Who Do You Want Leading the Senate and the House?

Photo: Celal Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images

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Are Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries the leaders Democratic voters want? To answer that, we read the national polls since 2025 that asked Democrats about the two men and the people who could replace them, and we compared each man’s record with what most Democrats say they want. Democrats won both chambers in the Nov. 3, 2026 election, so the leader Senate Democrats choose in early December 2026 becomes majority leader, and the House elects a speaker on Jan. 3, 2027 with Democrats in the majority. If you want to influence who gets these jobs, you can vote in our two polls at the end of this piece and tell your two senators and your representative who you want before those votes.

The majority leader decides which bills the Senate votes on, and the speaker decides which bills the House votes on. Senate Democrats choose their leader by secret ballot in a closed meeting, and the winner needs only a simple majority of Democratic senators. House Democrats choose their candidate for speaker the same way before the full House votes. Schumer told reporters on Nov. 4, 2026, “I’ll be reelected as majority leader.” Jeffries is expected to become the first Black speaker of the House.

Gallup found in December 2025 that 39 percent of Democrats approved of the job Schumer was doing, down from 76 percent two years earlier. In a November 2025 poll that Emerson College Polling ran for Consensus Strategies, a political consulting firm, 61 percent of Democrats said Schumer should step down as leader.

Five Democrats who won Senate seats on Nov. 3, 2026 said during their campaigns they would not vote for Schumer as leader: Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, Troy Jackson of Maine, Juliana Stratton of Illinois and Adam Hamilton of Kansas. Stratton said in a January 2026 debate, “I will not support Chuck Schumer as leader in the Senate.” Jackson told The New York Times that his first choice was Bernie Sanders: “Obviously Bernie, but that ain’t going to happen.”

Democrats rate Jeffries well above Schumer, though Jeffries’ approval has fallen too. The same Gallup poll found 64 percent of Democrats approved of the job Jeffries was doing, down from 80 percent in 2023. In a January 2026 survey of 2,421 Democratic voters that the polling firm Embold Research ran for The New Republic, 60 percent viewed Jeffries favorably.

In an August 2026 survey for Strength In Numbers, the polling newsletter of former FiveThirtyEight head G. Elliott Morris, 83 percent of Democrats said Democratic leaders need to show more fight against Trump, and 9 percent said the leaders were doing enough. In March 2025, Schumer helped Republicans keep the government open rather than risk a shutdown, and progressive groups called for his resignation.

A New York Times/Siena poll in May 2026 found 74 percent of Democrats opposed more aid to Israel, economic and military. On April 15, 2026, most Senate Democrats voted for Sanders’ resolution to block a sale of military bulldozers to Israel, and Schumer was one of seven Democrats who voted against it. In a March 2024 floor speech, Schumer said, “I also feel very keenly my responsibility as a shomer yisroel,” which he translated as “a guardian of the People of Israel.”

Jeffries received more pro-Israel money in the 2024 cycle than any other House member. In a July 2026 letter to his House colleagues, he opposed an amendment from Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky that would have removed all U.S. aid to Israel from the State Department spending bill, calling it “overly broad.” In the same letter he wrote that “Israel has an advanced economy and is capable of paying for its own sophisticated weapons” and suggested that direct military aid end when the current aid agreement expires in 2028.

The health policy research group KFF found in September 2026 that 84 percent of Democrats favor Medicare for All. Jeffries said on Meet the Press on Aug. 16, 2026, “I haven’t co-sponsored the Medicare for All legislation that has been introduced over the last several years.” Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts cosponsor Sanders’ Medicare for All Act in the Senate, and Schumer does not.

Who else could lead Senate Democrats? In a March 2025 survey by the polling firm YouGov, Democrats gave Sanders a net favorability of +75, Warren +58, Cory Booker of New Jersey +52 and Schumer +3.

Schumer is the only one of them running for leader.

By the jobs they have done, the best-qualified alternatives are Schatz and Patty Murray of Washington State. Schatz has held Democratic leadership posts since 2017 and has secured enough votes to become whip, the second-ranking job, in January 2027.

Murray is the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, which writes the annual federal spending bills, and she chaired the committee in 2023 and 2024. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senator El-Sayed wants as majority leader, chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2017 to 2019 and the House Democrats’ campaign committee before that.

On Nov. 3, 2026, traders on the prediction market Kalshi put Schumer’s chance of keeping the job at 79 percent, with Schatz at 13 percent, Chris Murphy of Connecticut at 6.9 percent, Van Hollen at 4 percent and Booker at 2 percent.

In the House, the member Democratic voters like most is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the most favorably viewed lawmaker in the Embold survey. The second- and third-ranking House Democrats are Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the whip, who is expected to become the first woman to serve as House majority leader, and Pete Aguilar of California, the caucus chair, who said in January 2026 that if Democrats won, “I will ask the caucus to elevate me” to whip.

Jamie Raskin of Maryland is the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and led the House impeachment managers in the 2021 Senate trial. Pramila Jayapal of Washington State is the lead House sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, and Greg Casar of Texas chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

By these numbers, most Democratic voters want Schumer to step down, and he is running to keep the job. Five of the senators who will vote in the leadership election have already said they won’t support him. Jeffries has the approval of most Democrats, and on Israel and Medicare for All he holds positions most of them oppose. The people who make both choices are members of Congress, and every one of them answers to voters.

About 60,000 people read The Existentialist Republic. If every one of you contacted your two senators and your representative, Republican and Democrat, to tell them who you want leading the Senate and the House, and asked one or two friends or your whole Indivisible group to do the same, that would be more than 100,000 people contacting Congress before the votes. You’ll find their contact pages in the CALL TO ACTION below.

You can vote below for who you want as Senate majority leader and as speaker. To write in a name, pick Someone else and put the name in the comments. We’ll spotlight the winners and help get the word out.

Vote in the two polls on the Substack version by clicking on this sentence.

CALL TO ACTION

Who you’re contacting and how: Reach out to your two U.S. senators and your U.S. representative, whatever their party. You can do that by email, phone, FaxZero or even a printed letter. You could even go to their office during business hours, bring donuts, and tell the staff you’re going to talk to them about an issue you care about if the senator or representative isn’t there. If any of those seats changed hands on Nov. 3, 2026, the person who won is the one who votes on these jobs, so contact them through their campaign website until they take office on Jan. 3, 2027.

Find your senators by clicking on this sentence.

Find your representative by clicking on this sentence.

See who won your Senate and House races on Nov. 3, 2026 by clicking on this sentence.

What you’re asking for: Tell them who you want as Senate majority leader and as speaker of the House, and ask them to support that person. Senate Democrats choose their leader in early December 2026, and every House member votes for speaker on the floor on Jan. 3, 2027.

Let them know who you are, what you want, and why you care. Offices count identical messages once, so write it in your own words.

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