With just ten days remaining until November 5th, the nation’s eyes have been turned towards the presidential race, where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck-and-neck. Just as even is the fate of Congress, which both candidates hope to control. Their party’s control of the legislature could mean the difference between successfully enacting an agenda and having it opposed at every turn.

Control of Congress was already fragile going into the election. Democrats only control the Senate by a single vote, having a 51-49 seat majority. Republicans, meanwhile, narrowly control the house, having won 222 seats in the 2022 midterms, or just four more than the 218 needed.

With each chamber having such thin majorities, individual lawmakers have extraordinary power to derail legislation. Divisions in the Republican House Caucus led to Kevin McCarthy being elected speaker after fifteen ballots, only to then be ousted in October of 2023. He was the first speaker ever to be ousted in American history.

Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has broken a record number of ties in the Senate due to divisions in her own caucus. These weak minorities have contributed to the 117th Congress being the most unproductive in decades, as both parties have struggled to pass meaningful legislation while experiencing opposition from the opposing party and from their own.

Whoever does win a majority in the House of Representatives will likely be slim. Five-Thirty-Eight’s Election Forecast predicts that Republicans will win 53 times out of 100. Even if they do keep control of the House, almost 221 seats. That’s one less than they won in 2022. Even a victory, therefore, seems unlikely to end the House’s divisions.

The fate of the Senate appears much more concrete. Five-Thirty-Eight’s election forecast simulates a Republican victory 88 times out of 100. The breakdown in numbers, however, may simply end up being a mirror image of the current Senate. 270-to-win predicts a Republican majority of just 51, equivalent to what the Democrats hold now. If JD Vance is elected Vice President, he may have to cast an equally high number of tie-breaking votes. If he isn’t, however, Republicans will experience tremendous pressure to keep their caucus united, as missing just one Republican vote would sink their bill.

The exact fate of each chamber remains to be seen. However, the end result is likely to remain as divided and close as it has been since 2022. No matter who enters the White House, they can predict to work with an extremely volatile Congress. A vote in either chamber could go for or against their agenda, regardless of whether their party is in control or not. How such a Congress will function remains to be seen and likely won’t be fully understood until months after the election, as the new congressional dynamic starts to play out.