On Tuesday, the United States held its midterm elections. To say that Democrats had a good night would be the understatement of the century. As of right now, 232 House races have been called for Democrats, with the Democratic candidate currently leading in another 35 uncalled races. In the Senate, once viewed by pundits and strategists as out of reach for Democrats this cycle, Democrats managed to hold on in all of the swing states and flip seven seats, six of which were in states that Trump won, and five of which were in states that Trump won by double-digit margins. Democrats winning tonight is no surprise; the president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms, and Republicans had only the narrowest majority. What came as a surprise to many was just how big of a night it ended up being for Democrats. Here are some of my key takeaways from this week’s blue tsunami.
This was a complete rejection of Donald Trump
The president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterm elections. Tuesday night was certainly no exception to that rule. However, that simple law of politics cannot explain the utter decimation that Republicans endured on Tuesday. Instead, there is an even simpler explanation for their loss: The president and face of their party is incredibly unpopular. A pre-midterm Reuters/Ipsos poll found President Donald Trump’s approval rating was an abysmal 31%. Most presidents have low approval ratings late in their second term as the country prepares to move on. Trump’s low approval rating is not simply part of that trend. It is the second-worst approval rating ever; only Richard Nixon, at the height of the Watergate scandal, polled worse.
It’s not hard to see why. Voters chose Donald Trump in 2024 because he promised to fix the economy, which was still slowly recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and the unexpected disruption to oil markets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump also promised his base that there would be no new wars and that he would release government files related to deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. These promises led Trump to make massive inroads with traditional Democratic voting blocs, including young men and Hispanic voters, propelling him to a win despite failing to win independent voters.
Trump did not keep those promises. He started his term by denying federal wildfire aid to California as Los Angeles burned. He unleashed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on the same Hispanic communities that propelled him back to the Oval Office. When ICE agents murdered two American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis, top administration officials defended the agents. Instead of fixing the economy, Trump threw fuel on the fire by imposing massive tariffs on every country in the world, which he kept changing arbitrarily. At one point, the tariffs were as high as 145% on China, a major U.S. trading partner. Trump repeatedly and publicly antagonized U.S. allies, threatening to invade Greenland and annex Canada. In February 2026, he broke another promise by launching an unprovoked war with Iran, closing the Strait of Hormuz and sending gas prices soaring. He constantly told the public that the war would end soon, only to never reach a deal. He called affordability a “hoax,” outright dismissing the number one issue for most voters. He continues to push debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen, even delivering a primetime address from the Oval Office to spread his baseless lies.
On Tuesday, the public had a chance to let Trump know how they felt about the past two years. Their answer was clear: This is not what we voted for. Across the country, Republicans lost in places that two years ago were not even competitive. Donald Trump was the driving factor. Exit polling by NBC News found that 44% of voters cast their vote to oppose Donald Trump. Only 16% said that they cast their vote to support Donald Trump. 40% of voters said that Trump was not a factor. 62% of midterm voters believe Trump puts his own interests above those of the country. 66% of voters think that Trump’s policies have made the economy worse. These numbers paint a clear picture of an electorate that utterly rejected the Trump agenda. Trump told voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” The voters listened.
Democrats do not have a mandate
After any election, the victorious party claims that the voters have given them a mandate to enact their agenda, even when the margin was razor-thin. House minority leader (and likely future Speaker) Hakeem Jeffries claimed in his victory speech that voters have given a clear mandate to the Democratic Party. It’s not hard to see why he thinks that; Democrats just had the third-best midterm elections of all time (only 1894 and 2010 saw one party flip more seats; Democrats had a better performance than the 1994 Republican Revolution or 2006 rejection of George W. Bush).
But Hakeem Jeffries is wrong. The Democratic Party does not have a mandate. Voters rejected the Republican Party on Tuesday; they chose the Democrats because the Democrats were their only other option. Voters did not choose some sweeping Democratic agenda that they love. Even if Democrats had received a mandate for some policy agenda, it wouldn’t be entirely clear what exactly that agenda was. This election saw moderate Democrats, progressive Democrats, and everyone in between come away with massive overperformances. How can a mandate be derived from an election that saw Medicare for All proponent Abdul El-Sayed and private health insurance supporter Sherrod Brown win by almost the same margin? It simply can’t.
But Democrats don’t need to worry about what, exactly, voters gave them a mandate to do, because Democrats do not have a mandate. Even in the bluest election in modern history, 52% of voters in the NBC exit poll said that they have a negative view of the Democratic Party. Those are not the numbers of a party with a clear mandate from the electorate. They are the numbers of the party the voters hated less. Right now, Democrats have a mandate to do only one thing—stop Donald Trump.
No clear winner between progressives and moderates
While voters were clear on which of the two major political parties they preferred, the 2026 midterms did not resolve the biggest intra-party dispute within the Democratic Party. When a political party is in the White House, the president sets the party’s agenda. Whenever a party finds itself out of power, different factions within the party grapple for greater control and influence, hoping that a clear win will help their side ahead of the next presidential primary. Such an internal battle is playing out within the Democratic Party right now. On one side is the Democratic establishment, advocating similar policies to those held by the party since the Obama era. On the other side is an insurgent movement of progressives and democratic socialists, led by young politicians like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The fight for the Democratic Party truly began in 2025 with the rapid rise of Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In the weeks leading up to the primary, he surged in the polls, from around 2% to just below 50%. He ended up winning the Democratic nomination for mayor in a shocking upset victory over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, whom he then beat again in the November 2025 general election. The same election that saw Mamdani take the most important mayorship in the country also saw moderate Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill win huge victories in what were projected to be two close governor’s races, pushing the contest between progressives and moderates to the 2026 primaries.
The 2026 primaries again saw neither side win a leg up. Seven of 25 DSA members won Democratic House primaries. On the Senate side, Progressive candidate Graham Platner won a decisive victory over Maine Governor Janet Mills before a sexual assault allegation forced him to drop out. In the race to replace him, Bernie Sanders-backed Troy Jackson won the majority of delegates from all but one county. Progressive candidates Abdul El-Sayed and Peggy Flanagan both overcame huge fundraising disadvantages to become the nominees in Michigan and Minnesota. In what seemed like a decisive victory for moderates over progressives, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley pulled off the upset over DSA-backed State Representative Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin governor’s race despite dropping out and reentering the race at the last minute. Just one week later, in the Florida Senate primary, DSA member Angie Nixon pulled off a massive upset against Alex Vindman, a veteran with backing from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Moderates won the next test, with Representative Chris Pappas prevailing in the New Hampshire Senate primary over DSA member Karishma Manzur. Both sides won key victories in the 2026 primaries, and neither side had a clear leg up.
Looking at the general election, both sides massively beat expectations. In Michigan, a state that Donald Trump won in 2024, El-Sayed cruised to a seven-percentage-point victory. DSA candidate Will Lawrence flipped a Republican seat in Michigan’s seventh congressional district. Jackson beat five-term incumbent Susan Collins by seven points, despite Collins’ history of winning in Democratic Maine, even in heavily blue years like 2020. Of course, an election does not turn into a blue tsunami without clutch performances by several moderate Democrats. Former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper trounced Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley to flip the Senate seat held by retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis in a 20-point blowout. Former Senator Sherrod Brown won back his old seat in Ohio in the special election to fill the seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance. Incumbent Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff won his reelection in another swing state that voted for Trump in 2024, with networks calling the race in just under half an hour.
With such massive performances by moderates and progressives alike, the 2026 midterms provide no clear answer on which side has more support among the Democratic base and the broader electorate. Given the massive margin, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we didn’t get a clear picture. These midterm elections were about Donald Trump, not about policy issues, so it makes sense that they don’t resolve the major policy debate roiling the Democratic Party. The battle lives on to 2028.
This win came in spite of Democratic leadership
Take a look at the social media of Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, or listen to one of their speeches, and you’ll probably hear them taking a victory lap for delivering such massive electoral success to their party. They shouldn’t. The profound success of the Democratic Party on Tuesday night came in spite of the Democratic leadership, not because of their efforts.
Start with the Senate. While his predecessor Harry Reid only got involved in recruiting candidates in rare circumstances or in his home state, Senate Minority Leader (soon to be majority leader) Chuck Schumer has taken on a major role recruiting Democratic Senate candidates. The pinnacle of this effort came in 2020, when strong Schumer-recruited candidates like Mark Kelly, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock led Democrats to unexpectedly take back the Senate. Since then, Schumer’s recruitment efforts have largely fallen short. In 2022, Democrats only managed to flip one seat, in Pennsylvania, in a race that Schumer largely stayed away from. Democrats managed to hold on to the Senate due to candidate quality issues on the Republican side, rather than any efforts by Schumer or other Democratic leaders. In 2024, as Democratic incumbents lost, a few Schumer recruits managed to narrowly hold swing seats, including Ruben Gallego in Arizona and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan. But Democrats did not come within more than eight points of flipping a Republican seat, as other party-backed candidates fell well short of expectations in places like Texas and Florida.
In 2026, despite its appearance at first glance, Schumer’s recruitment efforts were a catastrophe. Some of Schumer’s recruits won on Tuesday. Roy Cooper in North Carolina won a 20-point victory in a state that Trump won. Sherrod Brown won his seat back by five points. In Iowa, State Legislator and Paralympian Josh Turek flipped a Republican seat by four points. However, both Brown and Turek underperformed relative to their state’s nominees for governor. While Brown won his race by five points, Democrat Amy Acton won Ohio’s governorship by eight. Turek won Iowa’s Senate seat by four points, but lawyer Rob Sand won the state’s governor’s race by 11. The only Schumer recruit to overperform was Cooper, a political force within North Carolina who was a serious contender to be Kamala Harris’ vice presidential nominee. Cooper’s success had nothing to do with Schumer.
While Schumer’s recruits that made it to a general election held their own, several other recruits crashed and burned so badly that had they been the nominees, Democrats very well could have lost the Senate. In Florida, Schumer-backed groups poured tens of millions of dollars into pro-Alex Vindman spending, only for Vindman to lose by double digits to Angie Nixon. Many political pundits consider James Talarico a Schumer recruit because he supported Talarico over Jasmine Crockett. However, prior to Crockett’s late entry into the Senate race, Schumer backed former Representative Collin Allred, the state’s 2024 nominee who lost to Senator Ted Cruz by eight. Only after Allred dropped out did Schumer start supporting Talarico. In Maine, Schumer backed Governor Janet Mills, a 78-year-old incumbent governor who was facing massive backlash from Maine voters for her support for data centers and decision to veto a popular gun control measure. Mills received only 20% of the vote against scandal-plagued candidate Graham Platner. By far Schumer’s worst recruit was in Michigan, where he backed Representative Haley Stevens over El-Sayed and State Representative Mallory McMorrow. Despite having a 60 million dollar spending advantage over El-Sayed, including millions from Schumer-aligned groups, and McMorrow dropping out, Stevens still lost to El-Sayed. Immediately after her loss, Stevens publicly endorsed El-Sayed. As time went on, she began to get more and more equivocal when discussing the Senate race. The weekend before the election, Stevens unexpectedly endorsed Republican nominee Mike Rogers over El-Sayed. The Senate Minority Leader’s hand-picked Senate candidate supported Democrats losing the Senate seat.
Hakeem Jeffries’ leadership in the House was nowhere near as catastrophically terrible for his party’s chances of reclaiming the chamber as Schumer’s. But Jeffries was not without his share of blunders. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), House Democrats’ campaign arm, had a program called “red to blue,” where chosen candidates in red districts received massive funding and resource support from the national party. Progressive members of the party were angered by the fact that all candidates supported by this program were moderates, with Representative Ro Khanna blasting the DCCC for not staying neutral in primaries. Even moderate members became unhappy with the party’s leadership after three of the 10 candidates chosen for this program lost in the primary, with members arguing that the resources would have been better spent on general election campaigns.
Jeffries’ secret meeting with Jared Kushner a few months before the election left the party’s nominees in an extremely uncomfortable position after the meeting was exposed by the New York Times. Candidates who had promised to fight Donald Trump now had to explain to their base why the man who would be their leader was taking secret meetings with his son-in-law. The news of the meeting also set off a round of intra-party fighting about whether or not Jeffries was fit to be speaker, turning attention away from the midterms at a critical moment.
So as Schumer and Jeffries celebrate their wins and their upcoming promotions to Majority Leader and Speaker, it’s worth keeping in mind that the party’s success comes despite their efforts, not because of them. While the party’s large margins in both houses in the upcoming Congress will likely prevent any successful challenge to either of their leadership, they’ll need to get their act together if they want to keep their jobs after 2028. And if they want to keep the majority, they should stay far away from their party’s primaries.
Invest in the South
In 2008, former presidential candidate Howard Dean talked about the need for the Democrats to implement a “50-state strategy,” where the party competed across the country, starting at the local level and working their way up to statewide and national offices. Instead, the Democratic Party strategy has been to focus all resources on major battleground states. This meant that, for the past decade and a half of American politics, Democrats have been on defense instead of offense, trying to stop swing states from going red rather than competing everywhere. During the Trump era, this defense-only strategy has led swing states to turn into red states and blue states to become swing states. Take Iowa, Florida, and Ohio. Those three states propelled Barack Obama to the White House in 2008. By 2024, all of them were considered ruby red, and Kamala Harris barely campaigned in any of them. Democrats were too busy defending the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, given that nickname because they once represented an unbreakable vote bank for the Democratic nominee. Competing in southern states like Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee was simply out of the question for the party.
But those states were not out of reach. This year, at least as I’m writing this, Democrat Scott Colom is ahead in the Senate race in Mississippi. In Louisiana, Democrat Jamie Davis lost by just two points to Julia Letlow in that state’s Senate race. In Tennessee, Jerri Green came within three points of flipping the state’s governor’s race. All three candidates were ignored by the national party and major donors. Like in past years, the party simply wrote off the South as safely in the Republican column. Yet with the right investment and effort from the national party, the South has the potential to be a massive battleground or even potentially a blue area. Years of Republican rule have left Southern states trailing behind the rest of the country in everything from education to economic success to life expectancy. The South also has the largest Black population of any region of the country, and Black Southerners are the single most consistent Democratic voting bloc in the country, providing a floor of around 37% for even the worst-performing Democratic candidates. With a strong, charismatic candidate who can energize their state’s Black population and earn support from just a small percentage of the white voters in the region, Democrats could retake the South—but only if they stop trying to play defense all the time.
Cash is no longer king
The 2026 midterms are by far the most expensive in history. More than $12 billion were spent flooding the airwaves with a deluge of ads from candidates, Political Action Committees (PACs), super PACs, and interest groups. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, poured half a billion dollars into his pro-Republican super PAC. MAGA Inc., Donald Trump’s super PAC, spent $277 million boosting Republican candidates. Some of the biggest spenders in this cycle were interest groups, including the artificial intelligence and crypto lobbies, as well as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The majority of outside spending benefitted Republicans by a wide margin, particularly benefitting Senate Republican candidates. Leading up to the election, Democratic strategists worried about Republicans’ massive cash advantage.
It didn’t matter. Democrats won all of the most expensive races this cycle. In Texas, Democrats were outspent $268 million to $130 million. James Talarico trounced Republican nominee Ken Paxton by 12 points in a state Trump won by 10. Nearly a quarter of all spending in these midterms happened in just three states—Texas, Michigan, and Ohio. Democrats won all three by at least five points.
This pattern, where outcomes of races are completely detached from election spending, was also seen pretty clearly in this cycle’s primary elections. Take Michigan, for example. Haley Stevens and pro-Stevens groups outspent Abdul El-Sayed and pro-El-Sayed groups by $60 million. In years past, that would have been enough to propel almost any candidate over the finish line. Yet El-Sayed emerged with the primary victory and went on to win the general election, despite being outspent yet again. In Florida, Angie Nixon raised less than a million dollars, but was able to pull off an upset against the well-funded Alex Vindman, who spent more than $16 million.
In the past, successful fundraising was the key to winning elections. A party with a two-to-one spending advantage could have expected a massive night for themselves, not for their opponents. Why doesn’t money matter as much anymore? Money doesn’t buy votes; it buys name recognition. Candidates who had a lot of ads on TV beat candidates nobody had ever heard of. In today’s political climate, two things have changed that calculus. The first is social media. Candidates no longer need to blast the airwaves with ads during every sports game and nightly news segment for the electorate to simply know who they are. Instead, with the right strategy, a candidate can receive nationwide attention without spending a dime. The other factor is a drop-off in the return on investment as spending increases. Eventually, every voter who has a TV has seen several ads for both candidates. By the time a race’s spending reaches into the hundreds of millions, voters are already familiar with the candidates. Pouring tens of millions of dollars into more advertising won’t win as many votes as the first few million; most minds have already been made up.
Money in politics is still a big issue. El-Sayed in Michigan won with a slogan of “money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All.” But it simply doesn’t have the same effect as it once did. Candidates can win elections despite massive fundraising disadvantages, and failing to raise money is no longer a death sentence for a campaign.
Candidate quality still matters
As politics has become less localized and more of a national sensation, candidate quality has mattered less. This has been especially true of the Trump era, where the most successful political figure in the country is a 34-time convicted felon and adjudicated rapist. However, for anyone not named Donald Trump, candidate quality still matters. Every election has good candidates and bad candidates. Good candidates tend to be very charismatic speakers who are good fits for their political environment. Bad candidates are either scandal-plagued, uncharismatic, or clearly unqualified. Running good candidates leads a party to overperform; running bad candidates leads to disaster.
Take the 2022 midterms. With gas around five dollars and inflation at 9%, the midterms should have been very bad for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. Pundits projected a red wave election. When the results came in, however, the red wave failed to materialize. Republicans retook the House of Representatives, but Democrats actually gained a seat in the Senate. The problem for Republicans wasn’t that the environment was good for Democrats; it was that they ran a slew of terrible candidates. In Georgia, Republicans nominated former NFL player Herschel Walker to take on incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock. Walker faced numerous allegations of domestic abuse and had no political experience prior to running for Senate. In Pennsylvania, Republicans chose television doctor and COVID conspiracy theorist Mehmet Oz to replace retiring Senator Pat Toomey. Across all the competitive races, Republicans nominated unqualified conspiracy theorists to take on experienced Democratic political figures.
2026 saw the opposite of that. Instead of squandering an expected wave year by running terrible candidates, Democrats ran a slate of candidates that mixed young, charismatic talent with experienced political veterans to turn a projected blue wave into an actual blue tsunami. The gold standard for talented politicians is Barack Obama, one of the most charismatic speakers in recent memory. Democrats managed to nominate not one but two candidates whose speaking style and communication skills have drawn comparisons to Obama. Both are fantastic fits for their unique political environment. In Texas, James Talarico managed to bring religion, once a strong Republican talking point, to the Democratic side of the ticket, asking, “What would Jesus do about a tax system that benefits the rich over the poor? What would Jesus do about a healthcare system that forces the sick to start GoFundMe pages to afford life-saving surgeries? … Would he stay in his room and pray? Or would he walk into the seat of power and flip over the tables of injustice?” In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed created a catchy slogan of “money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All” that established in nine words what he stood for. He was able to tap into the anger over the Gaza war felt by Michigan’s Arab community, the largest in the United States. He easily turned Islamophobic attacks back on his attacker, responding to Trump’s comment that he should have to go through a metal detector to enter the Senate by saying, “I’ll tell you what, Donald. I’ll go through a metal detector if you sit for a lie detector. First question: Jeffrey Epstein.” For Democrats, these charismatic newcomers combined with political veterans like Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown to power an unexpectedly big blue wave.
On the other side of the ticket, the Republican Party was dragged down by some truly terrible candidates. Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate nominee, may be the most corrupt politician in Trump’s America, rivaled only by Trump himself. When he was Texas Attorney General, he was impeached by the Republican-controlled State House, and his own staff referred him to the FBI because of bribery concerns. He was caught on camera stealing a $10,000 Montblanc pen during the campaign, a video which was promptly turned into a Talarico ad. As Attorney General, he offered a plea deal for a pedophile to serve just one day in prison.
Darlene Graham Nordone, who was appointed to finish her brother Lindsay Graham’s term after his death in July, was clearly unqualified for the job and had next to no political instinct. When asked a question about Taiwan, Graham said, “I’m not that informed on national security … national security is not my thing.” She publicly supported construction of A.I. data centers, which are opposed by 71% of voters. Prior to being appointed to the Senate, Graham had no political experience. She lost by four points to Democrat Annie Andrews.
In the House, Republican Max Miller refused to drop out despite allegations of domestic abuse. His father-in-law, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, tweeted that “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives.” Despite this, Trump continued to support Miller, which allowed him to win the Republican primary. Democratic nominee Brian Poindexter defeated Miller in a district that voted for Donald Trump by 11 points in 2024.
Would Republicans have won those races had they nominated better candidates? Perhaps. Even strong Republicans like Senator Susan Collins found themselves on the wrong side of the voters’ wrath in this election. In an environment this blue, even the strongest Republican candidate could find themselves unemployed on Wednesday morning. One thing is certain: If Republicans had chosen better candidates, they would have had a fighting chance at several more seats.
Independent candidates still cannot win
After the unexpected success of independent candidate Dan Osborn in the 2024 Nebraska Senate race, where Osborn came within seven points of unseating incumbent Senator Deb Fischer amid a national red wave, Democrats decided to try winning certain deep-red areas with independent candidates rather than Democrats in 2026. The strategy was a complete failure. Not a single one of the four major independent candidates won a Senate race.
In Nebraska, Osborn once again ran as an independent. In the Democratic primary, pastor William Forbes ran on a typical Democratic platform, while Cindy Burbank ran on a promise to drop out and support Osborn. Burbank won the primary, setting up a race between Osborn and incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts. While Democrats nationwide performed far better in 2026 than 2024, Osborn put up nearly identical numbers, losing the general election by seven points. In South Dakota, independent Brian Bengs lost to incumbent Senator Mike Rounds by 21 points in a state that Trump won by 29 in 2024, a far smaller shift than the one seen by most Democratic candidates. In Idaho, which Trump won by 35 in 2024, incumbent Senator Jim Risch defeated independent Todd Achilles by 23, a larger shift but not even close to the size seen in places like Texas and Georgia.
Nowhere did the independent candidate experiment have a more pernicious result than in Montana. Republican Senator Steve Daines announced his retirement shortly before the state’s filing deadline. Shortly after, independent candidate Seth Bodnar jumped into the race, backed by former Senator Jon Tester, who lost his seat in 2024. Democrats then began pressuring party nominee Alani Bankhead to drop out and support Bodnar. She refused, arguing that she was the candidate chosen by Democratic voters and Bodnar was the one who needed to drop out. Over the course of the campaign, a very vicious and very public feud played out between Bankhead and Bodnar, who spent more time attacking each other than Republican nominee Kurt Alme. When the results came in, Alme won the election with just 48% of the vote, with his opposition split between Bodnar and Bankhead. Democratic candidate Sam Forstag managed to flip one of Montana’s two House seats, proving that Democrats can still win in Montana. Had just one candidate run against Alme, that candidate would likely be a future United States senator. Instead, Republicans narrowly hold on to a seat that they very easily could have lost.
There are several reasons why independent candidates will never work. They don’t have access to the same donors and fundraising committees as major party candidates. They don’t have the same partisan base eager to see their party finally flip the state. Even if an independent candidate can successfully get the votes of their state’s Democrats, the Democratic base is more likely to knock on doors for a candidate when the candidate is actually a member of their party. Perhaps the most important reason why independent candidates failed, though, is that they rely on voters being stupid. When an ostensibly independent candidate is being supported by a former U.S. senator from a major party, or when a candidate wins 89% of the vote in a party primary by promising to drop out and support the independent, the voters know which side of the aisle the candidate sits on. Changing the letter next to the candidate’s name in the hopes that maybe some Republican voters won’t realize the candidate is a Democrat just insults the intelligence of the electorate. If independent candidates continue to be partisan hacks pretending not to be, independents will never win an election.
How 2028 was reshaped
Tuesday night’s elections have fundamentally changed the political landscape of the United States in ways that will reverberate through the 2028 election and well beyond. Both the environment in which the candidates will be running and who we should expect to be those candidates have changed dramatically from what we would have expected even a week ago.
For the past several election cycles, the states that have been considered swing states have largely remained unchanged. News articles about elections would frequently refer to the “seven swing states” of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. Interested potential candidates would frequently make stops in those states, hoping to shore up support ahead of a future presidential run. But what last week was a pretty familiar electoral map has this week been blown wide open. Democrats won in Texas. Not only did James Talarico win the Senate race by double digits, but Gina Hinojosa won the governor’s race, and Democrats won all statewide races and took control of both chambers of the state legislature. Democrats have been trying to turn Texas blue for decades. The 300-million-dollar question now is whether they can keep it, and its 40 electoral votes, in future elections.
Texas is not the only red state now in the swing column headed into 2028. After becoming red states for the Trump era, Iowa and Ohio returned to their previous swing status by electing Democrats to key races, including both Senate and governor. Kansas, which elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1938, may be in play; while this is Democrats’ first time taking a Senate seat there, they’ve been competitive in other statewide races for a while. Even Florida, where Republicans narrowly avoided electoral disaster, is potentially on the table after Democrats lost both the Senate and governor’s race by three points or less. While it appears that Republicans’ loss in South Carolina was primarily the result of a poor candidate at the top of the ticket, House race results indicate a larger loss of support for the Republican Party in the state, and Republicans may be forced to spend millions defending a state that would normally be solidly red.
House members are up for reelection every two years, meaning that Republicans have a chance to make up their losses in the next election. On the Senate side, they face a much bleaker picture. As of right now, 54 Senate races have been called in favor of the Democratic candidate. Two more races remain uncalled, with the Democratic candidate narrowly leading in both. The outcome of these two races will determine whether Republicans have an extremely narrow realistic path back to the majority, or whether they need to pray for a night like Tuesday to even have a chance. With Democrats having 54 seats, Republicans would need to hold all of their seats, plus flip Democratic seats in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, plus win the presidency so the vice president can break the tie. With a 56-seat Democratic majority, the path for Republicans becomes next to impossible, requiring flips in at least two states that Kamala Harris won in 2024 (as a reminder, Harris lost every single swing state).
For Democrats, the Senate outlook in two years looks even brighter. Their margin is already decently comfortable where they can endure a relatively bad night while maintaining the majority, and their margin may grow as more results come in from Alaska and Mississippi. Democratic wins in numerous gubernatorial races across the country mean that one senator’s death does not necessarily cost them the Senate, a real concern given that the average age for senators is 66. Democrats will also have the opportunity to pick up seats in both the traditional swing states of North Carolina and Wisconsin, as well as in potentially new swing states like Iowa, Florida, Kansas, and South Carolina. With another night like Tuesday night in 2028, Democrats have a real chance to give the next president a filibuster-proof majority, opening up the possibility of passing any number of policy goals previously out of reach.
An electoral earthquake like the one that happened on Tuesday will also have a major impact on who the parties may choose as nominees. On the Republican side, a clear picture was muddied by the unexpectedly bad midterm results. Political observers have long predicted that the 2028 contest would be a fight between Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for control of Trump’s MAGA base. The midterm results revealed that there may not be very much of the MAGA base left to fight for. Such a resounding rejection of the Trump administration will undoubtedly damage the presidential prospects of its top officials. The Republican Party was always going to move away from the MAGA movement at some point. Prior to Tuesday, it was practically unimaginable for that shift to occur while Donald Trump was still in the White House. Now, the door is open for non-MAGA Republicans like Representative Thomas Massie or Senator Thom Tillis, who lost reelection and chose not to run, respectively, after enraging Trump. There is also the possibility that the Republican Party shifts the other way. With the MAGA base smaller than previously thought, only the most extreme far-right voters remain a real part of the base. A politician who brings their own base would likely have a leg up in a primary where other candidates fight for leftovers from Trump’s base. Both of those factors combine to leave Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with a viable path to the Republican nomination.
On the Democratic side, what was a fuzzy picture became increasingly clear. The former frontrunner for the nomination according to polling was Kamala Harris. Tuesday’s results make it even more clear just how massively the Harris campaign failed to deliver for the party, striking a blow to her prospects. Other candidates emerged or strengthened their case based on delivering enormous results in swing or red states. Senator Jon Ossoff was already considered a contender because of his ability to win in Georgia and his massive fundraising totals. After winning reelection by 18 points, he is the clear favorite if the party goes in a more moderate direction in 2028.
If the party decides they want a progressive candidate, Abdul El-Sayed passed Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the clear choice. El-Sayed won a seven-point victory in the swing state of Michigan, while Ocasio-Cortez has only ever had to campaign in deep-blue Queens. El-Sayed’s charismatic personality and confident demeanor also make him a stronger candidate than Ocasio-Cortez, who sometimes gets tripped up when speaking publicly. With the left lane to the nomination no longer hers alone, El-Sayed’s strength likely pushes Ocasio-Cortez to run for Senate instead of president should El-Sayed choose to run.
In between those two on the political spectrum is perhaps the strongest candidate of all, and my personal prediction to win the nomination: James Talarico. Talarico’s fundraising performance was the best of all candidates in this cycle, on either side: He raised an astounding $158 million to run in a state where Democrats hadn’t won a statewide race this century. He won by a double-digit margin. He is progressive enough to appeal to progressives and moderate enough to enamor moderate voters and even win crossover support from Republicans. He is one of the most charismatic candidates since Barack Obama. Perhaps most importantly for Democrats, nominating him provides Democrats with an excellent chance to win Texas and its 40 electoral votes. Don’t be surprised if you see James Talarico in the Oval Office in two years.
Your vote matters
One final thing that everyone should take away from the midterm elections is this: Your vote matters. To prevent a total wipeout, Republicans across the country gerrymandered district maps and changed voting laws to make it more difficult to vote. It didn’t matter; Democrats won anyway. But despite all the talk about the political environment and Trump’s approval rating and the Iran war, the real reason why Republicans lost was much simpler. Republicans lost because millions of people went to their local polling place and voted against them. Had even a small percentage of those voters decided that their particular vote didn’t matter, this article may have been analyzing a very different outcome. In Mississippi, as of when I’m writing this, two candidates for U.S. Senate sit just 1,813 votes apart. Two years ago, a House race was decided by just eight votes. You never know when your vote will be the deciding one. No matter how inconsequential it may seem, always vote. If your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop people from voting.
