Where did all the Republicans go?
This week’s election wipeout saw GOP voters stay home even as Democrats and independents rushed the polls and mailed back the ballots to deliver 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 they now control a majority of governorships for the first time since after the 2010 election — including taking Texas, the biggest GOP 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 GOP, where it kept the state’s governorship and Senate seat and limited damage within its 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 weren’t 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, for his part, said the GOP’s 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 election wasn’t 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 Sen. Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat in line to become Senate majority leader. “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 — the latter state picking 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 winners in more than 240 seats, compared to Republicans at about 145. 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 election that ended that dominance is also the best comparison to what happened Tuesday. Republicans in 1994 gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years, and flipped 10 Senate seats.
The GOP ran that year on its Contract with America, giving voters a clear vision for where the GOP would lead.
Democrats’ unity this year, by contrast, came chiefly from anger at Mr. Trump.
His approval rating was below 40%, the lowest of any president heading into a midterm election in 20 years. Even in 2018, during the midterm elections in his first term, his approval had stood at 45%.
Voters weren’t sold on Democrats either. Some 53% held an unfavorable view of them.
But they were worse on the GOP, with 59% down on Republicans.
On the issues, Democrats generally came out on top, with voters giving them an edge in handling the economy, foreign policy and health care. Republicans still prevailed on immigration, and the parties were about even on tax policy.
Asked specifically about Mr. Trump’s actions, voters were dismayed.
Some 57% said he’d gone “too far” on immigration enforcement, 62% said it was the “wrong decision” to attack Iran, and 62% said the higher prices they are paying are “because of Trump’s policies.”
The polling didn’t ask about it, but several leading Republicans wondered Wednesday whether the GOP’s handling of the files of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t also a drag on 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 GOP majorities.
But short of last year’s tax-cut budget law and special funding for Homeland Security, Republicans in Congress didn’t pass much major legislation over the last 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 218 House seats, to Democrats’ 214, with one independent and two vacancies.
The Trump administration had hoped to give the GOP a bit of a cushion by pushing for an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting, seeking to erase some Democrat-held seats.
It backfired big time.
In Texas, where Republicans had hoped to reduce Democrats to just 8 of the state’s 38 seats — a loss of five — Democrats were poised to actually grow their number, with victories or leads in 14 seats as of Wednesday afternoon.
Meanwhile in California, which retaliated against Texas with its own map to give Democrats five additional seats, the maneuver worked. As of Wednesday, Democrats won or held leads in 48 of the state’s 52 House seats.
In North Carolina, Republicans drew lines they hoped would reduce Democrats to just 3 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 Dem 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 GOP gerrymander map that would have erased a Democrat-held seat.
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