Where did all the Republicans go?
During the midterm elections Tuesday, Republican voters stayed home while Democrats and independents rushed to the polls and mailed in ballots, delivering a historic drubbing.
Democrats gained control of the House and were eyeing an eventual majority of more than 250 seats. They captured at least seven Senate seats and will now control a majority of governorships for the first time since after the 2010 election — including taking Texas, the biggest Republican prize on the board.
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Abortion rights measures advanced in Virginia and Nevada, while a pro-life measure was defeated in Missouri.
Republicans were left to figure out where it all went wrong.
“This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who oversaw one of the few bright spots for the Republicans, where they kept the state’s governorship and Senate seat and limited damage within their U.S. House delegation.
He said Republicans failed as candidates, “fighting yesterday’s battles” by highlighting the wrong issues such as the “woke” agenda while botching their response to the cost-of-living concerns voters were telegraphing.
Vice President J.D. Vance, though, saw things differently.
“The reason we lost is the war,” he said.
Where Mr. DeSantis said Republicans were not excited enough to show up, Mr. Vance said they did show up but felt betrayed.
“The main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026,” the vice president said.
Mr. Trump said the Republicans’ problem was too little, not too much, Trump.
“If I were on the ballot, we would have won,” he said. “We weren’t able to transfer the love to candidates.”
Democrats laughed off Mr. Trump’s notion that the elections were not about him, saying voters “hate the direction our country is going.”
“Trump spent half his time talking about things that were irrelevant to their lives, the reflecting pool, the new [arch]. But most of the time he did things that hurt them,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. “Republican eyes were so glued to Trump’s Truth Social feed that they missed the truth, staring them dead in the face.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Democrats had flipped Senate seats in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Maine and Kansas. Kansas picked up a Democrat for the first time since the New Deal. Two other seats, in Alaska and Mississippi, were still developing.
In the House, Democrats were projected to win more than 240 seats, compared with about 145 for Republicans. NBC News estimated that when all races are concluded, Democrats could hold 258 seats. That would be their largest majority since the first years of the Clinton administration.
The midterm elections that ended that dominance are also the best comparison to what happened Tuesday. In 1994, Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years and gained eight Senate seats, flipping the chamber to Republican control.
The Republicans ran that year on their Contract with America, giving voters a clear vision of where they would lead.
Democrats’ unity this year, by contrast, was rooted chiefly in anger at Mr. Trump.
His approval rating was below 40%, the lowest of any president heading into a midterm election cycle in 20 years. Even in 2018, during the midterm elections in his first term, his approval stood at 40%.
Voters were not sold on Democrats either. Some 53% held unfavorable views of them.
Still, voters were harder on Republicans, with 59% holding unfavorable views.
On the issues, Democrats generally came out on top, with voters giving them an edge in handling the economy, foreign policy and healthcare. Republicans still prevailed on immigration, and the parties were about even on tax policy.
Asked specifically about Mr. Trump’s actions in Election Day exit polls, voters were dismayed. Some 57% said he had gone “too far” on immigration enforcement, 62% said it was the “wrong decision” to attack Iran, and 62% said the higher prices they were paying were “because of Trump’s policies.”
The polling did not ask about it, but several leading Republicans wondered Wednesday whether the Republicans’ handling of the files of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had also dragged down their candidates.
Mr. Trump spent the final weeks of the campaign trying to give Republicans reasons to turn out, including the possibility of a $5,000 “Trump dividend” check if voters preserved Republican majorities.
Yet short of last year’s tax-cut budget law and special funding for the Homeland Security Department, Republicans in Congress did not pass much major legislation over the past two years.
Attempts to approve legislation requiring voter ID and proof of citizenship to vote never reached Mr. Trump’s desk.
Republicans went into the night with 53 Senate seats. They also held 220 House seats, to Democrats’ 213, with one independent and two vacancies.
The Trump administration had hoped to give Republicans a bit of a cushion by pushing for an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting to erase some Democratic-held seats.
It backfired big time.
In Texas, where Republicans had hoped to reduce Democrats to just eight of the state’s 38 seats — a loss of four — Democrats were poised to actually increase their number, with victories or leads in 14 seats as of Wednesday afternoon.
In California, which retaliated against Texas with its own map to give Democrats five additional seats, the maneuver worked. As of Wednesday, Democrats held or led in 48 of the state’s 52 House seats.
In North Carolina, Republicans drew lines they hoped would reduce Democrats to just three of the state’s 14 House seats. As of Wednesday morning, Democrats were leading or had won nine seats.
Even when put directly to voters, redistricting was a Democratic win.
In Maryland, the party’s faithful approved a ballot measure allowing the legislature to scrap its current map, which gives Democrats seven of the state’s eight U.S. House seats, and replace it with one that gives them all eight.
In Missouri, though, voters rejected a Republican gerrymander map that would have erased a Democratic-held seat.
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