2026 Blue Wave

This week we talk about the US midterm elections, the unusually broad Democratic victory, and what a change in congressional control means for the remainder of President Trump’s term.

We also discuss the cost of living, the limits of a congressional majority, and what these results may, and may not, tell us about 2028.

Recommended Book: 1873 by Liaquat Ahamed

Transcript

On November 3rd, 2026, Americans voted in an election that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been expected to make governing a little more difficult for the sitting president. The party in the White House often loses seats in midterm elections, as voters register their frustrations and the coalition that elected the president proves more difficult to assemble without the president, the party’s figurehead, on the ballot.

This time, though, the losses were substantial enough to change who controls both chambers of Congress. Democrats won the House of Representatives, and they won the Senate, picking up seats in states that would have seemed like especially difficult targets, perhaps even borderline impossible to win, not that long ago. They also won several governorships, including in until recently unlikely-seeming places, like Texas, Iowa, Ohio, and Georgia.

The precise size of those majorities are still in flux as of the day I’m recording this, as the last close races are still being counted and have yet to be called. But the basic result is settled: when the new Congress takes office in January, President Donald Trump will be working with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate after two years of enjoying a Congress run by his party, in addition to his spot at the top of the executive branch, and a Supreme Court stacked with loyalists and ideological fellow travelers.

What I’d like to talk about today is how that happened, what it allows the Democrats to potentially do after they’re seated, and what it might mean for the next presidential election.

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As I mentioned, at the start of this election cycle, Republicans held the presidency, the House, and the Senate. Their House majority was narrow, which made a Democratic takeover there plausible. The Senate, as is often the case for Democrats hoping to win it, looked like it would be a far heavier lift, to the point that it wasn’t really in play. Senators serve six-year terms, so only about a third of them face voters at any given midterm, and Democrats needed to win seats in places where Republicans had recently been quite strong, in some cases leaning toward the Republicans in the double-digits.

But the Dems managed to win those seats, and then some. Democrats flipped Senate seats in North Carolina and Maine, but also in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, and South Carolina. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown returned to the Senate after losing his seat two years earlier. As I’m writing this, Democrats have secured at least 54 seats, with a couple of contests still unresolved, and 51 seats represents a majority in the Senate.

That Kansas result is especially striking: the state hadn’t elected a Democrat to the US Senate in nearly a century. Texas hadn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office in more than three decades, but voters there chose James Talarico for the Senate and Gina Hinojosa for governor in this election—both Democrats.

The House results were widespread and numerous, too, with Democrats flipping more than two dozen Republican-held districts, according to the Associated Press. And across the country, some voters elected new Democratic governors even where the state legislatures will remain Republican. This matters because a governor can shape budgets, appointments, and the administration of state government, but generally can’t enact their whole agenda without the legislature.

That said, for a sense of how unusual this is, the House and Senate have both changed hands during a midterm election only three other times since World War II: in 1946, 1994, and 2006. A president’s party losing ground halfway through a term is common. Losing enough ground to hand over both chambers, including one with the Senate’s electoral map and offset election cycle, is not.

So let’s take a moment to consider why this happened, because election results, even unusual ones, tend to get appealingly simple explanations in the press and think pieces, but there are several different things going on here, all at once.

One is the cost of living. In the Associated Press’s large survey of people who voted, those who were especially concerned about grocery bills, healthcare, gas, and other daily costs overwhelmingly favored Democratic House candidates. Many voters blamed Trump’s economic policies, including tariffs, for making prices worse. The war with Iran also pushed fuel costs higher, and was unpopular with many voters who had expected a different approach to foreign policy.

None of which requires a recession or other dramatic economic state of affairs. People can have jobs and still feel that the monthly budget is no longer enough. Nor does it mean everyone who voted for a Democrat shares the same explanation for inflation, or agrees on what should replace the president’s policies. It means these concerns were prominent, and that Republicans, as the governing party, bore much of the blame.

Another issue was power. About seven in ten voters in that survey said Congress wasn’t doing enough to check the presidency, a view held by many Republicans as well as Democrats. More than half said government corruption was crucial to their vote. Those findings suggest that part of the electorate wanted Congress to behave more independently, whatever they thought about individual Democratic candidates; for many, this was more about the failures of the current leadership than about the specifics of whomever might replace that current leadership.

Candidate quality did seem to matter, too, though. In Texas, Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s scandals were a prominent part of the campaign. In South Carolina, voters had doubts about the experience of the Republican nominee. Trump-backed candidates in several states faced voters who felt they were too closely tied to him. So while this was a national political wave in favor of the Dems, some local races also had specific vulnerabilities that helped local Democrats make the most of the moment.

The groups voting for each party also changed from the last election. In that AP survey, about seven in ten voters under 30 supported Democrats in their local House race, a marked change from the near-even split between young voters who backed Trump and Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Latino voters also moved toward Democrats in a big way, compared with 2024, and Democrats won every House district that touches the US-Mexico border.

Now, keep in mind that a midterm electorate and a presidential electorate are different groups of people. Comparing the two can reveal a shift in support, but it doesn’t prove that a particular voter changed their mind. Some people voted in one election and stayed home for the other, and some voted for the first time this year. The pattern is politically meaningful, but it’s not a one-to-one comparison, two years offset.

It’s also worth noting that the winning Democrats aren’t all the same sort of politician, and don’t all stand for precisely the same platform. The party elected moderates in some Republican-leaning states and more progressive candidates in places like Maine and Michigan. Each faction can point to victories that support its preferred approach, but that’s also a sign that there isn’t one neat ideological mandate behind this blue wave turnout.

The survey found something else that complicates the wave story, too: about one in five people who voted for Democratic candidates viewed the Democratic Party itself unfavorably. These voters helped put Democrats in power, but still have concerns about the party as a whole. And that’s something that could complicate things for individual candidates who benef…