Democrats Won Big in the 2026 US Midterms: What Happens Next?

by Gian Luca Di Lenardo

The United States midterm elections made quite the splash. Last week, Democrats, buoyed by growing opposition to the U.S. war with Iran and concerns around affordability, pulled off some historic political wins.

In Kansas, Senator-elect Adam Hamilton is the first Democrat to be elected to the Senate from the state since 1932. In South Carolina, Darline Graham, the brother of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, ran unsuccessfully to continue her caretaker term, granting Annie Andrews a victory in a state which had not seen a Democratic senator in roughly 20 years. However, the most shocking result was in Texas, which, due to its size within the United States’ electoral college system, is a lifeblood for Republican politics. There, James Talarico was able to clinch a critical Senate victory for the Democratic Party and overturn the notion of Texas’ longstanding status as an inviolable Republican stronghold. These Democratic inroads also extended down-ballot in Texas with Gina Hinojosa replacing Republican Governor Greg Abbott. Finally, in Michigan, where the failed Democratic primary candidate, Representative Haley Stevens, had an eleventh-hour conversion to shift her support to the Republican nominee, Mike Rogers, Abdul El-Sayed nevertheless emerged victorious as Senator-elect. He defeated Rogers by approximately seven percentage points and became the first Muslim elected to serve in the Senate.

In total, Democrats flipped seven Senate seats (if the vote counts in Mississippi and Alaska continue to favor the Democratic candidates, this figure will increase to nine), more than 40 seats in the House of Representatives, and six governor’s offices. This has led some commentators to refer to the midterms as a “blue tsunami.”

Faced with this blue tsunami, U.S. Republican President Donald Trump has attempted to distance himself from the results by claiming that they are not a referendum on his term in office, as his name was not on the ballot. This claim has emerged despite Trump’s proclamations at political rallies leading up to the midterms to vote as if he were on the ballot. Further complicating this assertion is a fact that many of the Republican candidates—especially in Senate races—had relatively limited electoral experience. For example, before her brother’s death, Darline Graham had no prominent political career or sizable name recognition, including within South Carolina. A further challenge to Trump’s argument is that he took a very active role in the midterms by playing kingmaker and personally endorsing candidates who were challenging incumbents that had not been sufficiently loyal to his MAGA brand.

The day after the midterms, in a show of political defiance, Trump displayed a red hat on his desk in the Oval Office with a capitalized ‘VETO’. President Trump’s posture for the final two years of his presidency, now to include an oppositional legislative branch, seems to be a strategy centered on confrontation rather than legislative compromise. While he also left open the possibility of potentially working with Democrats on certain key issues such as immigration, if history is any indicator, Trump sees political compromise as a sign of weakness if he does not first receive big concessions. Within the Republican Party, the midterms have also pushed potential 2028 presidential contenders—the most notable being U.S. Vice President JD Vance—to distance themselves from Trump to preserve their political image. Vance recently demonstrated this by posting on X that he believed the war in Iran was responsible for Republicans’ defeat and that the MAGA contingent should return to its “America First” foreign policy, reassess the U.S.’s relationship with Israel, and focus on bottom line issues such as affordability.

But how should the Democrats govern in these next two years if they want to set themselves up well for 2028?

Undoubtedly, Democrats will be raring to investigate the abuses and excesses of Trump’s second term, and Trump has indeed given them plenty of things to investigate. However, in the pursuit of accountability, Democrats risk devoting so many resources into their investigative and oversight responsibilities that they neglect the task of governance and fail to deliver on the affordability agenda that many campaigned on. Although successfully passing legislation with a president who will not shy away from the veto will be difficult, Democrats must continue to demonstrate to the American people that they are the party most focused on ‘kitchen table issues’ that concern many Americans. If they do this well, they can translate their 2026 midterm victories into lasting political success in 2028.

On the other hand, now that Trump is on his way out of office, will the Republican Party meaningfully evolve itself—recognizing that the MAGA approach to politics does not generate electoral support without Trump at its helm? As candidates on the Republican side begin to announce their intention to seek the presidency, it will be interesting to see how closely they choose to emulate the Trump brand to position themselves as the inheritors of his legacy. The MAGA era of American politics will end alongside Trump, and perhaps the midterms are an indicator that its demise has begun.