A year ago, even the most optimistic Democrats could not imagine winning back the Senate in 2026. President Trump had just stormed back to power. The Democratic brand was damaged. And Republicans were up to 53 Senate seats — with Democrats facing an unusually daunting midterm map.

But now, after a series of candidate recruitment in red states, Leader Schumer said that Democrats were poised to capitalize on rising anger from voters toward Mr. Trump over a cost-of-living crisis.

Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have slumped, and Democrats have won a series of elections over the last year. The political environment has so brightened for the party that there is an path to victory.

Flipping Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio, defending defending all of the states Democrats now hold is possible.

Schumer faces attacks frpm many on the left and those who are desperate for younger leadership to take the fight to Mr. Trump. Some progressives are dreaming of a challenge from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

A series of blue-chip Senate recruits include Mary Peltola, a Democratic former congresswoman, who entered Alaska’s race .

She joined former Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio and former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, two other top Schumer recruits who are running in states that Mr. Trump has carried all three times he has been on the ballot.

But taking the Senate remains a steep challenge for Democrats. The party would need to not only sweep the four states that Mr. Schumer identified as his top targets, but also hold seats in the battleground states of Michigan, New Hampshire and Georgia.

Democrats also face an unusual number of fractious primaries — most notably in Michigan and Maine — and a Republican president with a super PAC that is flush with cash.

Most Democrats still view the House as the main battleground in 2026, given Republicans’ paper-thin majority in the chamber and its historical tendency to swing against the party in power in midterm elections.

There are parallels to 2006, when Democrats took back power by winning seats even in red states like Montana and Missouri.

That year, voters recoiled from President George W. Bush’s proposals to privatize Social Security as well as the quagmire of the Iraq war. Today Trump is similarly distracted by “military adventurism” and weighed down by an affordability crisis.

The cost issue is much more trenchant than Social Security privatization because that was the future. People are having their health care costs, their electricity costs, their housing costs raised right now.”

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