Election watch
United States 2026 Midterm Elections
Fixed by federal statute as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. All 435 House seats and roughly a third of the Senate are contested, alongside more than thirty governorships.
The first federal election since the 2020 cycle whose aftermath produced the most heavily litigated fraud claims in American history — every one of which failed in court, and which are recorded here as debunked. The question for 2026 is not whether those claims recur but whether the administrative safeguards that defeated them, chiefly paper records and post-election audits, remain in place at state level.
What to watch
Each point is classified under the same five categories as a documented finding, so an upcoming election reads with the same frame as a past one.
- Process violations
Whether states that changed certification procedures after 2020 apply them as written, and whether any local canvassing board refuses to certify a lawful count.
- Statistical anomalies
Whether turnout or margin anomalies are presented as evidence of fraud without the underlying method being published. An anomaly justifies examination; on its own it establishes nothing.
See the source - Information operations
Whether the 2020-era claim that voting machines altered totals is revived. It was tested by hand recounts, audits and litigation and failed each time; the Georgia hand audit remains the cleanest single refutation.
See the source - Foreign interference
Whether foreign influence activity is documented against the campaign environment, and whether it is again conflated with the separate and unestablished claim that vote counts were altered.
See the source - Foreign interference
Documented precedent, not evidence of 2026 activity: Iranian actors used voter-threat tactics in 2020 and targeted presidential campaigns with phishing and an alleged hack-and-leak operation in 2024. Watch for campaign-account compromise without conflating it with vote-system access.
See the source - Information operations
Documented technique precedent, not evidence of 2026 activity: DRAGONBRIDGE used high-volume synthetic audio, avatars and comment spam around Taiwan's 2024 election, but Google measured practically no authentic engagement. Track reach as well as output volume.
See the source - Foreign interference
Documented precedent, not evidence of 2026 activity: Storm-1516 targeted the 2024 U.S. electoral process with staged material, false news infrastructure and coordinated amplification. Watch for reuse of that production chain.
See the source - Information operations
Documented precedent, not evidence of 2026 activity: Treasury found that the GRU-backed Center for Geopolitical Expertise used a generative-AI server, at least 100 imitation news sites and manipulated video for the 2024 U.S. election. Watch for the same origin-laundering chain, and measure authentic reach rather than raw posting volume.
See the source - Foreign interference
Documented precedent, not evidence of 2026 activity: the same Treasury designation also says the IRGC subsidiary Cognitive Design Production Center had planned influence operations targeting U.S. voters since at least 2023. Because the public notice gives limited operational detail, track any future activity separately from the alleged 2024 hack-and-leak case and from vote-system claims.
See the source
Precedent, not prediction
Documented past → this vote
Each is a past, documented case linked to this vote as precedent — not a claim that it is active here. Watch for reuse of the technique, not the name.
Documented past
Russia · Internet Research Agency · 2014 – 2017
Internet Research Agency 2016 Campaign
ConfirmedA Kremlin-directed social-media influence operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election, in which operatives impersonated Americans and exploited divisive issues; 13 Russian nationals and three entities were indicted, and officials stated there was no allegation it altered the outcome.
Watch for reuse
Documented past
Russia · GRU Units 26165 and 74455 · 2016
GRU 2016 Hack-and-Leak Operation
ConfirmedA Russian military-intelligence operation that stole material from the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign accounts, then released it through DCLeaks, the fictitious Guccifer 2.0 persona and intermediaries during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Watch for reuse
Documented past
Iran · Emennet Pasargad · 2020
Iran 2020 Voter-Threat and Disinformation Campaign
ConfirmedAn Iranian cyber-enabled campaign that obtained voter information, sent threatening emails while impersonating the Proud Boys, circulated a fabricated video purporting to show fraudulent overseas ballots, and attempted to use compromised media infrastructure to spread further post-election claims.
Watch for reuse
Documented past
Iran · Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps / APT42 · 2024
Iran 2024 U.S. Hack-and-Leak Campaign
AllegedGoogle documented IRGC-associated APT42 phishing against people affiliated with both 2024 U.S. presidential campaigns. A federal indictment separately alleges that three IRGC employees compromised accounts associated with Donald Trump's campaign, stole campaign material and tried to release it through journalists and people associated with the opposing campaign.
Watch for reuse
Documented past
China · DRAGONBRIDGE / Spamouflage network · 2023 – 2024
DRAGONBRIDGE / Spamouflage Taiwan 2024 Campaign
CorroboratedA PRC-linked network surged around Taiwan's 13 January 2024 election with thousands of videos and comments, synthetic audio and AI-generated presenters, including material targeting outgoing president Tsai Ing-wen and urging voters not to support the Democratic Progressive Party.
Watch for reuse
Documented past
Russia · GRU Unit 29155 with support from the Center for Geopolitical Expertise; distribution support from CopyCop · 2023 – ongoing
Storm-1516
ConfirmedA persistent Russian information-operation method that manufactures source material, launders it through false news infrastructure and amplifies it across platforms. VIGINUM analysed 77 operations through March 2025 and documented activity targeting elections and political figures in France, the United States and Germany.
Watch for reuse
Documented past
Russia · Center for Geopolitical Expertise, founded by Aleksandr Dugin and directed by Valery Mikhaylovich Korovin, financed by the GRU · 2024
CGE U.S. 2024 AI Disinformation Operation
ConfirmedA GRU-backed influence operation in which the Moscow-based Center for Geopolitical Expertise used generative AI, manipulated video and a network of imitation news sites to circulate false material about candidates in the 2024 U.S. election.
Watch for reuse
Documented past
Iran · Cognitive Design Production Center, a subsidiary of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps · 2023 – 2024
Iran CDPC U.S. 2024 Influence Planning
ConfirmedAn IRGC subsidiary's planning for influence operations intended to incite socio-political tensions among U.S. voters before the 2024 election, as documented in a U.S. Treasury designation.
Watch for reuse
Previously documented in this country
Actors documented in this region
Narratives to expect
Background reading
Explore
Sources cited above
Where the date comes from
- Election and voting information — Federal Election Commission
- The 2026 Midterms: Key Dates and Events — Bipartisan Policy Center
Scheduled dates come from national election authorities and are linked above. Dates can move; where one is not yet fixed by decree it is marked as expected rather than confirmed. Listing an election here is not a prediction that anything improper will occur — it is a statement about what would be worth checking if it did.