With the next presidential election less than one week away, polls continue to predict an extremely tight race in the Electoral College between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. While Harris is projected to win the national popular vote, Trump could still take the White House if he manages to edge out Harris in just a few key battleground states. But this year’s U.S. Senate race is also critically important, and who actually shows up to vote in those key states could determine which party controls both Congress and the White House.

Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich lists the states he says will determine both the Senate and the White House races, and why he says this election could end up shaping U.S. laws and policies for many years to come.

The following is an excerpt from the above video:

In addition to what’s happening at the presidential level, the Senate is a big deal. The Republicans are almost certainly guaranteed to pick up control. They’re going to win West Virginia. They’re probably going to win Montana, where their candidates [are] ahead and where Trump is going to win by a huge margin. They could well win in Wisconsin. They could well win in Michigan. They could very well win in Pennsylvania. They were very likely to win in Ohio.

Why does all this matter? Well, the way the Senate works, one-third of the Senate’s up every two years, and every once in a while, the geography favors one party or the other. This is a big Republican opportunity year because of the way the states are breaking this year. If, in fact, the Republicans end up at, say, 55, 56, 57, they may be in a position to keep the Senate for a decade. If they’re at 51 or 52, then the Democrats have a lot of energy and drive to try to take it back in ’26. So the Senate, I think, leans Republican.

The question is, it’ll almost certainly be a Republican victory, but will the victory be big enough to enable a newly elected President Trump to govern, and will the victory be big enough that it controls the Senate for more than just the next two to four years?