trend. If it is the latter, one factor that could be at play is falling gasoline prices. The average price for a gallon of gas today stands at $3.84. That compares to $4.29 last month and $4.46 a gallon two months ago. Gas prices hovered around $3.00 a gallon at the end of February. If the Strait of Hormuz remains open, gas prices are likely to continue to fall back toward the $3.00 per gallon average seen before the start of Operation Epic Fury.

Trump hopes to drive the number even lower. This week, he warned gas station owners to lower prices to $2.50 per gallon:

Should Trump get his way, gas prices would be at their lowest level in five years.

The completion of the unusual round of mid-decade redistricting also gives Republicans reason for optimism. They will now defend just eight House districts that Kamala Harris won in 2024. In contrast, Democrats are defending twenty-three House districts that Trump won, nine of which he won by double digits.

On the flip side, polls also contain troubling news for Republicans. A Fox News poll released in mid-June found that 59 percent of voters are pessimistic about the economy, only 37 percent are satisfied with the direction of the country, and just 20 percent think that Trump’s economic policies benefit everyone. All of those numbers are down from a year ago. Likewise, the Conference Board reported this week that while its consumer confidence index ticked up slightly in June, it remains well below where it stood a year ago.

The New York Times’s Nate Cohn did a deep dive into the polling numbers for the six Republican-held Senate seats that are most vulnerable to flipping and concluded that “Democrats are highly competitive, but for now they seem just out of range of flipping the chamber.”

The New York Times’s Ashley Wu showed how mid-decade redistricting has changed predictions of how many seats each party can expect to win in November.

A team of reporters for Reuters assessed how the success of left-wing, progressive candidates in high-profile primary races could create an opportunity for Republicans to change the dynamics of midterm races.

Jack Patton and Jacob Wentz assisted in the preparation of this article.

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