'Nail-biting' midterms may deliver Democratic wins across the US, says top Democratic strategist

America is heading for a political showdown, and the stakes could hardly be higher. In just one week, voters will decide who controls Congress in what is widely seen as a referendum on Donald Trump's presidency. With Republicans fighting to hold on to power and Democrats hoping for a comeback, the outcome could reshape Washington and Trump's last two years in the White House. For more on this, I'm now joined by Keith Branham, senior advisor on U.S. politics at consulting firm Green Lane with more than a decade of experience as a Democratic strategist and campaign manager. Good morning and thanks for coming on. Good morning. So right now Democrats have a huge polling advantage on the generic ballot. Likely voters prefer Democratic candidates over Republicans by 11 points in their congressional districts. But when it comes to Senate races, the Democrats lead narrows to just five points. Is there still some nail biting or do Democrats have it in the bag? There's definitely some nail biting, but this is far more nail biting than Republicans would have wanted. When we came in to 2026, it was understood that the House, because of history, was probably in play for Democrats. Democrats probably had a really good chance of winning it. And the Senate was out of reach. The map was just not in their favor. That is how much the politics has changed between January and now. And there's a few reasons for that. One, Democrats have recruited really fantastic candidates across some really difficult states that Republicans are used to winning. And that Donald Trump in 2024 won in by high single digits, sometimes double digits. And for example, you have a great camp, you had a great candidate in in Tularico in Texas, who won a really competitive primary and is going up against a Republican candidate who is beladen by scandal. And this is put- Keith, if I may, I have to ask you this. Over the past decade, pollsters understated Trump's and Republicans' strength. Are the polls overestimating Democrats yet again? I would say the polls are not overestimating. In fact, the most polls are within the margin of error. So it is a coin toss across so many of these districts. Again, where we started in in January, that is just how much this landscape changed. So just like in 2024, where you had a bunch of states that you could have said one way or another would have gone for Kamala Harris or for Donald Trump in the presidential election, now you have the same situation here. Again, that's just how the map has shifted again. Briefly, Keith, to what extent would a Democratic Congress have the ability to roll back Trump's policies? That is a really good question, because right now, this Congress has been, I would say, very subservient to the president, and the president has shown little interest in governing with Congress. Now, with Democratic majorities, Democrats will certainly, and they have been very vocal about holding the president accountable and using their powers of oversight and investigation to try to do so. I think we are in uncertain times because the president normally, in these next two years, would go into what we call the lame duck status. And we'll probably not get a lot done because, again, we're looking forward to the next presidential administration because we have another presidential election coming up next year.