House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Tuesday that Republicans could gain as many as seven or eight seats in the 2026 midterms, and possibly reach double digits, a prediction that would defy nearly a century of electoral patterns favoring the party out of the White House.
Johnson made the forecast during an exclusive appearance on Fox & Friends, where he pointed to aggressive redistricting efforts in Republican-led states, a strong legislative record, and President Donald Trump's personal campaigning as the ingredients for an unusual midterm expansion.
The speaker acknowledged the long odds. The sitting president's party has picked up House seats in a midterm only a handful of times since the 1930s. But Johnson argued this cycle is different, and he did not hedge.
"I'm convinced we're going to defy history and keep the majority here so we can keep all this going."
Central to Johnson's math is a wave of redistricting activity across several states. Alabama and Tennessee have already pushed through changes to their congressional maps. Johnson said Mississippi, Missouri, Maine, and South Carolina could follow.
The numbers game here is straightforward. If Republican legislatures redraw enough districts to flip even a few seats before voters go to the polls, the GOP's narrow House majority gets a cushion it badly needs. Johnson framed the potential gains as dependent on "how many states get involved" in the redistricting process.
But not every state is cooperating with the plan. On Tuesday, a handful of South Carolina Republicans blocked a redistricting effort that would have eliminated the state's only Democratic-dominated U.S. House seat ahead of the midterms. That intraparty setback undercuts the tidy narrative of a unified Republican march toward map advantages.
Johnson's leadership has faced internal Republican friction before, and the South Carolina episode is a reminder that the speaker cannot simply will his caucus into lockstep, even on a strategy that could protect their majority.
Johnson also pointed to Trump's willingness to campaign for Republican candidates as a factor that separates 2026 from past midterms. The speaker described the president as actively working the trail, driven by the stakes of losing the House majority.
"He's out on the campaign trail as well because the stakes are so high."
Johnson went further, framing the midterm as an existential test for the Trump agenda. Lose the House, he warned, and the administration's policy gains collapse.
"We can't lose the majority in the House because it would come crashing down around him, and you're going to have a lot of factors in play that have not been a factor in previous midterms. We're going to win."
Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade pushed back during the segment, noting that history overwhelmingly favors the opposition party in midterm elections. Johnson did not concede the point. He argued that better candidates, a record of results, and what he called "common sense" governing give Republicans a case to make that previous midterm parties could not.
"But this is a midterm unlike any other... We have a great record to run on. We've got better candidates in the field. We're applying common sense."
Johnson's midterm confidence aired alongside a much messier story: the ongoing fight over Department of Homeland Security funding. The speaker has publicly rejected a Senate-passed DHS bill, calling its language "problematic" and warning that it would leave Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection effectively unfunded.
Just The News reported that Johnson said the Senate legislation was "haphazardly drafted" and that the House is preparing a modified version he believes will work for both chambers. The bill funds most of DHS but carves out the very agencies responsible for immigration enforcement, a nonstarter for House Republicans who have made border security a centerpiece of their agenda.
Johnson has not been shy about the stakes. "We have to make sure that immigration law is enforced, and the border is safe and secure," he said, as Newsmax reported. Trump backed the speaker's effort and urged House Republicans to pass the Senate budget blueprint so enforcement funding could move forward with only Republican votes.
The speaker's willingness to take dramatic action in the House, including backing the expulsion of a member over ethics violations, reflects a leadership style that prizes bold moves, even when they carry political risk.
The DHS standoff has exposed a rare and public split between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune. The Associated Press detailed how Johnson abruptly rejected a bipartisan Senate deal to fund most of DHS, a deal the Senate had unanimously agreed to before senators left town expecting it to succeed.
"I have to protect the House, and I have to protect the American people," Johnson told reporters. Thune, for his part, offered a cooler assessment as the deal came together: "I don't know what the House will do."
House Republicans broadly opposed the Senate plan, arguing it failed to include immigration enforcement funding. The collapse left the partial DHS shutdown unresolved and deepened tensions between the two chambers over how to advance Trump-backed priorities.
That kind of intra-party turbulence is not new for Johnson. He has been blindsided by sudden departures and forced to manage a caucus where thin margins leave almost no room for defections. The South Carolina redistricting failure on Tuesday only added to the list of reminders that the speaker's ambitions depend on cooperation he cannot always command.
Johnson's prediction rests on a bet that 2026 will break the mold. The historical pattern is brutal for the president's party. Midterm losses of twenty, thirty, even forty seats are common. Gains are the rare exception, Johnson himself noted it has happened only "a couple of times in the last 90 years."
The speaker's case has identifiable pillars: redistricting, Trump's campaigning, a legislative record, and what he describes as a stronger candidate field. Whether those pillars hold depends on variables that remain unresolved, how many states actually redraw maps, whether the DHS funding impasse damages Republican credibility on border security, and whether Trump's presence on the trail energizes more Republican voters than Democratic ones.
Johnson has also navigated controversies of his own making, and his leadership will be judged not just by predictions but by results, on funding fights, on redistricting, and on keeping his caucus together through a grueling legislative calendar.
The open questions are real. Which specific districts account for Johnson's projected seven or eight seats? What happens in Mississippi, Missouri, and Maine if redistricting stalls the way it did in South Carolina? And can the House resolve the DHS funding standoff in a way that strengthens, rather than undermines, the GOP's midterm message on border security?
Johnson is making a big bet in public. He is telling his party, the press, and the president that Republicans will not just hold the House but expand their majority. That is a bold claim from a speaker managing a razor-thin margin, an unresolved government funding crisis, and a caucus that does not always follow orders.
Confidence is fine. But midterm voters do not grade on enthusiasm. They grade on results, and the results are not in yet.
