Miles Parks

It's the state that has a potentially competitive Senate race, a competitive governor's race.

Three of its four U.S.

House districts will likely have competitive races.

And if you look at Trump's popularity and approval ratings among states that Republicans have won the last three presidential elections, Iowa is right there at the bottom.

You look at why it has industries like agriculture, manufacturing and other places that are very much affected by Trump's economic plans.

And it also is a state where you can get the breadth of how unpopular Republicans could be or how much they could separate themselves from Trump.

My fourth pick is North Carolina.

It has the first primary of the year, along with Texas, like we talked about.

So it's going to be a key place to really get a sense of where the electorate is in the early part of 2026.

You have a House primary in the Research Triangle area where you've got a younger generation Democrat trying to challenge an existing Democrat from the left.

You have the gerrymandering aspect to it with what they've done with Don Davis, the Democrat in the northern part of North Carolina.

And you also have a sleeper pick in western North Carolina where there's a very localized issue of Hurricane Helene recovery that is kind of shaping things up under the hood that you wouldn't necessarily think about looking at just top level data.

georgia is a place where there were several special elections at democrats did much better than expected including flipping two statewide seats on the public service commission which is the utility regulator which includes regulating things like data centers which are used for ai so dominico you do have the goods on the draft pick there that it's all related

It's one reason why I'm here in Georgia and am very keen on seeing where this state's races develop.

This is the clearest we've heard the president just come out and say he wants to take over in some places.

In terms of where exactly he's talking about these 15 places, that's still a little bit unclear, though he did mention Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia, all places controlled by Democrats, all places with high minority populations and all places that election conspiracy theories have really focused since 2020.

This is the clearest we've heard the president just come out and say he wants to take over in some places.

In terms of where exactly he's talking about these 15 places, that's still a little bit unclear, though he did mention Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia, all places controlled by Democrats, all places with high minority populations and all places that election conspiracy theories have really focused since 2020.

To argue for more federal control of voting, the president repeated a false claim on Dan Bongino's podcast that he's made a lot in recent years, that non-citizens are swaying America's politics for Democrats.

It's unclear which places Trump is talking about wanting to take over, but he's been most critical of states with easier voting access and cities with large minority populations like Atlanta and Detroit.