Key Points

• During the last election year, Dogecoin's value tripled in a month.

• President Donald Trump's pro-crypto rhetoric, combined with the creation of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), fueled a sharp rally in Dogecoin back in 2024.

• The upcoming midterm elections are far from a lock for the GOP, making crypto assets potentially more risky.

Every few months, Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) seems to find another viral push, and the same question comes roaring back: Can this meme coin actually hit $1?

The hook right now is simple: In the last U.S. election year, Dogecoin didn't just bounce -- it ripped. That memory is doing a lot of work for bulls right now.

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The problem is that the rally in 2024 was not a story supported by cash flow, user engagement, or a tighter coin supply. Instead, it was a hype narrative surrounding politics and a punchline that actually became policy.

How did Dogecoin trade after the last election?

Let's go back to November 2024. At the time, Dogecoin was trading around $0.15. Within a month of Donald Trump winning the presidential election, the coin had nearly tripled. That parabolic rise did not come from a sudden wave of merchants accepting Dogecoin at checkout. Instead, it came from two overlapping headlines.

First, Trump spent a good deal of time on the campaign trail marketing himself as a pro-crypto president -- promising a friendlier rulebook after years of disagreements on Capitol Hill. Crypto enthusiasts interpreted this rhetoric as a green light for risk-on assets. From there, investors started pricing in the impact of crypto-friendly regulations.

Then came the joke that stopped being a joke: Trump tapped Elon Musk to lead a new initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk had spent years pumping Dogecoin on social media, so naming an official government project after its ticker was the equivalent of catnip for retail traders.

The idea here is that Trump's victory did not actually change how Dogecoin works. The election itself did not fuel new product launches, no coins were bought off the market from crypto whales, and the underlying Dogecoin network did not suddenly become scarce.

Crypto traders were simply buying a vibe: Trump back in the White House, Musk in the building, and Washington promising to cut red tape. That is why the rally felt both fast and fragile. When a narrative is the entire thesis, price charts live and die by the next news cycle.

Why this election year looks much different

That same cocktail is harder to mix for Dogecoin in 2026. For starters, this is a midterm year, not a presidential one. More importantly, the map is not lining up like a victory lap for the Trump administration. Pollsters and prediction markets are increasingly pointing to a split Congress, with Democrats favored to take the House or the Senate (or both). The forecasts are close enough within a margin of error that neither party can comfortably assume a clean sweep.

Broadly speaking, a divided Washington can mean slower bills, louder disagreements, and fewer wins for any particular industry. While crypto can still get attention, it likely wouldn't get the kind of one-way tailwind that sent Dogecoin flying in November 2024.

If Democrats take more power on the Hill, the easy assumption is that the euphoric cheerleader mode around cryptocurrency becomes less stable. But even if Republicans hold one chamber of Congress, the "everything is getting deregulated" narrative cracks materially. When you layer in fatigue -- the fact that markets already used the Trump-Musk catalyst once -- repeating the same punchline two years later on a weaker political backdrop is a much tougher sell.

Why a $1 Dogecoin is a pipe dream, no matter who wins

Valuation is the part of this analysis that survives any election result. A $1 Dogecoin is not just a round number; it's a mechanical problem.

Dogecoin does not have a hard supply cap like Bitcoin. Miners mint about 5 billion new coins a year. There is no built-in burn mechanism that systematically deletes supply in the way some other crypto networks do. While some tokens get sent to dead wallets, this is noise next to Dogecoin's fresh issuances because the supply just keeps growing.

There are already about 172 billion Dogecoins in circulation. At $1, that implies a market cap of $172 billion. That kind of value would make a satirical crypto token larger than Uber, CVS, and Snowflake -- three companies that dominate critical industries such as travel, healthcare, and artificial intelligence (AI).

From today's price around $0.08, a $1 price tag is roughly a 12x jump in a few months. While political undertones can juice a trade, they cannot invent scarcity that the underlying code simply doesn't have. The last election year proved Dogecoin has the ability to experience a fleeting sprint based on headlines. But its longer-term pace indicates how the coin lacks enough support to become a material fixture of the crypto ecosystem.

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Adam Spatacco has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Snowflake. The Motley Fool recommends CVS Health and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.