“This is a middle finger,” one former senior administration official said of the midterm election results. “I think it comes down to affordability and the war, and Americans feeling like the administration and Republicans at large, including an unproductive Congress, don’t really give a damn,” the former official added.

Republicans suffered crushing losses Tuesday not just in swing states, but in seats they long held in reliable red states such as Kansas, Texas, and South Carolina. While most of the party was left shocked by the scale of the defeat, the White House was defiant on Wednesday.

Officials at the White House and the Republican National Committee told the Daily Signal that President Donald Trump’s voters just don’t turn out when his name isn’t on the ballot, and that weak candidates failed to do the necessary work to win in 2026.

However, several Republican operatives and officials close to the White House who spoke with the Daily Signal saw other reasons for defeat: high gas prices, an unpopular war with Iran, and voters left feeling that the party in power just wasn’t working for them.

One official in Trump’s political operation put it bluntly: “I heard people say this was a realignment; it’s not. It’s a punishment election. We got punished.” The official added that the turnout problem wasn’t just Trump voters staying home, but some actually switching sides.

Another source close to the White House agreed, describing a GOP coalition that feels “neglected” rather than one that has been abandoned.

“Voters were desperate for answers on issues that directly impact their lives, and too often they got misplaced priorities and unserious responses. That’s a failure of leadership, not a failure of the electorate,” one source close to the White House told the Daily Signal. Yet, the source cautioned against reading into the midterm results as a “permanent ideological realignment.”

“You don’t have nearly 80 million Americans vote for a fundamental shift to the right and then assume they’ve all embraced the left two years later. Those voters haven’t disappeared. Their patience has,” the source close to the White House said.

Exit polling pointed to the economy as an area of deep voter frustration. In a CBS News exit poll, 38% were “angry” about the economy and 37% said they were “dissatisfied.” Only 18% said they were “satisfied,” and just 7% said they were “enthusiastic.”

“I think it’s clear that Republicans failed on countering Democrats’ messaging on affordability,” a second source close to the White House told the Daily Signal. “The Iran war is unpopular and causes gas prices to go up. Gas prices are the most tangible political issue that voters see and feel every day. It is hard to message your way out of real economic situations that Americans feel daily.”

Trump has maintained that the conflict with Iran is necessary, but on Wednesday, he acknowledged that he “knew the war was going to impact” the midterms.

CBS News’ exit polling found that while the war was not as important to voters as the economy, it still had an impact on the midterm results. Most voters believe the administration made the wrong decision to attack Iran, including about a quarter of Republicans, polling shows.

“Dems were on a warpath against [Trump] and don’t have any real plan on affordability,” the source close to the White House told the Daily Signal. “They motivated their base to come out and spite [the president.]”

Beyond Trump’s absence on the ballot, the White House and RNC officials pointed to candidate quality as another critical problem for Republicans.

“President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves,” the White House official told the Daily Signal.

But several candidates who lost the night’s most surprising races, including Senate contests in Texas, South Carolina, Ohio, and North Carolina, were handpicked by the president.

“A loss like last night wasn’t about candidate quality or spending. It was a referendum,” a national Republican operative who worked on the midterms told the Daily Signal. “Voters were promised something by President Trump and Republicans in 2024: stability, prosperity, safety. They may have gotten safety, but on the other two pillars, voters feel the president gave them war and a chaos economy that goes up and down like a yo-yo. Americans are exhausted, angry, and distrustful, and they voted for something different because of it.”

The operative acknowledged that weak candidates made things worse in Georgia, Texas, and Kansas, but said better candidates wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Even Republicans who took their races seriously and campaigned tirelessly, such as Sens. Ashley Moody of Florida, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, and Jim Risch of Idaho, barely held on, the operative said.

Furthermore, some of the party’s strongest candidates, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Rep. Ashley Hinson of Iowa, lost.

“And yes, this field was picked and shaped by the president. Along with the messages voters were inundated with,” the operative added.

Several Republicans told the Daily Signal that Trump is directly to blame for the results of the midterms.

“This was a complete repudiation of Trumpism,” one GOP strategist told the Daily Signal. “When you lose literally everything, there is no one else to blame. Trumpism expired, and conservatives need to start rebuilding the coalition.”

However, not everyone in the party is ready to blame the president.

“To just blame the president, I think a lot of these people are very lazy and it kind of ignores the widespread problems that go beyond just one thing: all of these candidates begged the president to go out and do rallies with them in the home stretch, and if he was such an albatross around their neck, they would not have done that,” an official involved in Trump’s political operation told the Daily Signal.

“If the candidates really felt that way, they would have told him to stay away, and they didn’t,” the source added.

The Human Rights Campaign touted its efforts boosting Democrats and portrayed the election results as vindication for candidates who resisted Republican attacks on transgender issues. The results, however, tell a more complicated story.

Not only did ballot initiatives preventing men from competing in women’s sports perform well in blue and purple states, but even prominent Senate candidates like Texas’ James Talarico openly defied Democrat orthodoxy on transgender issues in the lead-up to Election Day. Talarico’s statements represented a sharp reversal from his own prior rhetoric, suggesting that he realized support for transgenderism would be a political liability.

“Tonight voters delivered a resounding message: equality wins,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said Tuesday. “After two years of MAGA Republicans waging a culture war, wasting taxpayer dollars attacking LGBTQ+ people, and spending $340 million on anti-trans ads while families suffered, voters have had enough.”

While HRC-endorsed candidates prevailed in many key races, the results are far from a ringing endorsement of transgenderism.

HRC’s Victories

HRC spent $15 million on the midterms, raised more than $2 million for pro-LGBTQ+ candidates, and identified 74 million of what it calls “equality voters.”

The organization said it provided “research-tested tools” to campaigns facing transgender-related attacks and “consulted directly with dozens of campaigns.” It concluded that its research “proves candidates don’t have to choose between standing for equality and winning elections.”

Democrats are projected to win all seven of the U.S. Senate races HRC prioritized, and the organization’s preferred House members were leading on Wednesday afternoon.

Robinson noted that New Hampshire Democrat Chris Pappas will become the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate. She also listed three LGBTQ+ candidates who won election to the U.S. House, along with Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., the only member of Congress who identifies as transgender.

According to The 19th News, six candidates also won elections that will make them the first transgender or nonbinary members of their state legislatures. One of these candidates, Bentley Hudgins, served as HRC’s Georgia state director for three years before winning the state Legislature race.

Breaking With the Trans Orthodoxy

Some of those very victories may pose a problem, however.

Talarico, the Texas state legislator who won the Lone Star State’s U.S. Senate race, said he “will oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it risks safety or fairness.” He also said, “There are not six sexes, there are two.”

These statements marked a notable reversal from Talarico’s previous stances, not only stating that there are six sexes but also defending votes in support of transgender ideology by making theological claims, such as “God is nonbinary.”

Sarah Trone Garriott, an HRC-endorsed candidate who won a U.S. House race in Iowa, released a video in which she says, “I oppose letting men in women’s locker rooms.”

Benjamin Ryan has noted many other examples of Democrats who broke with the party’s narrative on transgender ideology but nonetheless won their elections. Dr. Annie Andrews, who defeated Darline Graham in the South Carolina Senate race, released an ad in which she said, “I don’t support biological men playing women’s sports, and I don’t support and haven’t ever performed gender surgery for minors.” Andrews had voted against a ban on men in women’s sports and a ban on surgeries.

Ballot Initiatives

Meanwhile, nearly 60% of voters in Arizona—a state with a Democrat governor and senators—passed a ballot initiative preventing men from competing in women’s sports and protecting women’s privacy in bathrooms and locker rooms.

As of Wednesday afternoon, blue state measures to ban men in women’s sports in Colorado and Washington are ahead but remain too close to call.

Voters in Nebraska also passed an initiative banning men in women’s sports, with 68% support.

The Human Rights Campaign had a good night, but voters didn’t give transgender ideology a mandate. If anything, the results demonstrate that Democrats can buck transgender orthodoxy and win, even as voters separately embrace policies that HRC opposes.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

I’m speaking late on midterm night, and it looks like this blue wave materialized in the way that the Republican red wave did not in 2022. Why did it happen, and why does it seem to be so big? 

Well, we got to first start with history. In the modern period since 1900, in that 126 years, the party occupying the White House in 90% of the elections loses House seats. 

In 75% of the midterm elections, they lose Senate seats. We don’t know if this will be as big a win for the Democrats as the Republicans won against Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010, which, along with the FDR wipeout, were the three biggest setbacks in modern history, but it could be.  

A couple of other things to remember. 

The blue wave doesn’t necessarily mean that [President] Donald Trump is paralyzed, and I say that again as a historian. If you look at Bill Clinton and Barack Obama after they lost control of the Congress … Remember, they both came in in 1992 and 2008 election, started in 2009, with huge congressional majorities. 

But by the last two years of their administration, they had lost them. What did they do? Remember, in domestic policy, Bill Clinton met with Newt Gingrich, and he had two more balanced budgets. He fought off, he had fought off in the conviction in the Senate with the Monica Lewinsky impeachment. 

Abroad, he bombed Serbia for 77 days without congressional authority. It had no effect. He had a big peace summit the last few months in office. In the case of Obama, he just said, “I have a pen and phone,” and he ruled by executive order. In foreign policy, he just said, “I don’t believe that the Iran deal or the Paris climate accord is a treaty.” 

I didn’t approve of that, but he just bypassed them, and he signed us on to both, I think disastrously so. He recognized Cuba, kind of a communist hardcore enemy of the United States. He normalized relations without any regard to Congress, none at all.  

So, in the imperial presidency of the modern era, Donald Trump can pretty much do what he wants based on prior precedent abroad, and he can do pretty much what he wants domestically if we keep in mind a couple of caveats. 

A president has to have a veto-proof Congress. I don’t think that the Republicans will end up with only 40 seats. If they end up with 45, 48, then it’s imperative that they have absolute solidarity. In other words, that when Trump vetoes a crazy piece of left-wing legislation, and beware, that’s going to happen very soon, along with lawfare, subpoenas, and possible or probable impeachment. 

But when he vetoes something, he can’t have renegade senators joining the Democrats to get a 60 majority, override on the veto. We’ll see what happens. The other couple of things that happen to a lame duck president when he loses the Congress, as is the situation facing Trump, their polls go up. 

Obama hit at one point 37% popularity, Clinton 38. Clinton left with almost 70% approval. Obama was 60%. Why? Because they sort of were above the fray, and when a party wins a large tsunami like we see tonight, they overreact. They get too overconfident. They get too extreme. They get too boisterous, and the president, if he’s wise, is above the fray. 

“Now, now, you guys, calm down. I’m the president,” kind of. In the case of Obama, the more you didn’t see him and didn’t hear him, the more the idea of him was appealing. Same thing maybe with Clinton. And then the campaigns heat up, the presidential campaign. Al Gore versus George Bush. Clinton stayed out of it. 

Al Gore didn’t even want him to campaign, and he let them kill each other off and alienate everybody. It was a hard-fought campaign. Remember the hanging chad and all that? And Bill Clinton was above the fray, and he ended up very popular. Same thing with Obama. Trump and Hillary [Clinton] battled it out, battle out Russian collusion, “Access Hollywood”, and Obama was playing golf. 

I’m not suggesting I approve of that. I’m just trying to, as a historian, suggest to you that it’s likely that Trump’s favorability will go up. It’s likely that this will not have a large effect upon him if he keeps discipline among the minority senators.  

And one thing we do know, he will not make judicial nominations. 

This Congress will stop every one of them, and that’s a tragedy, but it’s true. why did it happen? Why did it happen? And to answer that question, go back to 2022. Midterm election, Joe Biden, 40% approval rating. History, we just said, gave you a 90% chance of picking up House seats and a 75% picking up Senate. 

And what happened? The red wave was a ripple. They only picked up nine seats. They barely got the House. They lost one Senate seat in a midterm. Why? The economy was … Let me re-reiterate that. The economy was in worse shape in 2022 in that midterm than it is now. Let me explain. GDP was lower. The inflation rate was three times higher at 9.1 than 3.3 as it is now. 

Per family income was $14,000 less than it is now. The price of gas, it reached $5, $5 in July, and it got down to about $4.03, not much different than it is now. The stock market was 20,000 points lower in 2022. And yet nobody talked about affordability. Nobody talked about, the economy quite like they did against Donald Trump. 

Why? Well, one was the media kept downplaying the economic woes of Biden, and they kept exaggerating those of Trump. I mean, after all, we had 3.4 GDP just announced today. Manufacturing activity was at an all-time high. The median family income is at an all-time high, $87,000. The poverty rate is at an all-time low. 

Projections are 5%. The GDP will grow. The stock market’s an all-time high. That didn’t come across. That was, one, because the media. But the other thing very quickly is lowering prices is not the same as lowering the inflation rate. Biden came in with 1.9% inflation rate that he inherited for Trump. Only 7% something over four years. 

So when he went up to 9.1. It was traumatic, but we hadn’t had a prior inflation, so prices could absorb that a little bit. When Donald Trump came in, he was facing an average of 5.1 every year, or 21% rise in prices. So he said, “We’re make everything affordable.” But what he meant was, “I’m going to lower the inflation rate.” 

He did just that in the first year. He cut it from 5.1 to 2.4. Even this year with the oil spikes, it’ll probably be about 3.4. Almost, you know, two points, one and a half points less than the Obama. But what he didn’t do, and what he couldn’t do, and what no one can do, unless you want a depression, is suddenly whack off 21% of the price of food or insurance. 

It’s very hard to do that without a recession. That was never explained. Never explained. So, that was a very different perception of a better economy in 2026 that people despise, whereas in 2022, a worse economy, they were not bothered by it as much.

And again, the media and the fact that they were coming—Biden was coming into a low inflation inheritance that had not raised prices, and Trump was coming into a sky-high inflation where prices were 21% higher when he entered office than when he had left, and there was no margin of any increase given that unaffordability issue. 

The other was the Iran war. It wasn’t that the people were against the idea initially. They were scared of Iran getting a bomb. They were scared of Iran dominating the entire Middle East. They knew that Iran had killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization except al-Qaida on 9/11. But they were confused that on February 28, after a magnificent campaign of 38 days. 

We were only into early April, and we had pretty much defanged the Iranian regime, but we hadn’t yet really tightened the noose on sanctions. We wouldn’t do that for months. But then we started talking. Talk, talk, talk, a few bombings, talk, talk, talk, and everybody, including myself, said, “Okay, we better do something because we’re eight months away from the midterms. 

We’re seven months. We’re six months. We’re five months. We’re four months. We’re three months.” What the American people wanted to do was something what Bill Clinton did in Serbia. He hit dual use. They wanted to take out the bridges. They wanted to stop all the rail links to China and Russia, all the highways, all the travel in the Caspian Sea, and they wanted to arm the Kurds. 

They wanted to stir up the pot. They wanted to hit Pickaxe Mountain. They wanted to completely reassure there was no nuclear plan. They wanted another 28 days, and then they wanted to go home. And they wanted to leave a crew to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, which we are now opening, and they wanted ironclad sanctions, which we have. 

But they did not want us fighting Iran anymore. They wanted it nuclearly defanged and in terrible shape and let it stew in its own juice and arm the dissidents and let them sort it out and hope, like the Berlin Wall fell, and then a year or two later, the Soviet Union did. That’s what the idea was. 

But talk, talk, talk. We’re right around the corner. It’s going to end. That’s not a prescription in a war to win, not in a democracy. People have finite patience. They want victory, and then they want to go home. They do not want victory kind of talk, talk. Victory maybe talk, talk, especially with people who are completely unreliable and can’t tell the truth like the Iranians. 

There are some really important things finally about the midterms, and that is the 2028 election. No socialist had won, I don’t count Bernie Sanders as a socialist Islamicist, but no anti-Israel socialist radical had won a statewide. Yes, they won congressional districts. Yes, they won a mayorship, but not the whole state of Michigan or not all of Texas. Angie Nixon almost won the Florida state. 

So they control the Congress now. They don’t control the White House. They can’t legislate because it will be vetoed, and they won’t be able to override it if Trump can maintain discipline against the Senate majority. They will block all judicial nominations, all of them. They will go after the entire Trump family, and they will do a lot of investigating and subpoenaing, but they will not make legislation. 

However, what’s going to happen is the socialists are going to say, “We did this.” Tomorrow, Hasan Piker said, “See, I told you, the more radical and Islamicist socialist you are, the more we win. We are the youth. We are the charismatic people. We are the future.” Look at [James] Talarico. He was much more charismatic than [Ken] Paxton. 

Look at [Abdul] El-Sayed. He could talk his way out with [Mike] Rogers. This is the future. If they were to go on in 2028, and if they were to win and hold that Congress, there’s no stopping them. And they would do exactly what they said. They would open the border. They’d bring in another 10 or 12 million people. They’d give mass amnesties for 30 million to change the demography for ballot reasons. 

They would shut down fracking fossil fuel and go to the whole European nihilistic green social program. They would pack the court. Forget the Constitution. They would eliminate the Electoral College by hook or cook. They would bring in new states without following the Constitution. I think they will end the  filibuster in January anyway. 

They will structurally change the United States so that the socialists can have a long tenure, and we would not know America. We wouldn’t recognize it.  

Let me just finish then with some known unknowns of the next years. First unknown, will the hard left, as I suggested, overreach and start impeachment, do the same old lawfare, subpoena people, showcase the new radicals? You get sick of hearing El-Sayed’s “Yes, yes, I like the Muslim Brotherhood” type of stuff, and “No, I didn’t say that.” 

Talarico will go back to his vegetarian, anti-beef, anti-oil, pro-trans talk. Yes, he will. And will people get tired of them? We’ll see. Or will they be smart and keep quiet and build a constituency? I hope not, but they might. Will the current 3.4 GDP be the beginning of an economic gigantic boom? As I said, 5% is predicted in the fourth quarter. 

We’ve had more manufacturing activity, and the inflation rate is pretty tolerable. It’ll go down with the oil coming down. AI is going to expand the economy. The full effect of tax cuts, deregulate. Will that grow the economy in such a way that it will nullify this victory? I don’t know, but that’s a possibility. 

Iran. What, are we gonna go back to talk, bomb, talk, talk, bomb, bomb, talk, talk, talk, endless Iranian hag-haggling? Or will we end with the complete destruction of their nuclear program, the continuation of the sanctions and arming the dissidents so that the regime is under enormous pressure, and we go home and we don’t engage in them? 

That’s something that’s gonna be very important. Americans want a quick victory, a decisive victory. They do not want an Afghanistan, an Iraq, a Vietnam. And we can do that, but we to decide that we’re not going to talk. We’re going to do enough damage, so they will not have a bomb for 10 years, and they will have the Strait open and oil will flow. 

Finally, a couple of other things. Vance-Rubio. Do we really think that the arrangement where [Vice President JD] Vance will run for president and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio will not, as he said, and they will be the ideal ticket and that will heal the rivalries and they will win? I don’t know about that. I think Rubio is under enormous pressure as his polls go up. 

In some he’s ahead of Vance, that people will come and say to him, “I’m not going to vote for Vance given his opposition to Israel, given his opposition to a lot of the things I stand for, and therefore you have to run.” There’ll be enormous pressure. On Vance, Vance is a very good debater. He’s a very good communicator. 

Will he then say to himself, the primary role of the vice president, whether you like it or not, is to protect the president of the United States? That’s his first mission. That’s his existential mission. You can’t have a vice president when somebody, with Tucker Carlson on others’ audiences are saying that your president is satanic, that he wants to use a nuclear bomb, that he should be impeached, as has been said, and not call him out and say, “Well, I don’t attack my friends. I just don’t agree with them.” 

No, your job is to attack the person who’s trying to destroy your president. That is the prerequisite of a vice president, and that is the indicator of whether you’re going to be president. And so, he’s gonna have to make that decision very quickly. Otherwise, we’re gonna have a big fight in the Republican Party at a time when the socialists are solidifying around this new Islamic socialist communist coalition. 

And what will be the Democratic agenda? We haven’t heard any agenda. It’s Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Hate Israel. Hate Israel. Don’t like the Jews. What’s the agenda?  

Are they ever gonna come out and say, “We are for biological men. We’re gonna make sure that biological men can play in women’s sports. We wanna open the border. We want more immigrants. We wanna defund the police. We wanna defund [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. We want to stop fossil fuel exploration. No, no more new lease. Stop fracking,” as both Biden and Kamala Harris were on record for that. 

 And will they have that agenda? If they have that agenda, they’re 30% issues and they will lose badly. 

Or will they moderate? We’ll, we’ll see. 

A couple of final things. If this Congress continues into 2028 after that election, by that I mean sizable majorities in the Senate and House, and if an [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes] or an El-Sayed or a radical from that group, and we’ve seen it before with the Democratic Party with [George] McGovern following the 1968 defeat, 1972 he was nominated. 

He had some pretty radical ideas, but not as radical as these people. If they were to run, and if they were to win, we would see historical changes in the United States. We would become a de facto supporter of the Palestinian cause, and we would be an enemy or an opposition to the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel. 

And we would be opposed to the reform movements in Europe and be propping up a decrepit and failed EU system. And we would be telling all of those new 26 to 28 countries that have flipped from communist, socialist, totalitarian governments to free market democracies and pro-America that you missed the boat. 

We’re against you now. We’re on the side of the people you overthrew. 

So, what I’m getting at is there is going to be a radical revolution in American foreign policy. We are going to go from the protectors of democratic capitalist societies and the protectors of America preeminence and exceptionalism to a globalist, neutral foreign policy, but mostly we will favor left-wing socialist governments funded by an expanded USAID program. 

And that’s the future of this country if these midterms that we’ve seen tonight were to continue with a presidential victory and another congressional victory in 2028.  

So, it’s not the time for recriminations. It’s not the time for the blame game. It’s time for constructive criticism. See why with a better economy in 2026 we didn’t have the wave that Biden avoided in 2000. 

We didn’t have the wave in 2022 that the Democrats had in 2026, even though, and by all economic indicators, there was a worse economy and worse foreign policy, and we have to figure out why that happened.  

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

“Next year, America’s seniors will save over $1 billion on high-cost drugs, like infusions to treat cancer, and over $2 billion over the next decade on common services such as heart ultrasounds, bone density scans, and chest X-rays,” White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said Wednesday.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is finalizing a policy to end intentional Medicare overpayments for outpatient drugs. It is lowering Medicare Part B payment rates for drugs administered in hospital outpatient departments to ensure discounts received by hospitals through the 340B program are passed along to Medicare and Medicare patients.

In 2027, the average impacted senior will save $900 on co-pays for outpatient drugs administered in 340B hospitals. Seniors will pay $1.1 billion less on high-cost drugs because of the change.

“This action lowers premiums and eliminates bad incentives that have driven up prices, building on President Trump’s efforts that have already reduced health care costs and delivered more than $1 billion in savings through TrumpRx.gov and the Medicare Bridge program,” Schuster said.

Previously, Medicare overpayments created an incentive for independent clinics to be purchased by 340B hospitals, as the clinics would otherwise make much smaller margins on these drugs, an administration official said.

CMS is also lowering hospital outpatient costs for Medicare patients on many routine imaging services to the amounts Medicare would have paid if the services were provided in a lower-cost setting. Common services affected by the change include heart ultrasounds, bone density scans, chest X-rays, chest CTs, and head/neck ultrasounds.

Over 10 years, seniors are expected to save $2.4 billion on routine imaging services because Medicare will no longer pay more for these services when they are performed in a hospital instead of a doctor’s office. 

“President Trump will continue fighting every day to make life more affordable for America’s seniors,” the official added.

“Over 50 DSA victories tonight prove socialism can win in the U.S. Workers deserve more and a reality where all of us live with dignity and hope is closer than we think,” the DSA said in a statement. “The job’s not done, though. Tomorrow, we continue organizing, fighting, and winning for the working class!”

The incoming DSA freshmen will join two existing DSA House members, making their group in the lower chamber number at least seven. This will be the largest group of socialists in the U.S. Congress since the first was elected in 1910. While still low in numbers compared with the 242 other winning Democrats, their bloc could shift leadership votes and influence significant votes on “Medicare for All” and military spending.

“Ronald Reagan used to warn about communism, he talked about it, but it was a distant threat across the world,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a warning on the campaign trail. “And now the barbarians are inside the gate … This is not your father’s Democratic Party. That party’s long gone.”

America will now see if Johnson’s warnings were accurate or if his months spent campaigning on these socialist candidates were exaggerated.

Their first taste of power will be in the Democratic Party’s leadership race expected to take place on Nov. 17. No DSA-affiliated candidates have backed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has also not backed their group but is likely to be speaker.

“I am nobody’s rubber stamp … I’m committed to transformative change,” said DSA-endorsed Chris Rabb, who will represent Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District.

While their candidates unseated established Democrat members and won in many blue seats, none of their members or endorsed candidates flipped Republican seats.

3 Republicans Hold the Line

Republican incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody defeated state Rep. Angie Nixon in the Senate race in Florida. Nixon is a DSA member but was not endorsed by the group.

Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Hagerty defeated Marquita Bradshaw, who was endorsed by the local Memphis-Midsouth DSA but not by the national group. Hagerty wins a second Senate term in Tennessee.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise defeated DSA-endorsed Lauren Jewett in Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District. Scalise announced his run for House minority leader for the 120th Congress Wednesday morning.

DSA Touting Wins

The most significant win for DSA was Abdul El-Sayed winning the Michigan Senate race against Republican Mike Rogers. El-Sayed is not a member of the group, nor was he endorsed; however, he shares many of its policy goals, such as Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, taxing billionaires, permanent affordable housing, and ending military aid to Israel.

Also in Michigan, Democrat incumbent Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a DSA-endorsed incumbent who won reelection in Michigan, defeated Republican James Hooper by over 50% of the vote.

DSA-endorsed Democrat incumbent Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also a DSA member, held her seat in New York against Republican Diamant Hysenaj, collecting over 55% of the vote. The significant DSA win could push Ocasio-Cortez to run for president in 2028.

DSA-endorsed Chris Rabb won in Pennsylvania, Donavan McKinney won in Michigan, and Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez won in New York.

Melat Kiros, a DSA-endorsed candidate, won in Colorado. Kiros was expected to win after defeating Democrat incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in the July primary. DeGette, an establishment Democrat, had represented the district since 1997.

A notable local win from the night was DSA-endorsed Janeese Lewis George, who will be the mayor of Washington, D.C.

Too Soon to Call

Decision Desk HQ has not yet called California’s 34th Congressional District. However, the DSA announced its candidate, Angela Gonzales-Torres, as the winner. She ran against Democratic incumbent Rep. Jimmy Gomez after they finished as the top two candidates in the June nonpartisan primary, allowing for two Democrats to appear on the general ballot. Gomez is seeking his sixth term while under a House Ethics Committee investigation after a former staffer made allegations of nonconsensual sexual misconduct against him. Gomez, who is married, claims the relationship was consensual.

The final federal race with a DSA-endorsed candidate yet to be called is Mai Vang in California. According to Decision Desk HQ, Vang is closely trailing Democratic incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui.

In total, there will be five new socialists in the U.S. House of Representatives, six if Gonzales-Torres beats Gomez.

“DEI is back!”

That was the message from Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., following Tuesday night’s midterm blue wave that swept Democrats back into power in both houses of Congress and in many state capitals.

Khanna then went down his list of those he conserved to be DEI Democrats who won last night. It was just a list of people who are not straight, white men.

Perhaps Khanna was trying to be provocative. His party is generally reveling in what it thinks is a massive national mandate for its agenda.

But I think that the fact that Khanna, one of the let’s say “more ambitious” members of the new Democrat coalition, decided to immediately spike the football for diversity, equity, and inclusion after an election in which Democrats did everything in their power to avoid cultural issues is telling.

It’s a clue, a little reminder, of what the modern Left is about.

Leftists haven’t decided that their ideas about race or men in women’s sports went too far. Sure, they made some sheepish mea culpas following the 2024 election, indicating that maybe there was a reason some people opposed them. But they mostly abandoned that tack and went into don’t ask, don’t tell mode to get past the unpopularity problem.

It seems to have worked, for now.

But they haven’t suddenly abandoned cultural issues.

They’ve merely conceded to the reality that their ideas on these matters had become toxic to a public that was sick of pronouns, sick of perpetual, over-the-top virtue signaling, and sick of the racialization of everything.

However, and it must be stressed time and again in coming days, it would be a huge mistake to assume they’ve abandoned the field and the various woke ideas that are foundational and nearly sacred to the mostly secular Left.

If it wasn’t obvious before the midterm, it’s certainly obvious now that congressional Democrats, at least, intend to use the next two years to engage in lawfare in an attempt to stymie the Trump administration in any way they can, pulling out all the stops to make sure they won’t lose power again.

Hence the flood of gleeful social media messages about lawyering up and subpoenas.

No doubt they hope they can give their base what it wants—prosecutions, reprisals—while appealing to the broader electorate with further appeals to “affordability.” Of course, they won’t do anything to make things more affordable, but the message is what Americans want to hear, and they no doubt hope they can pin all the problems on President Donald Trump and the GOP.

Yet, grabbing and securing power is the starting point, not the finish line for the Left. They are still enraged about the loss of their political and institutional power, which forced them to retreat on the culture war battlefield.

They’ve seen a bloc of former Big Tech allies go wobbly on wokeness, colleges have been forced to compromise on affirmative action and racialized admissions, DEI is being expunged from federal and state governments. All nearly unthinkable realities just a few years ago.

Their ability to force issues they spent the last decade obsessing over has been deeply constrained following their collapse in popularity and Trump’s return to office.

There’s little indication, even after a monstrous wave election, that voters suddenly decided that open borders and gender surgeries for children were what we needed all along.

But the Left can’t give up the cultural crusade, especially given its importance to the younger members of their coalition. You can bet that they will push for activist judges who enforce their cultural norms, they will sue and subpoena on behalf of institutions that lost funding over illegal DEI initiatives, they will signal to higher education to rope a dope just a little longer in preparation for dumping as much money into DEI-adjacent programs as you can imagine.

DEI isn’t back. The Trump administration has, often quietly, waged an effective counterrevolution against it. The Left’s power in the new Congress won’t make those changes, both legal and administrative, go away overnight or likely even within the next two years.

But they fully intend to amass power in the meantime. And they’re dead set on making structural changes to our system to ensure that the revolution will be back on soon. This time, there will be nothing you can do about it.

For the sake of the country and the future of Western civilization, we must hope the Trump administration holds the line and refuses to back away from ending the illegal and un-American identitarianism that the Left wants to foist on us. It must continue the work that the counterrevolution started and squeeze these rancid ideas out of American institutions.

“You have now entered the Becerra Era,” declared California Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra in his victory speech Tuesday night.

But for the nearly 3 million Californians who cast their ballots for Republican Steve Hilton, hopes for a different direction for the Golden State have faded as another Democrat administration prepares to take office.

So, what will the “Becerra Era” look like, and how will his policies differ from the changes Hilton promised?

Immigration and Health Care for Illegal Immigrants

Hilton campaigned on stricter immigration enforcement, opposing the state’s sanctuary law, SB 54, and promising to deport the “worst of the worst.”

In stark contrast, Becerra, in his victory speech, called the California dream “universal,” “non-negotiable,” and “undeportable,” echoing his pledge to push back on federal immigration enforcement, saying he would “protect and lead our state against [President Donald] Trump and his attacks.”

In addition, Becerra plans to guarantee access to universal coverage “regardless of income, ZIP code, or immigration status.”
These plans will cost roughly $10 billion annually, according to estimates from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Expanded Taxes

Much of Hilton’s campaign focused on making life more affordable for everyday Californians. That included eliminating state income tax on the first $150,000 of income, capping vehicle registration at $73, and promising to bring gas prices down to $3 a gallon.

Becerra, on the other hand, has shown interest in creating a mileage tax to compensate for revenue lost as more Californians purchase electric vehicles. He has also discussed imposing taxes on large corporations if their workers qualify for Medi-Cal.

“Whether it’s a fee, whether it’s working the system so that maybe the employers will boost the support, the benefits that they give their workers, one way or the other, people who work full time should not have to ask taxpayers to cover their health care bills,” he said in an interview with KCRA 3.

Energy and Utility Costs

Californians pay some of the highest electricity rates and water bills in the nation.

Hilton has called himself an environmentalist but focused his campaign on addressing water scarcity through infrastructure improvements. He also promised to cut average monthly water bills nearly in half, from $81 to roughly $40, and repeal California’s wind and solar mandates and subsidies.

Becerra, meanwhile, has taken a different approach, calling California’s clean energy transition “necessary and urgent” and promising to “push for progressive environmental policies.” To help lower electricity costs for low-income households, he has proposed “Power Hour,” a program offering up to two hours of free electricity.

However, the proposed assistance would be limited based on income. Under the plan’s stated eligibility thresholds, a family of four earning more than $82,000 annually would not qualify, with limits adjusted based on household size.

For the nearly 3 million Californians who voted for Hilton, promises of cheaper gas, lower taxes, and stricter immigration enforcement will remain just that: promises.

Meanwhile, Californians will have to wait and see whether the “Becerra Era” delivers on its own promises of change.

“This was a complete repudiation of Trumpism,” one GOP strategist told the Daily Signal. “When you lose literally everything, there is no one else to blame. Trumpism expired, and conservatives need to start rebuilding the coalition.” 

Democrats retook control of both the House and the Senate on Tuesday. As of 2:17 p.m. EST Wednesday, Senate Democrats won 54 seats and the Republicans held 44, with races in Alaska and Mississippi still to be decided. In the House, Democrats won 249 seats to the Republicans’ 152. 

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said the GOP’s crushing loss of a Senate seat in South Carolina was “directly the result of his [Trump’s] actions.” It is the first time since 1998 that the state is sending a Democrat to the Senate. 

After the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham in July, Norman ran in the special election to succeed him in the next full term. However, Trump endorsed Graham’s sister, Sen. Darline Graham Nordone, who had been appointed to serve the remainder of the current term. Graham Nordone bested Norman in the August primary for the special election but lost the general election to Democrat Dr. Annie Andrews.

“Ronald Reagan would never ever have done what he did,” Norman told the Daily Signal of Trump. “And he’s paying a price for it. And the country’s gonna pay.” He noted, “The big money that went in to defeat me, the million dollars he put up to distort my record.”

“His pride of wanting to just dominate did not work, and it did not work in other states either,” he said. “It did not surprise me here in South Carolina, but it did shock me when you have a poor candidate like [James] Talarico, when you have Marxists.” 

In a Fox Business interview early Wednesday morning, Trump did not assume blame for Tuesday night’s massive blue wave. 

“They didn’t like the candidates, and some of the candidates that I endorsed fought me, and they didn’t like it,” he said in an interview. “This MAGA base is incredible, the most loyal base, the most loyal people, the people that built America.”

Some Republican operatives and members blamed forces other than Trump for the party’s losses.

One GOP operative said that Trump hurt in some races but helped in others, noting that it’s hard to fully blame the president for the loss of a candidate not closely associated with him, such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. 

The dramatic blue wave came from a combination of people casting a protest vote against Trump and the party, lack of Republican turnout, and candidates who thought that GOP money would deliver them wins without having to do hard work, the operative noted. 

A GOP congressman who asked to remain anonymous said the president was unable to overcome “headwinds.”

“I think the president worked tirelessly to try to get folks over the finish line. I feel like that there were obviously some headwinds that we were up against, and we know historically there were headwinds,” he told the Daily Signal. The congressman named concerns about the prices of gas and groceries. 

Another GOP strategist said the Iran war was a huge factor in the losses in deep-red states such as Texas. 

“You look at a place like Texas, and you have $6 diesel in Texas. You take it for granted, and then look how they responded,” he said. “People just kind of had enough.” 

“We got into a gerrymandering fight that we didn’t need to get into,” he continued. “We lost a number of seats in Florida and Texas that we didn’t need to lose as a result. And then you don’t spend money until September, and spend most of the time talking about your arch versus what people are facing every day with the affordability conversation.” 

In Texas, Republicans shot themselves “in both feet and both eyeballs” by nominating controversial Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for the Senate race, the operative said; Paxton lost to Democrat James Talarico. 

“Texas already repudiated him [Paxton] by impeaching him,” he said. “They already stated what they wanted.” The operative said there is a disconnect between Washington, D.C., and what local voters want. 

Steve Mitchell, a Michigan pollster with a background in Republican politics, blamed Trump for GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers’ loss to Muslim Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. 

“What happened in Michigan is a direct result of President Trump and the priorities he’s had during the second administration,” he said. 

A senior GOP staffer, however, said those blaming Trump need to “go buy a mirror.” 

“Republicans had both chambers, delivered on one reconciliation package, and burned an entire year making excuses about why they couldn’t force or eliminate the filibuster on SAVE America,” the staffer said. “Until people here start caring more about results than their three-day work week, they shouldn’t be surprised.”

Texas GOP strategist Brendan Steinhauser said he hopes the president can work with Democrats so they both get some wins for the rest of his presidency.

“He doesn’t want to just be a lame duck,” he said. “He wants a legacy.”

In addition to the cost of living and the Iran war, Steinhauser thinks grassroots opposition to the administration’s artificial intelligence policy played a role in the losses.

“It was just a bad look to have Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Greg Brockman and all these guys hanging out at the White House, wining and dining with Xi Jinping and President Trump in their tuxes,” he said. “It just didn’t go over well, and that is a big lesson learned. The populist right did not like that approach, does not trust those folks, and I think the president should distance himself from those folks.”

Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, while state Rep. James Talarico defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in a closely watched U.S. Senate race.

The victories mark the first time Democrats have won Texas’ gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races in decades.

Democrats also defeated Republicans in other statewide races, with Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick losing to Democrat state Rep. Vikki Goodwin and Democrat state Sen. Nathan Johnson defeating Republican state Sen. Mayes Middleton for attorney general.

These results represent a massive setback for Texas Republicans, who have controlled every statewide elected office for more than 30 years.

Democrats Gain Momentum

Hinojosa’s victory over Abbott marks the first time a Democrat has been elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards won the office in 1990. Richards left office in January 1995 after losing her reelection bid to Republican George W. Bush.

She campaigned on issues including affordability and public education, opposing the state’s private school voucher program, and pledging to give a one-time payment of $1,500 to Texas households to address rising costs.

Talarico’s victory over Paxton also marks a major change in Texas politics, as no Democrat has won a U.S. Senate election in Texas since 1988. 

The contest drew national attention and significant campaign spending as Republicans sought to hold the seat.  

Talarico ran on numerous issues, including making life more affordable for Texans by raising the federal minimum wage, allowing all Americans to enroll in Medicare, lowering housing costs, and providing property tax breaks for childcare providers. He also campaigned on school district homestead exemptions and tax relief for elderly and disabled homeowners.

Another issue he fiercely campaigned on was border security, insisting that he wants to strengthen border security, support law enforcement response efforts, maximize safety, and enhance infrastructure and road technology at the border.

Democrats didn’t just take the Senate seat and the governor’s race; they also took several other statewide contests, including races for Texas comptroller, land commissioner, agriculture commissioner, and railroad commissioner, setting the state up for a Democrat stronghold all the way around.

Texas Republicans Lose Ground in Congress

The Election Day results also showed that Democrats made gains in congressional races, winning several districts that were previously held by Republicans. 

Among the districts taken over by Democrats were Texas Congressional District 15, with Democrat Bobby Pulido defeating Republican incumbent Monica De La Cruz, and Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, which was won by Democrat Katy Padilla Stout, who defeated Republican Brandon Herrera. The 23rd Congressional District was previously held by Republican Tony Gonzales, who dropped his reelection bid earlier this year. 

However, the losses are now raising bigger questions in the Lone Star State, especially about the effectiveness of Republican efforts to strengthen the party’s congressional position through redistricting. 

Republicans Face Questions About Their Future in Texas

The results from Nov. 3 are raising serious questions among Republicans about what contributed to the Republican losses across the state. 

Affordability and the economy were central issues in Texas elections, with Democrat candidates emphasizing rising costs and concerns about the trajectory of the Republican-led state government and its effectiveness.

Other issues included border policies and data centers, with candidates seeking to flip one-issue voters on those topics.

According to KHOU 11 political analyst Brandon Rottinghaus, the Latino population made up approximately 30% of Texas voters, with Democrats receiving a majority of their votes.

One of the more concerning factors was the dissatisfaction with Republican candidates.

Paxton’s Senate candidacy was one of the more contentious races in the country, with Republican incumbent Sen. John Cornyn coming out against Paxton and vouching for Talarico. Paxton’s political and legal controversies gave rise to multiple attacks from Democrats and some Republicans on his character and qualifications to serve as a senator.

The results could have significant implications for the state’s political future, as Democrats have taken over every statewide office.

As of Nov. 4, Republicans are positioned to retain their majority in the Texas Senate. However, a report published on Wednesday revealed that Democrats have taken over the Texas House, flipping at least 18 seats, according to The Texan.

Republicans have long treated Texas as a reliable stronghold, but the 2026 midterm election results show that the state’s political landscape could be changing.

Whether those gains signal a lasting shift or reflect dissatisfaction with the party and its candidates remains to be seen. Texas Republicans will now have to face questions about their candidates, policy platforms, and campaign strategies as leaders look ahead to 2028.

Republican Party of Texas Vice-Chair David Covey wrote on X that the results are “our wake-up call.”

“Voters rejected the Republican status quo. Calling it a mandate for socialism misses the point. They put us in power and expected us to deliver. This is our wake-up call. Own the failures. Keep our promises. Deliver real results next time. And there will be a next time,” Covey wrote. “Today is day one of organizing and rebuilding the Republican Party bottom-up. We can’t give up because we do this for our children and families. We will never give up on Texas. We are the resistance.”

The party’s chair, D’Rinda Randall, also spoke on the election results, writing in a press release that the party must learn from its setbacks and begin rebuilding. 

“Tonight we congratulate our Republican candidates who earned the trust of Texas voters and celebrate their victories,” Randall said. “We also acknowledge the difficult losses and thank every candidate, volunteer, and supporter who gave their all.”

“Tonight, may be difficult, but it is not the end of our story. We will reflect honestly, learn from our setbacks, and come back stronger,” Randall continued. “Tonight we accept the results. Tomorrow, we begin rebuilding. Our commitment to Texas remains unwavering, and the work continues.”

The DSA expanded its congressional footprint, helped elect allies at the state and local levels, and can point to Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Senate race as evidence that a candidate closely associated with its agenda can win statewide in a presidential battleground. That said, the sheer scale of the Democrats’ House victory could make it easier for the rest of the party to ignore socialists’ demands.

Before the election, DSA-endorsed candidates Darializa Avila Chevalier and Melat Kiros openly spoke about leveraging their votes in the upcoming election for House speaker. They refused to pledge support for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., saying they want to ensure whoever wins the race would prioritize DSA agenda items such as Medicare for All and “universal childcare.”

Perhaps ironically, the Democrats’ large House majority will dramatically reduce that leverage from the DSA House members, even as their numbers expand from two to seven. Democrats are projected to win 249 seats and counting, according to Decision Desk, far above the necessary 218 for a majority.

If that figure holds or increases, Democrats could afford to lose 31 votes and still elect a speaker with 218, making a potential seven-vote bloc far less powerful.

Kiros spoke about “laying the groundwork” for a Democrat trifecta—controlling the White House and both the House and the Senate—in 2028, where “we can actually start delivering massive transformational changes.” If Democrats still work toward that trifecta, they may need the DSA candidates less than they had expected.

The larger majority means the DSA-endorsed representatives will have a harder time banding together to force concessions from Democrat leadership. Nor is there any guarantee that the seven will behave as a cohesive voting bloc. Kiros and Chevalier have not committed themselves to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “squad,” and a comfortable majority may give each member more latitude to emphasize differences rather than voting as a unit.

A seven-member bloc could have made or broken a narrow Democratic majority. With a large one, its leverage becomes considerably more situational.

Democrat wins in traditionally red states may also weaken DSA clout to some extent. Newly ascendant Democrats may take these victories as a sign that they should moderate their political messages to appeal to more conservative voters, and so the party may become more hesitant to take up DSA initiatives. Some of the Democrats responsible for the party’s massive majority won precisely the kind of competitive territory where the DSA brand appears least attractive. A strategist told Axios that Ocasio-Cortez’s polling is “atrocious” in a swing district.

That said, the DSA will still gain influence and build infrastructure as a result of the midterms.

The most consequential socialist-orbit victory came outside the formal DSA. While the DSA did not endorse Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and he is not an official DSA member, the senator-elect campaigned on key DSA priorities and has spoken at DSA rallies in the past. While he calls himself a capitalist, he touted endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ocasio-Cortez, and won while backing “Medicare for All,” changes to the Supreme Court, eliminating the filibuster, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The DSA has claimed 116 wins in the midterm elections, and the number appears to be growing. Over the past decade, the DSA built a massive infrastructure across the country, and about 90% of its victories have been at the state and local levels, where today’s winners can become tomorrow’s federal candidates.

The organization also seeks to put socialists inside labor unions and build “mass organization” through nontraditional groups like tenant unions.

Finally, some DSA chapters have already called on Ocasio-Cortez to run for president in 2028, not just because they think she can win the election but because the campaign itself will energize their base.

Socialism had a great night on Tuesday, but the Democrat majority may actually work against its influence in the near term. If Democrats think they have enough leeway to kick the DSA members to the curb, they may do so.

Democrats now have enough breathing room to tell the socialists no.

Whether they actually do so will reveal far more about the Democratic Party than Tuesday night’s election results.

Whether or not Ohio would retain its red state status or return to being a purple state has been up for much discussion. It’s very likely that that conversation will now be revisited.

According to NBC News exit polls, every single one of Ohio’s 88 counties shifted toward Democrat from the 2024 presidential election, when the Buckeye State voted for President Donald Trump for the third time, overall by 11 points against then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat nominee.

Last July’s opinion piece for the Daily Signal touched upon Ohio being a bellwether and its recent red-state status. One could say that Ohio certainly still is a bellwether, in that the blue wave came for the Buckeye State and swept the country in the 2026 midterms.

Not only did Ramaswamy lose, but so did Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed by outgoing, term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine to replace now-Vice President JD Vance. Former Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown is now senator-elect and will be senator once more, after losing to now-Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Ohio’s politics for the U.S. Senate remain interesting, especially as Moreno will now have to serve with the man he beat in 2024 and, as the likely next chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, will focus on seeing Brown, who has to run again in two years if he so desires, beaten again.

Ohio’s congressional delegation has also shrunk. At 10-5 in favor of Republicans going into the November elections, it will be 8-7 at the start of the 120th Congress in January, this time in favor of Democrats. Republicans failed to flip the two redistricted districts in their favor, with Derek Merrin’s loss to Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District and Eric Conroy’s loss to Rep. Greg Landsman in the 1st Congressional District.

Additionally, Republican Reps. Max Miller of Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, Mike Turner of the 10th, and Mike Carey of the 15th also lost reelection.

There is a forlorn sentiment within the Republican Party, including in Ohio. “It’s the war, it’s Epstein, it’s data centers. When Republicans might lose a Senate seat in MS, it’s not just about candidate quality or how well a campaign was run. It was all foreseeable. It was all avoidable,” an Ohio GOP strategist told the Daily Signal.

Ohio Democrats also won the offices of attorney general, treasurer, and secretary of state. Republican Frank LaRose, currently the secretary of state, did win his race for state auditor.

Even if Acton won, as was predicted in the polls, forecasts, and prediction markets, there was always a question as to how much veto power she would have, given that Republicans currently enjoy a supermajority in the state legislature. They ultimately ended up losing that supermajority, at least in the Ohio House, as of Wednesday morning.

With what could no doubt be seen as a grim outlook at the state and federal level in Ohio and around the country with the effect of that blue wave, many look to 2028, 2030, and 2032 for better or for worse.

Licking County Republican Party Chairman and GOP strategist Matt Dole had a much more hopeful, positive tone to share with the Daily Signal in that regard.

“This wasn’t a trend-setting election. In 1958, Republicans faced a tsunami election and Democrats ruled much of state government for the next 30 years. In 2006, Democrats held power for a scant 4 years—because the election was an in-the-moment repudiation, rather than part of a larger movement. This election was more 2006 than 1958—Ohio Republicans facing the headwinds of a specifically bad national environment. Democrats will have more real estate to defend in 2028 and 2030 and Republicans will be ready to hold them accountable,” Dole predicted.

He also spoke specifically to Ohio’s state legislative races. “Let’s not forget that one of the Democrats’ points of pride last night in Ohio was breaking the Republican legislative supermajority. Not winning the majority. Not even getting close to winning a majority. Just having a slightly smaller disadvantage,” he offered.

For all of the celebrations about Democrat wins, especially in Ohio, Brown’s win was still something of a narrow one for a midterm election year featuring a blue wave. With over 95% reporting, Brown ultimately enjoys 50.01% compared with Husted’s 45.15%, according to Decision Desk.

Dole added that this speaks to “Ohio being red, with a glitch, rather than purple or blue.”

There is another silver lining for Republicans, especially Ramaswamy. Even if he did not win the governorship, the ballot initiative for voter ID in the state constitution, which he called for in May, passed with over 65% of the vote.

Although Trump campaigned for Ramaswamy and Husted at rallies where other Ohio Republicans spoke, it does not appear he has spoken about the race on Truth Social as of Wednesday morning. The only statewide race he does appear to have addressed on social media is Texas’ gubernatorial race, where he referred to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who lost, as having turned into a “RINO.”

Vance, an Ohio native who also campaigned for these candidates, posted his thoughts to X on Wednesday morning, though his post did not specifically address Ohio races.

As the saying goes, politics is downstream of culture. But the opposite can also be true. We should keep this in mind when thinking about the path forward in the battle against gender madness.

It wasn’t too long ago that Americans were flooded with pronouns in signature lines, rainbow flags outside churches, and a man who thinks he is a woman in one of the highest-ranking positions at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Many Americans felt powerless to do anything about gender madness. Parents were denied notifications from schools about gender transition plans. In some cases, bills were proposed to remove children from homes where parents refused to affirm their child’s “preferred gender.” Men were allowed in women’s bathrooms and to play on women’s sports teams. Some of this is still happening, but the Trump administration fought back with executive orders and by championing legislation to put an end to the nonsense that swept the nation.

In the last two years, many have argued that America has experienced a “vibe shift,” including on the issue of transgenderism. However, this was far from a permanent change, as shown by the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Some of the biggest advocates for the LGBTQ+ movement just secured seats in Congress, including Sen.-elect James Talarico, D-Texas; Sen.-elect Abdul El Sayed, D-Mich.; and Sen.-elect Chris Pappas, D-N.H.

Regardless, Americans should not lose hope. The administration has two more years to fortify and secure the wins it has implemented in the area of gender and sexuality, lest we return to a dystopia fueled by confusion and lies.

In the past two years, HHS has ejected people and dismantled policies that once contributed to the mass psychosis of millions of Americans and the sexual disfiguration of youth across the country.

It was just three years ago when Rachel (born Richard) Levine, then the assistant secretary for health at HHS, touted “gender-affirming care” as “standard of care” medicine. The man currently in that position, Adm. Brian Christine, put an end to that nonsense, rightly calling such “care” sex-rejecting procedures. This past summer, his office released a damning report outlining the alleged fraud and nefarious activity perpetrated in the name of mental health care for minors.  

Dozens of gender clinics have shut down, in part due to successful legal action against practitioners of so-called gender medicine, along with the termination of funding for clinics.

Thanks to brave leadership in Washington, D.C., and in states across the country, far fewer Americans today are forced to virtue signal or bite their tongues during ridiculous conversations about gender. No more pronouns, no more ‘colorful’ celebrations on the White House lawn, no more tuck bathing suits.

Crucially, the current Supreme Court has also shown its support for parental rights.

This does not mean the gender brigade will quit. Some men are still doing their darndest to infiltrate women’s sports and spaces. Some politicians see concern over women’s rights as “manufactured.”

A reshaped Congress could embolden some of these malefactors.

Laura Hanford, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation who works on transgender policies, warns that the nail isn’t in the coffin of appalling gender initiatives.

“It would be a very grave mistake to assume the gender borg has been defeated,” Hanford says.

“The ideology and the training infrastructure that has embedded it across medical, educational, welfare, and legal systems are alive, thriving, and raring to resurface,” she continued.

Despite the decline in those identifying as gender-nonconforming, particularly among the younger generation, we can’t afford to be complacent. Parents, in particular, must remain vigilant about what is being taught in schools and what their children are exposed to via social media.

If you have children, do not take these declining rates as permission to check out. You are needed now more than ever, particularly at school board meetings and in your community.

American consumers can continue to vote with their dollars. Don’t give money to companies that blatantly support gender divergence, no matter how inconvenient it may be.

Recent success with lawsuits and executive orders has quelled the tide of gender madness. But progressives have been patient. They will never cease their quest to reshape human nature. Thankfully, those of us who believe in biology have reality on our side.

The Trump administration has given parents, communities, and institutions room to reclaim what was lost, but it cannot do all the work for us. Those of us who believe in biological reality, parental authority, and the protection of children must continue to speak plainly, act courageously, and refuse to surrender common sense for the sake of social approval.

The lesson of the past decade is clear: Cultural ground abandoned will eventually be occupied. If we want this course correction to last, Americans must stay loud and affirm truth.

Five new candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America won House seats Tuesday. Together with reelected Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., that brings the number of DSA-backed members in the next House of Representatives, as of this writing, to at least seven.

This marks a significant expansion for a movement whose official program calls for abolishing the Senate, bringing the nation’s largest corporations under public ownership, and replacing the president and the Supreme Court with institutions subordinate to Congress.

Perhaps the most consequential development is the DSA’s success in making ideas once considered politically unacceptable increasingly difficult for Democrat leaders to dismiss.

The Overton window, a concept developed by policy researcher Joseph Overton, describes the range of ideas politicians can advocate without being pushed outside the mainstream. That range can shift, and yesterday’s election shows that it most certainly has in recent years. Proposals once considered unthinkable have now become part of ordinary political debate.

In New York, Rep.-elect Claire Valdez campaigned to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and impose universal rent control. In Pennsylvania, Rep.-elect Chris Rabb advocated universal basic income, free high-speed public transportation, and what he calls “national grocery stores.” He also wants ICE abolished.

Rep.-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated former Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a New York Democrat primary. A former organizer of virulent pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University, she calls for ending U.S. funding to Israel and divesting from what her website calls “Israeli apartheid.”

Colorado’s Melat Kiros unseated 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in a Democrat primary. Kiros opposes Israel’s existence as a specifically Jewish state. Asked whether the 2025 lethal firebombing of a Boulder gathering supporting Israeli hostages held in Gaza was antisemitic, she declined to say so. She later expressed regret for not conveying sufficient empathy for the Jewish community but still stopped short of calling the attack unequivocally antisemitic.

In Michigan, Rep.-elect Donavan McKinney defeated incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar in the Democrat primary before winning the general election. Thanedar had the backing of House Democrat Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., making McKinney’s primary victory another sign that DSA-backed challengers can upset the party establishment.

In local elections, DSA-backed Janeese Lewis George was elected mayor of Washington, D.C. In Florida, DSA-backed Ashley Herrmann defeated a Republican state House incumbent in a district President Donald Trump carried in 2024.

Most of the congressional newcomers won in overwhelmingly Democrat districts, where the primaries were decisive. That hardly means the country has embraced socialism. Herrmann’s victory, however, shows the movement can win beyond those strongholds.

The socialists’ influence extends beyond DSA-endorsed candidates. In Michigan, Democrat Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers after campaigning for “Medicare for All” and opposing military assistance to Israel. El-Sayed was not endorsed by the DSA and calls himself a capitalist, not a socialist. His victory nonetheless illustrates how positions associated with the socialist Left are gaining support beyond the DSA’s formal ranks.

The DSA’s program is sweeping. It advocates moving toward the abolition of police and prisons, ending all military and economic aid to Israel, and replacing the two-party system. Not every endorsed candidate embraces every plank, but those are the stated goals of the movement helping elect them.

Public attitudes have shifted, too. Gallup reported in September that 65% of Democrats viewed socialism positively, compared with 50% in 2010. Among independents, the figure rose from 37% in 2025 to 45% this year. Overall, 43% of Americans viewed socialism favorably, a Gallup high. The DSA itself remained less popular: 38% favorable and 54% unfavorable.

Those figures do not establish that Americans endorse the DSA’s platform or that the organization caused the change. They do suggest that the socialist label carries less stigma than it once did.

Winning majority support for its most sweeping proposals is not essential to the DSA’s strategy. Its candidates campaign on concerns about housing, wages, and health care, then use public office to bring more far-reaching ideas into legislative debates. Each victory makes those proposals harder for Democratic leaders to ignore, particularly when a small faction may hold crucial votes in a closely divided House.

The DSA does not need to control the Democratic Party to change its direction. It only needs to make its agenda increasingly difficult for party leaders to reject.

Sadly, Tuesday’s election showed just how much progress the socialists have made toward that goal.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” stated Vance, who, at this point, is the presumed front-runner for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination.

“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance wrote. “Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”

Citing an unnamed pollster, the vice president said that President Donald Trump’s 2024 voters who planned to vote Democrat in 2026 gave their top four reasons they could return to the GOP: “end the war,” “focus on cost of living/inflation,” “put America First,” and “change our relationship to Israel.”

Vance said that “our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.”

“This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos-Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound,” Vance added.

As a senator, Vance opposed foreign intervention in the Russia-Ukraine war and was critical of previous interventions by the George W. Bush administration.

However, since Trump launched extensive strikes against Iran in February, he has never publicly opposed the war effort, though it is unusual for a vice president to critique administration policy.

Vance was part of a delegation that tried to negotiate the foundation of a peace agreement with Iran, but Iran declined to give up its nuclear ambitions.

The vice president noted in his X post, “I asked the smartest data guy” about polling. He said the response was, “The data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us.”

When asked about Vance’s comment, Trump later told reporters, “I think it’s largely true, because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short-term.” But he added, “If I had to do it again, I’d do it again because, long term, it’s the only answer. You can’t have Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

“I thought it was good,” Trump added. “I knew that when I went in. We stopped them from having a nuclear weapon, and they’ll never have a nuclear weapon.”

This episode was recorded before Tuesday night’s election results.

Jack Fowler: Well, Victor, as much as people are consumed with domestic elections, we have some recent overseas activity in Israel, in Brazil, in British Columbia. Let’s start with British Columbia. You mentioned a little something about that on a recent podcast with Sami, but maybe it portends what might happen here in the U.S. 

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, the polls were … It’s about the provincial governor, our term of governor, that runs the seats in the provincial parliament in British Columbia, which is, I think, arguably either one of the two top left … You know, Quebec’s a separate case, but probably top two or three most liberal of the Canadian provinces, and the one that is most affected by immigration, especially from Asia, from India, and China. 

And so, it’s considered just—it was gonna be left-wing. It was always left-wing. But the polls said that there might be a little conservative surge, but no one had anticipated that it was a tidal wave. 

And for the first time in nearly a century, the Conservatives got an overwhelmingly successful parliamentary vote, and now they’re running the government, and no one had predicted that. 

By the same token, it’s a little hard to talk about Brazil because Bolsonaro, excuse me, I hope I said that right. Flávio [Bolsonaro] was supposed to win. He had won in the primary, and he was supposed to win by 4 or 5 points. Reportedly, he was leading, and [Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s] own personal lawyer that he had appointed to the Brazilian supreme court ordered the polls to keep open two hours longer, but not nationwide. 

So, there was the accusation, it’s alleged, that that helped Lula win an election that he wasn’t supposed to. And, of course, the whole Bolsonaro family fled because Lulu will put you in prison if you stay in Brazil. So, the polls again were wrong on that if it was an, if it was a valid election. 

The polls in Israel were wrong. It’s not that they were way off, but [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] was supposed to lose more seats than his rivals. He needed 61. I think by today there’s some … I think he’s down to 53 seats. His opponents have 47. But no one thought that after this election he would have the most seats. 

The problem is that his opponents have said they will not deal with the Arab two parties. One is more radical than the other, but combined they own, I think, 19 seats. But now this morning, they said they would, his opposition. So, maybe they’ll form a government at a time of war with two parties, one of which is pretty much pro-Hamas. 

So, that’s kind of scary. But they have one common theme, and that is, in all three of these cases, the pollsters missed, missed it.  

And I think Harry Enten in CNN had made the statement that he thought the Senate would go 52, 53 Democrats with an asterisk. And he meant that if the polls were wrong at the margin, they have been wrong in the last three elections, the two generals and one midterm, it was around 4 percentage points in favor of the Democrats. 

If that were to take effect in this fourth one, then the Republicans would have 52 seats. If the Republicans hold the Senate, and they confine their [House] losses to 15 seats. Remember that Barack Obama lost in his first midterms 60 seats plus, and then in his second midterm, he lost another 13 in his second term. 

He lost 13 senators in the first, and I think a few in the second. And when he left office, there was an overwhelming Republican Senate and House, and the same thing happened to Bill Clinton. Just like Obama, he started with a huge lead. People were angry at George H.W. Bush as they had been at George W. Bush. 

He came in, I think, with, 258 seats, 57 seats, Clinton did, and Obama came in with 258. Obama came in with, if you count the two socialists that were voting, 59 senators, and both of them lost badly in their first midterms. And Clinton actually picked up a couple of seats in his second midterm, but he was still not enough. 

He and Obama’s last two years, they had gone from overwhelming Democratic majorities to solid Republican majorities.  

Now, the point is, I’m not trying to forecast this midterm, but let’s just say that the traditional polls are right, and Trump loses three or four seats in the Senate, and he loses 20 seats, 25, as they say he will. 

What’s the net effect? As a historian, all you have to say is what’s been the net effect the last two times that’s happened? You know what’s really strange, Jack, is that Joe Biden had a miserable 2022, if everybody thinks about it. Right before the midterms in the summer of 2022, gas was higher than it is now. 

It was $5 without adjusting for inflation, much higher than it is now nationwide. And the [gross domestic product] was lower than it is now, and the inflation got up to 9.1 that year. So it was three times the inflation. So what am I getting at? We’re told that Trump is going to lose the election because of a war and gas and inflation. 

And I’m telling you, in the 2022 supposed red wave, [Joe] Biden had higher gas prices, and the inflation rate was three times that rate that year, and there was a war. Well, I shouldn’t say higher gas prices. It got up to $5, but by the time of the midterms, it was about where it is now, four-something. 

And he didn’t actually get us in a war, but it was even worse in some ways. I think whatever you say about Iran, we’ve lost about 22 people. We’ve spent $45 billion. That $45 billion we’ve spent in Iran is less than what we turned over to the Taliban under Biden right before the midterms in August. It was only a year before, 2021. 

He turned over a billion-dollar embassy, which is still in their hands, locked or in their possession. He turned over the Balad Air Force base that we had just invested $300 or $400 million in. He turned over, and this is infrastructure, he turned over equipment, he turned over weapons.  

Even if it isn’t as high as the $60 billion that people were tossing around, it was the arms market, it being the storehouse that we left behind that’s fueled terrorism all over the world, probably at least as much as we’ve spent in Iran if you take the infrastructure and the buildings. 

And then closer to the 2022 midterms, they invaded in 2022, they being the Russians. And they invaded because of the humiliation that we had in Afghanistan that destroyed deterrence because Biden had put a hold on $100 million of offensive weapons that the Congress approved for Ukraine. He stopped it. 

He said to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, “If you’re going to … ” Basically, he said, “If you’re going to hack our cyber system, please don’t hack hospitals and nonprofit,” stuff like that.  

And then he said his reaction to a putative invasion by Russia would depend on whether it was a minor or major invasion.  

What I’m getting at is with all, with worse economic news, with worse gas prices, and with a worse foreign policy situation he picked up one Senate seat, and he only lost nine House seats. 

And the Left was exuberant. I went back and looked this morning at it. They said this was a victory. Yes, he lost the House, but the margins are so small, and the Republicans cannot enforce discipline, and now we have whittled down their Senate margin to almost nothing and da, da, da, da, da. 

So, what I’m getting at is the only thing I can see is different, Jack is I went back and looked at some of the news accounts. They said the economy was booming in the third quarter under Biden. It was 3.2.  

Well, the economy then is really booming because now we just learned that the third quarter was actually 3.4, and there’s estimates that might, estimates that might be five, but they’re not talking about a boom now. 

The inflation rate was three times higher. They said it was a bump. I looked at an article by Janet Yellen. Remember, she said, “This is just temporary. Don’t worry.” Gas prices, they said, are going down because he went to the Arabs. That didn’t work and asked them to pump more. But he did drain 40% of the strategic reserve to get it down from 5 to about 4.10 or something. 

But it was still high. But the difference was the media said it was great. Everything was going great. Don’t worry about Russia. Don’t worry about the skedaddle from Afghanistan. But it’s just a … What I’m getting at is if [Trump] loses the midterms, it’s not because the economy or gas or wars were different than Biden. 

It’s because they have been interpreted by the media as existential, one-of-a-kind, worst-thing-in-history events. Affordability. The other thing, which I think is the real reason there’s unpopularity, is Joe Biden raised prices by 21%. Twenty-one percent. So, if you wanted to buy a dollar banana when he came into office, it was $1.21. 

Trump came in, and he immediately stopped that 5.1 average over four years to 2.3 the first year, and now it’s gonna be about 3.4. Still lower, but nobody’s talking about that. Nobody’s saying, “Donald Trump’s got 3.4 GDP. He’s got the highest per family, per capita family income. 

He’s got the lowest poverty rate. We’re growing at 3.4, and it’s gonna go … ” No, no. They’re saying that prices are unaffordable. But nobody says they’re unaffordable because Biden raised them 21%, or they’re not saying, I don’t even think they’re saying this, Jack. “Well, Donald Trump should have lowered them, so we should have had minus 5% inflation the first … ” 

And if anybody can tell me when that happened without a severe recession, I’d like to know. So, there was a miscommunication. It was the media, but it was also the administration didn’t get it out what they were trying to do. And they’re trying now to, but it’s very … And we’ll see what happens. 

They’re playing catch-up. I think they’re gaining. And one final observation. As I said, when Bill Clinton, in eight years, his lowest approval rating was 38.5. Obama’s was 38. When they got wiped out and lost the House and the Senate, their ratings went up. In the last two years, Bill Clinton got an enormous amount of empathy for two reasons. 

One, he went to Newt Gingrich and he said, “Let’s continue working. We have two historic balanced budgets, ’98, ’97 and ’98—excuse me, ’98, and we’re forecast for ’99. Let’s go for 2000 and 2001.” And they did.  

There was even an article I saw that people were worried that we were paying off the debt too quickly, and it might affect bonds. 

There wouldn’t be an availability of government bonds. So, that everybody was happy about that. And Gingrich didn’t get the credit that Clinton did, but that was something.  

And then the second they tried to impeach Bill Clinton when the economy was growing at 3%. And so that didn’t work. And Bill Clinton left office with 60% approval rating in 2001 in January. 

Did losing the House and Senate affect him at  all? I don’t think it did. He ballyhooed his big Palestinian peace summit that he had. He went into Serbia. Did he ask for congressional approval? No. Did he bomb? Yes, 77 days. Did he hit bridges on the Danube? Yes. Did he knock out the power grid some days? Yes. 

He did what he wanted. Obama, the same thing. After the debacle over Obamacare, the one vote, the wipeout in the 2010 midterms, he got down to 37.5. To see Obama talk and to look at him prance around, people didn’t like him. Then he got clobbered. He won the election, but he didn’t do well in the Congress in 2012. 

He got clobbered again in 2014. He lost as many seats in the modern period in the House as anybody. And what did he do? And the state legislatures too were, were wiped out. And this—Oh, yes, 14—nationwide, 1,400 seats in state legislatures and federal seats. OK. So, now he’s president in 2014. And what is he doing? 

He’s on the golf course. He’s wearing his cutoffs. He’s wearing his shades. He’s giving his, “Well, hell,” you know, that just, those empty speeches. His popularity went from a low of 37.5 all the way over 60. Over 60. And what did he do? He did anything he pleased. He said, “I got a pen and I got a phone, and I’m gonna, you know, they’re not gonna work with me.” 

And he didn’t work with them, and they didn’t work with him. And he signed the Iran deal, which was a disaster. He airlifted $400 million in cash on a pallet for the Iranians at night so we couldn’t see it, and it was a treaty.  

And he [said], “I’m a constitutional lawyer. I don’t have to, I don’t have to, you know, I don’t have to go to the Senate.” 

He didn’t go to the Senate. And then he went into the Paris climate accord, that disastrous thing. Public opinion didn’t want that. And then he recognized Cuba. He recognized them and lifted the sanctions.  

So, my point is, he didn’t have any Congress. They were opposed to all of that, and he started issuing hundreds of executive orders. 

So, if Trump should lose I think it won’t affect his foreign policy one iota. It’ll affect his ability to confirm judges and appointees if he has to replace [any]. That’s important. In the House, it will do what they did to Clinton and what they did during Trump’s first term. They will impeach Donald Trump. 

There’s no doubt about it. Maybe once, maybe twice, they’ll impeach some Cabinet. Will they get convicted? No, because they’re not going to win 60 seats.  

So, it will be a performance art virtue signaling.  

One last observation. When these presidents lost their majorities and they went into their last two years, why did their opinion polls go up? 

One, they weren’t restricted. They’d kept doing what they wanted. Two, there was a campaign started. So, in the case of Bill Clinton, it was Al Gore versus George W. Bush, and it had already started, and they were going at it.  

But in the case of Barack Obama, it was even more visceral. It was Hillary Clinton and Trump back and forth in 2016 and to some extent in 2015. 

And so, these two presidents just said, “I’m above the fray. I’m a statesman. I’m working on foreign policy. I’m not gonna get involved with Hillary’s campaign. I’m not gonna get involved.” Remember Al Gore got really angry, and he made a colossal error because of the adultery and the Monica [Lewinsky] thing? Bill Clinton was popular, and he would not campaign with him against Bush. 

And remember that, Jack? People said to him— 

Fowler: Yes …  

Hanson: “Are you crazy?” I think Mark Penn, Doug Schoen, and everybody said, “Why don’t you campaign? He’s at 55% approval. The economy’s booming.” And Gore, I think, was a narcissist megalomania. They all are, but he especially, and he wouldn’t campaign, and people were kind of sympathetic to Bill Clinton of all people. 

Fowler: Yeah …  

Hanson: So, once that campaign starts in a president’s lame-duck years, he plays, he’s just kind of the president. The more you saw of Obama, the more you heard him, the less you liked him. The less you saw him and the less you heard him, the more you liked him. And then his team went with the propaganda, serious diplomacy of the Iran deal, landmark thing of the climate accord, revolutionary act with Cuba, and people didn’t even follow it. 

They liked him at that point because he was harmless. Trump, I don’t know if that’ll happen with him, but he will not be affected in foreign policy. He won’t be able to, if he loses the Senate, appoint anybody. But then Obama and Clinton didn’t get anybody really passed too much in their last two years. 

So, we’ll see. I think there’s a 50 … I think it’s 55% the Republicans have a chance to keep the Senate, and I think it’s 45-55 they might lose the House. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Voters were more dissatisfied with the state of the economy in 2026 than they were in 2024, according to exit polling.

While punishing the party in power was the antidote to that on Tuesday, most voters said they didn’t necessarily trust Democrats to handle key issues more than Republicans, as both parties had low approval ratings.

A CBS News exit poll found voters were angrier and had a more negative view of the economy than in 2024, when President Donald Trump won largely on voter confidence that he would repair the sagging economy.

The blue wave may not have been as much an expression of unhappiness or an endorsement of Democrat policies as it was anti-incumbent, even as deep red areas shifted blue.

The CBS poll showed that about 20% of those who voted for Democrats in House races had an unfavorable view of the party. Democrats had a 54% unfavorable rating and 46% favorable, not much better than 59% unfavorable for Republicans and 41% favorable, according to the CBS poll.

The CBS poll found that 38% were “angry” about the economy and 37% were “dissatisfied.” Another 18% said they were “satisfied,” while 7% said they were “enthusiastic.”

In a year when Democrats campaigned heavily on affordability, voters were also more than twice as likely to say their finances were worse off, and voters across party lines worried about affording gas and groceries, the CBS poll found. One in five even described their financial hardship as severe.

Compared to two years ago, 44% of Americans said their financial situation was worse, 38% said it was about the same, and 18% said it was better.

An Associated Press exit poll found that half the voters said the cost of living and corruption in government were “crucial.” Half of those concerned about corruption voted Democratic in House races, while 4 in 10 voted Republican.

The AP exit poll found that 4 in 10 voters wanted “to express opposition” to President Donald Trump, another 4 in 10 said the president wasn’t a factor, while 2 in 10 voters wanted “to express support” for Trump.

The AP poll found Democrats had only a “small advantage” in their perceived ability to handle the issues of the economy and government corruption.

The same poll found 4 in 10 identified the economy as their top concern, while another 3 in 10 said the state of democracy was the top concern. In a turnaround from 2024, just 1 in 10 identified immigration or health care. Fewer named foreign policy or crime.

Republicans lost significant ground from two years earlier, when Trump won almost half of the youth vote and about 40% of Hispanic voters.

The AP poll found that about 7 in 10 voters under 30 said they supported the House Democrat candidate, while about 3 in 10 said they voted for the Republican. About one-third of Hispanic voters supported a Republican House candidate.

An ABC News exit poll showed that white men, usually the most decisive Republican constituency, backed GOP candidates by only 55%. That’s compared with 62% in 2024 and 63% in 2022, the last midterm election.

Johnson announced his decision this morning, just hours after the House and the Senate were called for Democrats, on a call with his staff, the source told the Daily Signal. Johnson served two terms as speaker and was elected after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the job. The GOP was dealt widespread midterm losses on Tuesday night, leaving Congress to debate who will now lead the party in the minority position.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Wednesday sent a letter to his colleagues, obtained by the Daily Signal, announcing his run for minority leader. He called Tuesday’s returns “staggering” for the party and called on the GOP to learn from the results.

“In these next two years, our jobs cannot be to merely spotlight how radical this new Democrat party is—offense, not defense, wins elections,” the letter reads. “Republican priorities prioritize making Americans’ neighborhoods safer, keeping more money in their pockets, and protecting enduring American values and freedoms. To restore our majority, we must restore voters’ faith in our ability to deliver on these principles.”

“That is why I am running to serve as Republican Leader in the 120th Congress,” Jordan wrote.

House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise threw his hat in the ring with a letter to his colleagues of his own. The Daily Signal obtained the letter, in which Scalise warns about the “socialists” coming to Washington.

“His No. 1 goal will be to lead the conference back into the majority. He is a proven and tested leader who is ready on day one. He’s spent his career unifying Republicans, and he is prepared for the big legislative and oversight battles ahead. The conference knows him, how he fights, and that he’s a trusted leader,” a source familiar with the congressman’s thinking told the Daily Signal.

Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger has entered the race for minority whip, a source familiar with his decision told the Daily Caller. Pfluger sent a letter to his colleagues, which was obtained by the Daily Signal, announcing his bid.

“Championship teams take the time to debrief after every game. It is time to regroup, recharge, and fully unify. We need fresh ideas and a leadership team committed to rebuilding a culture with a clear game plan to win in 2028. I’m running for Republican Whip because I believe that I am capable and can be trusted to implement the changes this team needs,” the letter reads.

Tuesday was a shocking blow to the GOP. As of 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Democrats have secured 244 House seats, nearly 30 more than necessary to hold the majority, while Johnson’s Republicans have won only 150.

Among the stunning results, a Democrat was elected governor of Texas for the first time since 1990, and a Democrat U.S. senator was elected in Texas for the first time since 1988. A similar trend happened in South Carolina, where Democrats elected a senator for the first time since 1998. Democrats won the Senate seat and governorship in Ohio, a state President Donald Trump carried by about 11 points in the 2024 election.

Virginia Grace McKinnon contributed to this report.

Among the 74% of voters who said the Iran war was a crucial factor, 62% voted Democrat and 35% voted Republican.

President Donald Trump’s operation in Iran has led to increased oil and gas prices, spelling trouble for Republicans in the midterms. The White House originally said the Iran war would be a four- to six-week operation, but it has stretched into an eight-month conflict.

“Haven’t finished the job, and maybe I will, and maybe I won’t,” Trump said in a Fox Business interview reacting to election results.

Democrats retook control of both the House and the Senate. As of 10 a.m. Eastern, Senate Democrats will hold 54 seats, the Republicans 44, with races in Alaska and Mississippi still to be decided. In the House, Democrats have won 241 seats to the Republicans’ 149, with 45 races still to be called. Only 218 seats are needed for a majority.

In a CBS exit poll, most voters said the U.S. made the wrong decision to take that military action in Iran, including about a quarter of Republicans.

Trump acknowledged that the unpopularity of the Iran war played a role in the election results, telling Fox Business, “I think a part of it was Iran.” 

“People agree with what I’m doing on Iran, but they really probably weren’t willing to do the short-term consequence of playing anything more for gasoline,” he said.

According to the NBC exit poll, 39% of voters identified the economy as the most important issue facing the country. Another 75% said the national economy was in poor shape, and 65% said Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the U.S.

More than 60% held Trump responsible for high prices.

Eighty-eight percent said they were concerned about food and grocery prices, followed by 87% concerned about gas and diesel, 86% concerned about utilities, and 85% concerned about healthcare prices.

About 4 in 10 U.S. voters nationally said the economy was the most important issue facing the country, expressing concern about gas and grocery prices, according to an Associated Press exit poll. Another 75% of voters were “angry” or “dissatisfied” with the direction of the country.

More than 6 in 10 said they disapproved of Trump’s performance. Trump had a 38% approval rating, with 62% disapproving.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents to the CBS exit poll said the president factored into their midterm vote for the House.

During Trump’s 32-day midterm campaign blitz, he made himself a key player in the elections, urging voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

Vice President JD Vance urged voters to overlook the high prices and consider the bigger picture.

“Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas.

Despite his heavy involvement in the races this election cycle, the president did not take responsibility for the sweeping losses.

“They didn’t like the candidates, and some of the candidates that I endorsed fought me, and they didn’t like it,” he told Fox Business.

Seventy-six percent of voters reject building data centers in their local community, and 43% do not trust either party to tackle AI, according to early CNN exit poll results. These findings reflect similar results from national polling this year, which showed voters were torn about which party could be trusted to handle their AI concerns.

Out of 79,669 respondents, 23% of voters said AI and data centers were “crucial” to their vote, and 33% responded that AI and data centers were “a major factor” in their vote, CNN’s exit poll results showed. Voters who called the issue “crucial” backed Democrat House candidates 66% to 31%.

Fifty-seven percent of voters said AI will mostly hurt society, while 24% responded that the technology would mostly help society, the CNN data showed.

Similarly, an AP-NORC poll released Oct. 8 found that 39% of adults said neither party could reliably handle AI. Adults in the AP-NORC poll also expressed concern about AI advancement, with 81% responding that it is “extremely/very important” to keep AI under the control of humans.

Another New York Times/Siena poll, conducted from Sept. 8 to 13, found 61% of likely voters opposed building data centers to power AI, which included 47% of Republicans.

However, AI and data centers were not the top issue for voters.

Ninety percent of voters felt that government corruption was a “crucial/major factor” to their vote, and 89% responded that the cost of living was a “crucial/major” factor, according to CNN’s poll.

In 21 toss-up House districts, though, 43% of voters said they trust Democrats more on regulating AI, compared to 36% for Republicans, according to a Guidant Polling and Strategy survey first reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation on Monday. Eighty percent of voters in the same poll would be more inclined to support a candidate for Congress who backed “common-sense” AI regulation.

“[T]he titans of Silicon Valley dig bunkers for themselves and warn that the artificial intelligence they are creating risks human extinction,” Democrat Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff said during his victory speech Tuesday, shared in a video posted on X.

CNN’s exit poll results come from the Voter Poll, a survey conducted by SSRS that combined nearly 80,000 participants surveyed between Oct. 19 and Nov. 3 before the election, with about 22,000 live interviews at 15 competitive states’ polling locations, according to CNN. The poll’s figures could be off by a margin of error of plus or minus 0.6 percentage points, and the data may change as CNN updates its interview data.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Any hopes of passing the SAVE America Act disappeared with the new congressional majority. However, voters in multiple states approved measures to ensure that only citizens vote and to require voter ID.

Voter ID and citizenship requirements are traditionally supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats and passed mostly in red states. However, the measures also passed in states where Democrats saw big victories.

Alaska was a Senate battleground, but the citizenship measure passed by 69%, according to Ballotpedia.

Kansas is a red state where Democrats picked up a Senate seat Tuesday, but where 63% of voters approved a constitutional amendment to ensure that only citizens can vote.

Also, voters in the solidly red states of Arkansas and South Dakota approved new laws to prevent noncitizen voting in local elections. West Virginia enshrined it in the state constitution.

Other states boosted voter ID requirements.

Voters in North Carolina and Ohio, where Democrats also won Senate seats, locked voter ID into their constitutions. North Carolina voters approved it by 60%. It passed by 66% in Ohio.

In Nevada, voters approved a measure to require voter ID by 62%, according to NBC News.

There were sticking points.

In solidly blue California, one of the bluest states in the country, 60% of voters rejected a voter ID law.

Also, in Arizona, a battleground state that President Donald Trump won twice and lost once, voters rejected a broad election reform ballot measure that included a citizenship requirement and voter ID in the state constitution.

The blue state of Colorado also rejected expanding voter ID to mail-in ballots by a vote of 64%.

On gender issues, Nebraska voters approved a ballot measure to prevent biological males from playing in women’s scholastic sports by 68%, according to Ballotpedia.

Arizona approved a measure to require people to play on the sports team and use private locker room space based on their biological sex by 58%, according to Decision Desk HQ.

It further restricts transgender people from competing on sports teams or using private spaces like locker rooms that match their gender identity.

The heavily blue state of Washington appeared to be heading toward passing a similar measure, with 57% backing it. However, the ballot measure had not been called as of Wednesday morning.

A measure in Colorado was still too close to call Wednesday morning. The proposal called for prohibiting health care professionals from providing surgery to people under the age of 18 for “treatment in response to a minor’s perception of sex or gender.”

On abortion, it was a split night.

Voters in Virginia and Nevada codified the right to an abortion in the state constitutions, while voters in Idaho and Missouri rejected proposals to codify abortion rights.