Tuesday’s midterm results dealt President Trump and Republicans a severe blow, one reminiscent of the 2010 election, when Democrats under Barack Obama lost 63 seats in the House and seven in the Senate. This time, recent redistricting may have softened the overall numbers somewhat, but the result was still a rough one for the GOP.
Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress. While some races remain uncalled, they have flipped at least seven Senate seats and more than a dozen in the House.
The Texas results were startling, though not entirely out of the blue. Democrat James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton to win the state’s first Democratic Senate seat in 33 years. Paxton had been a vulnerable candidate, weighed down by controversy. More surprising was Gina Hinojosa’s defeat of incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott, which puts a Democrat in the Texas governor’s office for the first time in 32 years.
Michigan delivered another unexpected result: Abdul El-Sayed, a contentious progressive who has criticized Israel, won the open Senate race against former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers.
Florida was one of the few bright spots for Republicans. Ashley Moody kept her Senate seat, and Rep. Byron Donalds became the state’s first Black governor.
As in 2010, voters across the country delivered a clear rebuke to the president in office, signaling dissatisfaction with the first two years of Trump’s second term. Polls from a number of sources were imperfect, but Trump’s low approval ratings turned out to be a fairly strong warning sign.
My read is that voters, much as they did in 2010, punished an incumbent they saw as overreaching. Trump treated his sweeping 2024 victory as a mandate, as Obama had done after his own election win. Both presidents went too far in ways that alienated voters. Obama pushed through a large, unpopular health care overhaul, used executive orders to reshape the energy sector—an effort later rejected by the courts—and expanded government spending. The backlash helped fuel the Tea Party movement.
Trump moved quickly to close the border, responding to public anger over the millions of people who entered the country illegally during Joe Biden’s presidency. But he then pursued a broad deportation effort that reached people who had lived in the United States for years and had no criminal record beyond entering the country unlawfully. Voters were troubled by confrontations involving immigration agents, some of which turned violent. People who had recently demanded a secure border began to sour on the president’s approach.
Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, aiming to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons, also clashed with his campaign promise to keep the United States out of foreign conflicts. Even voters who supported that goal grew weary as oil prices rose.
He also imposed tariffs on trading partners, as he had during his first term, arguing that they would give American businesses a fairer chance. The White House can point to increased investment and a pickup in domestic manufacturing, but Trump used tariffs aggressively, and the costs became part of the political debate.
Higher fuel prices tied to the war, along with some inflation linked to tariffs, gave Democrats an opening to campaign on making life more affordable. It was a bold pitch, considering that the cost of living rose 21% during Biden’s four years in office—more than it has under Trump. Still, Trump had promised to lower prices and did not deliver, and voters held him to that promise.
Democrats, for their part, offered little detail about how they would make things more affordable. Some candidates backed Medicare for All as a way to lower health care costs, without explaining how they would pay for a program estimated to cost $25 trillion to $50 trillion. Others proposed returning to Biden-era policies aimed at curbing fossil fuels, a shift that could push energy prices up rather than down.
Much of the Democratic campaign focused less on a detailed platform than on opposition to Trump. The president helped that effort when he urged people to vote as though he himself were on the ballot. He may have been trying to energize his own supporters, but the opposition was already motivated. Many voters took him at his word and voted against his party—and against him.
Trump will have to answer for the Republican losses. His policies were effectively on the ballot, and he backed candidates in Texas and South Carolina who proved to be poor choices.
Democrats will celebrate their wins, but they now have the harder task of governing a party with deep divisions. Its progressive wing is likely to press for Medicare for All, abolishing immigration enforcement agency ICE and ending U.S. support for Israel—positions that may not have majority support. Proposals for higher taxes and expanded welfare programs could also put pressure on the country’s credit standing, while contributing to higher interest rates and inflation.
Some Democrats are also calling for a halt to the expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure. That could put American leadership in a major emerging technology at risk, along with jobs, investment and economic growth. Oil and gas investment faces a similar threat from Democratic proposals. Stock futures fell overnight as investors considered what the election could mean.
Several Democrats have promised investigations of Trump officials and have raised the prospect of impeaching the president again. Two years of bitter conflict and party infighting may not help them—and could complicate their plans for the 2028 presidential race.
There may be a small consolation for Republicans in the scale of the Democratic victory: if the party’s internal divisions undermine its ability to govern, Tuesday’s momentum could fade, giving Trump and the GOP time to regroup.
Trump has recovered from major setbacks before. He may manage it again.
