Republicans face a tumultuous new era
Donald Trump entered America’s midterm elections with the lowest net approval rating of any president at this stage in his term in 80 years. Add to that inauspicious sign the fact that the out-of-power party almost always gains seats in the midterms, and you had the makings of a Republican loss. What they got was a wipeout.
Democrats are on track to win the national popular vote for the House of Representatives by around 13 percentage points, roughly four more than their lead in polling averages and the biggest congressional landslide since the 1970s. They have won a Senate majority of at least 54-46, including victories in Republican strongholds such as Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Kansas, which had not elected a Democrat to the upper chamber since 1932. They are likely to prevail in Alaska as well, and at 3am Eastern Time are astonishingly ahead by 43 votes in Mississippi, which Donald Trump won by 23 percentage points in 2024. Many of their Senate candidates won by eye-popping margins: 20 points in North Carolina, 18 in Georgia and 11 in Texas.
The blue tsunami drenched House and gubernatorial races as well. Democrats are on track to win nearly 260 seats in the House, a bigger majority than they secured amid the financial crisis of 2008. Gina Hinojosa was elected as governor of Texas by a comfortable seven percentage points, and Democrats also flipped governors’ mansions in Georgia, Ohio and Iowa. They lead in the uncompleted gubernatorial counts in Alaska, Nevada and (narrowly) in Kansas as well.
The Senate map initially looked forbidding for Democrats. They needed to flip four seats to gain control of the chamber, at least two of them in states that Mr Trump won by double digits in 2024. In the end, the favourable political environment for Democrats overwhelmed the favourable electoral map for Republicans. The president had promised to lower prices for Americans and end forever wars. Instead he barrelled into a conflict with Iran, started a global trade war and seemed more interested in boosting his family’s fortunes than those of ordinary Americans. Mr Trump’s drubbing recalls that suffered by George W. Bush in 2006, when Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress amid the Iraq war.
Well before election day it was clear that Democrats were fired up and that Mr Trump had lost the support of independents. The real question, then, was how deep into Republican territory Democrats could go. Mr Trump eased their path. In North Carolina his attacks helped drive Thom Tillis, a Republican senator, into retirement, leaving Roy Cooper, a popular former Democratic governor, with an open seat to contest. In Texas his backing of Ken Paxton over John Cornyn, the incumbent Republican senator, buoyed James Talarico, the Democrat. In Kansas and Georgia, too, Mr Trump supported Republican Senate candidates who seemed concocted from the fever dreams of Democratic strategists. Roger Marshall in Kansas was a doctor who sued pregnant patients; Mike Collins in Georgia has ties to white supremacists.
The swing among Hispanic voters was striking. In 2024 Mr Trump narrowed Democrats’ lead among this group by 22 points. To shore up their chances in the House this year, Republicans embarked on a mid-decade gerrymandering spree across the South, betting that their gains among Hispanic voters would hold. They were wrong. A preliminary analysis by The Economist suggests that counties with larger Hispanic populations swung heavily towards Democrats this election.
In Webb County, for example, on the southern border of Texas, voters went from voting for Joe Biden by 23 points in 2020, to supporting Mr Trump by two points in 2024. This year Mr Talarico carried the county by a staggering 47 points.
The group’s reversion nearly nullified the redistricting effort in Florida and Texas. On the back of support from Hispanic voters, three Democrats in Florida and at least three in Texas carried gerrymandered districts won by Mr Trump.
High turnout by black voters helped elect four Democratic senators from the south in the same contest for the first time since 2008. Atlanta’s former mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, was elected governor of Georgia by a comfortable eight-point margin and will become the first black woman ever to be governor of an American state.
In the campaign’s final stretch, Republicans had little to tout. Petrol costs nearly 40% more than it did a year ago and the price of diesel sits near a record. Mortgage rates are at their highest in three years; inflation has outrun wage growth for six months. Mr Trump’s tariffs hit farm country. His only legislative achievement brought deep cuts to the social-safety net. His main feat—closing the southern border—was obscured by the cruelty of his mass-deportation campaign. On the campaign trail, many Republicans resorted to fear-mongering about socialism, wokery and Islam. Mr Trump called Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Senate candidate in Michigan, a jihadist.
For Democrats, the election will not herald a new era of policymaking—they still lack a veto-proof majority—but it is an unequivocal political triumph. For Republicans, the election marks the beginning of a tumultuous new era. Mr Trump has had the party in a headlock for a decade. Politicians who have, willingly and reluctantly, pledged their fealty to him now face a difficult choice. Criticise Mr Trump and he may try to end their career in a primary. Cling to him and he could end their career in the general.
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