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2026 Midterms
Dates that carry it
The election and the fiscal and trade cliffs clustered around it, read live from the deadline registry that also feeds the daily risk matrix.
2026-11-03TODAY2US midterm electionshigh
Expires: Control of Congress. Sits one week before the Nov 10 China tariff cliff.
Determines whether tariff policy faces any legislative check and sets the tax/spending path. Clustering with Nov 10 makes the first half of November the densest policy window of the year.
2026-11-10T-71US-China reciprocal tariff suspension expireshighestcritical
Expires: US suspension of heightened reciprocal tariffs on Chinese imports (10% reciprocal rate holds during the suspension). The extension of certain Section 301 tariff exclusions lands on the same date.
Snap-back to heightened reciprocal rates would reprice the entire China supply chain: retail margins, semis, industrials. Two deadlines on one date compounds the effect.
2026-12-11T-383Continuing resolution funding cliffmedium
Expires: The CR (House 370-48, Senate 90-6, enacted September) funds the government at FY2026 levels only through Dec 11, 2026, so clearing Oct 1 just relocates the cliff to December, after the midterms.
A lame-duck shutdown fight lands into December index rebalancing and thin year-end liquidity.
2026-12-31T-58China market-based tariff exclusions expirewatch
Expires: China's market-based tariff exclusion process for US imports; exclusions valid only through Dec 31, 2026.
Mostly agriculture and energy export channels; second-order for SPX but a live retaliation lever.
2027-01-03T-61120th Congress conveneswatch
Expires: The 119th Congress. New committee chairs, oversight agenda and a Speaker vote follow. The 20th Amendment fixes noon on Jan 3 unless Congress appoints another day by law; Jan 3 2027 is a Sunday, and the 117th convened on schedule the last time that happened, so no move is assumed here.
Where a midterm result stops being a probability and becomes committee assignments. Oversight and subpoena power transfer here, a headline and single-name channel rather than an index-earnings one.
2027-07-01T-240USMCA annual joint review
Expires: At the Jul 1, 2026 six-year review the US declined to confirm the 16-year extension, saying it would not renew USMCA in its current form. That triggered ANNUAL reviews under Art. 34.7.4 until the parties agree to extend or the agreement expires Jul 1, 2036.
Converts USMCA from a settled treaty into a yearly renegotiation. Mexico still seeks Section 232 auto/steel/aluminum relief; Canada and Mexico face pending 232 probes on timber, trucks, aircraft and jet engines, possibly processed critical minerals.
BPC estimates the debt limit is reached between late winter and mid-summer 2027 on cash-flow data through May 2026; CBO's baseline also puts it in 2027. Extraordinary measures then buy roughly six to nine months.
Open Section 232 tracks: commercial aircraft and jet engines (initiated May 1, 2025), medium/heavy trucks and parts, processed critical minerals (Proclamation 11001 of Jan 15, 2026 directed a negotiation status report within 180 days, i.e. by Jul 13, 2026). Proclamation timing after a Commerce report is presidential discretion, so these land without warning.
The read
- 01 The House is priced as close to settled at 94.5% Democratic, while the Senate is a coin flip at 77.5%. The contest is the Senate.
- 02 "Democrats Sweep" is the single most likely outcome at 76.5%, and it moved +11.0pp over the past week.
- 03 Divided government ("R Senate, D House") sits at 17.5% after a -9.0pp week. That week's repricing is a straight transfer between these two legs.
- 04 "D Senate, R House" is priced at 0.9%. The market treats a House flip as a precondition for a Senate flip, so there's no path where the Senate turns over while the House does not.
- 05 Texas is the fulcrum seat: 74.5% Democratic on $13.5M of volume, the largest single-seat pool on the board and a genuine dead heat.
Balance of power, market implied
Polymarket · $62.2M total ↗One event, four mutually exclusive legs, each separately traded. Resolution 2026-11-04.
Sparkline is each leg's own quoted history, hourly, over the life of the market. The percentage move beside it is measured from that same series.
Chamber by chamber
Senate
Derived, not directly quoted: summed from the balance-of-power legs where the Senate goes Democratic. Polymarket lists no standalone Senate-control market.
House
Quoted directly on $25.4M. The joint legs imply 94.0% for the same outcome; the 0.5pp gap is ordinary cross-market basis, not a signal.
Senate seats, closest first
Distance from a coin flip is what makes a seat decisive, so these are ordered by closeness rather than by volume. Democratic probability shown; where a seat trades as separate D and R lines, the D line is used and the volumes are combined.
| Seat | P(D) | Lean | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iowa | 52.5% | Toss-up | $2.3M |
| Kansas | 63.5% | D | $2.5M |
| South Carolina | 30.5% | R | $2.1M |
| Ohio | 71.5% | D | $2.9M |
| Maine | 72.5% | D | $3.8M |
| Texas | 74.5% | D | $13.5M |
| Michigan | 80.5% | D | $8.9M |
| Mississippi | 12.5% | R | $1.0M |
| Florida | 12.5% | R | $906K |
| Louisiana | 12.5% | R | $178K |
| Minnesota | 90.5% | D | $1.1M |
| New Hampshire | 94.5% | D | $725K |
| Arkansas | 4.3% | R | $65K |
| Georgia | 97.0% | D | $630K |
| North Carolina | 97.4% | D | $428K |
| Montana | 0.4% | R | $442K |
| Nebraska | 0.3% | R | $1.6M |
| South Dakota | 0.1% | R | $22K |
Only seats with a traded market appear. This is not the full map of contested seats, and named-candidate markets are excluded because mapping a candidate to a party is an assertion this page has no source for.
How this reaches SPX
An election result is not a market event by itself. It has to arrive through something, and the list of things it can arrive through is short.
Tariff authority barely moves
Tariff and foreign-policy authority sits with the executive, and a change of congressional control doesn't mechanically reverse it. That's the single biggest reason the vote matters less than the coverage around it implies. What actually constrains tariffs right now is the IEEPA litigation sitting on the registry with no date attached.
The tax path needs a sweep
A tax change needs both chambers. Under divided government the code freezes and the result is a non-event for forward earnings. So the 76.5% sweep leg is the only one that opens a legislative tax path, and the gap between the top two legs tells you more than the headline House number does.
October 1 and December 11 are where it becomes cash
These are the two dates where a result turns into appropriations. December is the one worth watching. It lands in a lame duck whose successors are already known, and a Congress negotiating against its own replacements behaves differently from one that isn't.
Oversight is a headline channel
A chamber flip transfers subpoena power and committee agendas. That shows up as headline and single-name risk rather than an index-level earnings effect, and it arrives from January onward. Not in November.
Not a midterm risk
- A new Congress undoing the tariffs by majority vote. The authority is executive and a majority does not reach it.
- Fed policy. September 16, October 28 and December 9 bracket the election without being contingent on it, so they stay in the daily brief.
- A Senate flip while the House stays put, at 0.9%.
What the record actually supports
Sample sizes here are small, so how consistently a pattern holds is worth more than its average. Ordered on that basis.
The post-midterm year is the one that holds up
Since 1950 the S&P 500 has been higher twelve months after every midterm election, 19 out of 19. Extend back to 1938 and it still holds about 95% of the time. The consistency is the finding, not the size of the move.
The size of that gain is genuinely disputed
Three reputable sources give three different averages for the same window, because each starts counting in a different year. Take the spread rather than any one figure.
| 12.4% | 31 midterm cycles, past 125 years |
| 13.6% | since the 1926 midterm |
| 16.3% | 15 midterms, past 60 years (U.S. Bank) |
Midterm years themselves are the weak leg of the cycle
The S&P 500 has averaged about 5.8% in midterm years since 1932, the most muted of the four-year cycle. October is the dominant bottom month in midterm years, with summer lows covering most of the rest.
Fidelity's read is that uncertainty drives it, not party
Markets respond more to changing levels of policy uncertainty than to which party wins. That would explain why the post-election year is strong regardless of who takes the chambers: what resolves is the uncertainty, and it resolves either way. It is also why the transmission channels are worth more attention here than the seat count.
Probabilities are live Polymarket quotes captured 2026-11-03, or sums over those quotes where labelled derived. Dated deadlines come from the same registry that feeds the daily risk matrix. This page is analysis of what the market is pricing. It contains no positioning, sizing or trade guidance.