This is the election Democrats fantasized about. This is the election Republicans had nightmares about.
If Republicans are smart, they will figure out why this happened and learn from it. If Democrats are smart, they will figure out why this happened and not let the victory go to their heads.
While the party holding the White House always loses seats, there were structural or technical reasons this election shouldn’t have been particularly bad for Republicans. Since late summer, however, those guardrails have evaporated, with this election very clearly headed to a very grim place for the GOP.
In the House, thanks to three decades of gerrymandering, only made worse last year, few organically competitive congressional districts remain. Republicans hold just 220 seats (after allocating vacant seats), scarcely more than the 218 narrowest possible majority in a fully occupied House. This majority is about as lean as can be, even in an era of fewer competitive districts. An ironclad law of politics is that a party cannot lose a seat it doesn’t have. The bottom line is that the GOP losing the House was expected, but the damage should have been limited.
On the Senate side, a party could hardly enter a midterm election with less natural vulnerability than Republicans did this cycle. They had to defend one seat with a natural blue tilt in Maine and an open seat in North Carolina; Donald Trump carried the Tar Heel State all three times, but by fairly narrow margins. Twenty of the 22 GOP-held seats up for election were in double-digit Trump states. Historically, the best predictor of how a state or district will vote in a general election is the most recent presidential election. Volatility in our politics has largely been confined to purple states and districts.
Despite this lopsided, GOP-friendly Senate map, Republicans are either underdogs or no better than even money in seven currently Republican-held seats—in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas—and possibly an eighth, in South Carolina. It’s hard to see over half a dozen GOP-held seats in danger on this map and think nothing big is happening.
This column has argued that this election isn’t a blue wave, but a red undertow. Voters are hardly enthusiastic about the Democratic Party’s leaders, policies, and recent accomplishments; the party’s lousy favorability ratings show it.
So why the potentially impressive Democratic showing? Donald Trump. Little more, little less.
This column has previously noted that Trump’s public image has shifted from unpopular to toxic and now radioactive. Proximity to him is a heck of a risk for almost any Republican on a ballot this year. We’re seeing quite a few Republican incumbents getting sucked down by the undertow, even in some unexpected red states and districts. It is much more obvious in Senate and gubernatorial races, simply because of the amount of public polling, even if most of it is low quality. But if this is happening statewide, it would be implausible to think it is not happening at the congressional level as well.
For the 49.8 percent of the electorate who voted for Trump in 2024, few envisioned many of the policy decisions and actions taken in this second term; this was not the cruise they signed up for. An attack on Iran with the easily predictable closure and constriction of the Strait of Hormuz has had the expected impact on gasoline, diesel, aviation, fuel oil, and fertilizer. The indiscriminate use of tariffs has had the expected impact on the broader cost of living, after inflation had been the primary driver of Trump’s 2024 victory. The litany of lesser offenses could go on for paragraphs.
An AP/NORC poll captured it well. When asked, “Do you think higher than usual prices are because of President Trump’s policies or more because of factors outside Trump’s control?” 65 percent of respondents blamed his policies, while just 33 percent cited other reasons. When asked, “Do you think President Trump’s handling of each of the following during his second term has gone better than you expected, worse than you expected, or has it been about what you expected?” 69 percent said things have gone worse than expected regarding cost of living, with 58 percent also choosing worse than expected for trade negotiations with other countries, 55 percent on foreign policy, and 48 percent on immigration. When asked, “In general, do you think Donald Trump keeps his promises to Americans, tries to keep his promises but is not able to, or does not try to keep his promises?” 54 percent said he does not try, 28 percent said he tries but is not able to, and just 17 percent said he keeps his promises.
On the other hand, one must ask: If this were a true blue-wave election, why are Democratic Senate nominees struggling in light-blue states like Maine, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, as well as in purple Michigan? In a wave year, these states should be gimme putts. In red states, Democrats played conservatively, not nominating candidates easily cast as fringe. But in some less-red states, Democrats got more adventurous in who they nominated.
It is as if there were two elections held this year: one in Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Michigan; the other, very nearly everywhere else. In the former group, Democrats are struggling despite what should be a favorable climate; in the latter, they are doing better in places where they usually struggle. Still, a wave year should overpower any such ideological concerns.
With 22 days to go before the election, there is little time for things to turn around. As of early afternoon on Monday, figures compiled by Michael McDonald at the University of Florida’s Election Lab show that 3,269,935 votes have already been cast (630,141 in person and 2,639,894 by mail); that number will grow steadily every day.
Historically, the percentage of voters who make up their minds in the last few days before an election is in the mid-single digits; the share in the few weeks that precede that is about the same. It would be foolish to read too much into this, but in states that report the partisan breakdown of voters who have already cast their ballots, Democrats have cast 53.8 percent; Republicans accounted for 27.8 percent.
It won’t matter much to Republicans who lose elections in three weeks whether this is a red undertow, as I believe it is, or a blue wave; the outcome is the same for them. What matters is what we learn from the election and what we ignore. Republicans are likely to need to do some soul-searching about where their party is going to go over the next few years; Democrats will need to understand why they lost the House in 2022 as well as the Senate and the presidency in 2024, and not cop out by blaming it all on then-President Biden’s age.