The US midterm elections take place on Nov. 3, 2026. Election night is hyper-competitive on the SERPs, where big publishers tend to dominate. In this preview analysis using data from the Trisolute News Dashboard, we’ll take a look at how the Google SERP has changed since the last election, insights from the 2024 US election, and what to consider as part of your newsroom’s search optimization strategy for election coverage.

2026 insights

2026 midterm elections keyword set

Top publishers (Mobile News Box Aug. 2026 Share of Voice)

• theguardian.com
• nytimes.com
• cnn.com
• nbcnews.com
• foxnews.com

Top publishers (Mobile Organic Aug. 2026 Share of Voice)

• usvotefoundation.org
• wikipedia.org
• ballotpedia.org
• scvotes.gov
• vote.org

Top keywords (Aug. 2026)

Approximately 75K Mobile News Box keyword rankings for the midterm election keyword set.

• elections
• trump election
• midterms
• trump midterm elections
• us midterm elections
• midterm elections us
• 2026 midterms
• midterm elections 2026
• 2026 midterm elections
• election

SERP performance insights:

• For the month of Aug. 2026, The Guardian led in Mobile News Box visibility rankings for the midterm election keyword set. In 2024, The Guardian was in eighth place over the same time period for the election keyword set.
• The Guardian earned the most keyword rankings for 7 of the 19 keywords we tracked in our midterm election cluster: us midterm elections, midterm elections us, trump midterm elections, midterm elections 2026, 2026 midterm elections, when are midterm elections, and trump election commission.
• Meanwhile, nytimes.com narrowly edged out nbcnews.com for most keyword rankings for the top keyword, “election.”
• NBC News had the most live Mobile News Box rankings in Aug. 2026.
• We’re seeing a limited impact so far from AI Overviews for the midterm election keyword set we are tracking in the News Dashboard. For the month of August, AIOs appeared approximately 11% of the time. We’ll be monitoring any changes to the SERP when it comes to AI Overview influence as we move closer to the election.
• Early in election season, we see small nonprofit newsrooms earning Top Stories News Box rankings. This will likely shift as we move closer to election day but for now, we are seeing a mix of local and state news sites earning at least modest visibility in the Top Stories News Box. Sites like Tulsa Flyer, FloridaTrib, and Alaska Beacon all earned Top Stories News Box rankings for the keyword “election day” in August 2026.
• We’re also seeing small foreign news sites earn a modest amount of Top Stories News Box rankings. Some of these sites have limited publisher history and mostly exist as aggregators. It’s somewhat surprising to see such publications earning Top Stories News Box rankings considering how cautious Google is with the election SERPs in general. Be aware of groups who create what look like news sites but are designed to push a specific political or industry agenda. Vet any election-related websites you link to in your coverage to maintain brand integrity.
• In organic rankings, usvotefoundation.org edged out wikipedia.org in overall Mobile SERP visibility. Ballotpedia.org, vote.org, and scvotes.gov rounded out the top 5. Keeping an eye on the verified sources Google chooses to surface organically can make for good links to add to your own election explainer content.

What’s changed: 

AI Overviews for political keywords: In 2024, Google wasn’t keen on surfacing AIOs for political keywords, but that has changed over time. Over the last year, we’ve seen AIOs appear more often for hard news keywords, including for political and election topics. As we get closer to the election, Google may decide to tweak how often AIOs are surfaced for election content, but for now, they are active. 

Top Stories News Box vs Top Stories AIO Carousel: Over the summer, Google began adding Top Stories carousels to news-related AI Overview responses.  We began tracking AIO Carousel visibility in the News Dashboard in late August. This new ranking type should be monitored for visibility impact throughout election season. Trisolute added AIO Carousel and link visibility tracking to the News Dashboard in late August. So far, we are seeing more AIO Links for our midterm election keyword cluster than we are AIO Carousels. We’ll keep track of these ranking types to see how they develop ahead of the election.

Social platforms and influencers’ growth in search visibility: We saw signs of this back in 2024, but social platforms have seen massive visibility growth since then on the Google SERPs. This means that news publishers may be competing more with social platforms and the influencers who dominate those spaces than other traditional news publishers. Of course, competition remains fierce among large news publishers but the visibility pie is growing smaller due to social platforms’ growth in search visibility.

Audiences will be uber-engaged on election night, and will expect traditional elements like fast and accurate election returns, race projections, and exit polls along with insightful, authentic, and meaningful commentary from a diverse set of experts who can help make sense of it all. Depending on your brand and audience, collaborations with news influencers and Gen Z- friendly formats, are options to explore to showcase your brand’s expertise on election night. These elements can earn strong search visibility as well. For example, we’ve seen short vertical videos grow in visibility on the Google SERP over the last couple of years.

Newsrooms vibe-coding analytics dashboards: This year we expect some newsrooms will be analyzing election search visibility data through internal dashboards they’ve vibe coded. If you are curious about this trend, we built a Midterm Election SERP Tracker using the Trisolute API. 

Election tracker: https://topics.newsdashboard.com/

Distribution diversification will be more critical than ever: The changes that Google has made to its SERPs over the last couple of years have led to declining search visibility for news publishers. Search isn’t dead, especially on election night, but it’s evolving rapidly and newsrooms should adapt their SEO strategy accordingly. Make sure that you are reaching your audience where they are, whether that’s Google, YouTube, social, a dedicated app, or a newsletter. As we’ve seen the Google SERPs become more social over the last couple of years, ensuring your brand has visibility across platforms relevant to your audience and cross-linking to those platforms will help your content be discovered.

From query to explainer: This is a tip we shared in 2024 but we think it may even play a bigger role as users engage more with Google’s AI search features and LLMs to get the answers to election questions. Review the questions that are being searched for the most for each candidate and issue of relevance to your area and audience. This research can uncover hidden gems when it comes to creating explainers that address the questions voters have by demonstrating your publication’s authority and expertise. 

Here’s one smart example: Branch Four built a local issues survey for La Verne Daily News. “Residents can submit questions on topics like housing, public safety, and schools, browse questions from their neighbors, and vote to prioritize the ones that matter most. The top questions are then put directly to candidates — ensuring coverage reflects what residents actually want to know, not just what candidates or reporters choose to highlight.”

2024 insights:

• In a 2024 Trisolute News Dashboard election preview analysis, we highlighted how election vs non-election keywords triggered different Top Stories News Box configurations. For election keywords, Google declined to provide a News Box descriptive header. The Top Stories News Box was also smaller for election-related queries than for other news categories. This is happening again in 2026 with the lack of descriptive headers for election keywords.
• Google’s election results panel launched in the early afternoon on Election Day. The panel took up a large amount of SERP space, pushing down the Top Stories News Box. On mobile, it took up to 3 swipes to uncover the Top Stories News Box.
• “US election” was the top keyword in News Box visibility on Google’s mobile and desktop SERPs. The Guardian had the best visibility for “us election,” NBC News for “exit polls,” CNN for “election live updates.”
• Live update articles dominated in visibility rankings on both mobile and desktop SERPs. Live updates, especially at the state level, were also the top performers on Discover on Election Day for a sampling of major US news publishers.
• Non-US news publishers such as The Times and The Sunday Times, The Guardian, and Hindustan Times showed strong Google visibility rankings for key 2024 US election keywords. They also performed well in video rankings.
• Side-by-side images depicting candidates vying in key races performed well in Top Stories News Boxes.
• In organic mobile and desktop rankings for two critical election keywords on Election Day: “election” and “election results,” Google chose to give more visibility rankings to .gov URLs vs. news publishers. In 2020, this was not the case.

Resources:

• Trisolute Election SERP tracker
• 2024 Election Day analysis: How news publishers fared in Google visibility

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