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All the signs were pointing in Democrats' direction heading into election night.
But nothing indicated quite this level of a romp.
Democrats won the House and the Senate, and while that outcome was always a possibility, the depth and breadth of the Democratic victories were jaw-dropping.
Tuesday night was a reminder that the pendulum of American politics continues to swing, and politics is never permanent.
Here are six takeaways about what happened, why it happened and what it all means going forward:
1. President Trump wanted this election to be about him. It was, and that hurt Republicans
President Trump's unpopularity has been a glaring warning sign for the Republican Party heading into election night. Since the Iran war, Trump's approval ratings slid from 48% to as low as 36% in an average of the polls.
A whopping 62% of voters in this election disapproved of his job as president, according to the voter poll commissioned by the broadcast networks and the Associated Press, which mixes pre-Election Day polling of early voters and Election Day exit polls.
Three-quarters of voters said they are either angry or dissatisfied with the direction of the country. A plurality said the economy was the most important issue, and two-thirds said Trump's policies have made economic conditions worse.
In addition to the economy, corruption rose as an issue in the last several months. The voter poll showed that 62% said Trump prioritizes his own interests more than the country's.
For all of the things that will be written about this election, the bottom line is that Trump waged the kind of war he said he wouldn't get into — one that is dragging on, raising gas prices and piling on people who were already feeling the pinch — and now he is paying the price.
If Trump was supposed to be the kingmaker in the 2028 Republican presidential primary, think again. These midterms will have heavy reverberations for the presidential election. It will likely mean more GOP candidates will enter the race, and they will be more likely to present a wider view of what the direction of the party could be — rather than simply trying to carry the Trump torch.
2. Republicans tried to insulate themselves with redistricting, but it didn't work
The fundamentals of this election seemed to mirror the 2006 midterms amid the Iraq War — the last time the Democrats won back both the House and Senate. Democratic gains in this election, though, were seen as possibly being limited by structural disadvantages — primarily through Republican efforts to tilt the playing by redistricting.
Trump strongly encouraged conservative-led states to redistrict over the last year, hoping to gain more Republican seats in the House — but that backfired, particularly in south Texas. There was always the possibility that incidentally weakening safe districts could make them competitive. Now that that's happened, it's a true cautionary tale of the "dummymander."
3. Latinos are a true swing group in America now
The reason Texas Republicans' efforts to gerrymander didn't pay off is because Latinos did not vote in this election the way they did in the 2024 presidential election.
In 2024, Trump only lost the group by 5 points. It moved toward Trump at the time, in large measure because they were upset with inflation and believed Trump would bring down prices.
Not only did that not happen over the last two years, Trump also angered many in the community because of aggressive deportation tactics that targeted more than just hardened criminals, as Trump promised.
In a real indictment of the Trump deportation policies, roughly 60% of respondents in the voter poll said they disapproved of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Sixty-eight percent of Hispanics disapproved of how ICE is handling its job.
To be clear, Latinos are not a monolith. Latinos in South Florida have different backgrounds and priorities than those in South Texas or those in California or New York. But the fact that the largest-growing group in the country swung strongly away from the president and Republicans makes them very important electorally — a true swing group in the country that is underrepresented at the polls and has a lot of power.
4. Are Texas and other red states in play for Democrats, or was this election a giant asterisk?
Democrats won in a lot of red states. That is important for the party heading into the 2028 presidential election. To have a real chance at expanding the presidential map, they need to figure out how to appeal to red-state and rural voters. They showed in this election they can do that, but they won't have Trump as their rocket fuel in this next presidential election.
The Lone Star State, for example, has been a majority-minority state for a while, and that demography had previously given Democrats false hope. So is Texas the new Georgia, or will it revert to its conservative roots?
The breadth of Democratic victories in Texas in this midterm is undeniable. They won up and down the ballot — Democrat James Talarico won by roughly 12 points, or 1.1 million votes, the first time Texas is sending a Democrat to the Senate since 1988; incoming Gov. Gina Hinojosa won by 7 percentage points, or almost 700,000 votes; they flipped two congressional districts, both of which were won by Trump in 2024 by at least 14 points; they won lieutenant governor; attorney general; railroad commissioner and more.
As they say in Texas, they beat 'em like a rented mule. But are Democrats renting power in the state or is it something bigger? There is going to be a lot of money spent in 2028 to see if the blue gains in Texas are more permanent. And a lot is on the line, because Texas has 40 electoral votes, and putting it in play legitimately for Democrats would reshape the electoral map in a way that would only be rivaled by the earthquake of a shift that was California going for Democrats starting in 1992. (Yes, California used to be a reliably Republican state, going for the GOP in all but one election between 1952 and 1988.)
By the way, a bonus lesson from this election is that money isn't everything. Republicans spent more than $413 million on the Texas Senate race — and lost.
5. The results of this year's elections don't mean the country is enamored with the Democratic Party
Democrats have the opportunity to show they can authentically represent their states and try to hold onto these inroads they made in lots of red states and districts.
They were handed the keys to Congress, and people are going to expect results. New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, the once majority leader who may want to be in the job again, victoriously promised overnight that "relief is on the way."
But how? Even if Democrats have serious policy ideas to help fix economic problems in the country, they can't wave a magic wand. They won't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and they are unlikely to have an eager negotiating partner in congressional Republicans or Trump. Just before midnight on election night, Trump put out an image on his social media platform of a big red hat with the word "VETO" on it.
So Democrats are in danger of overpromising and underdelivering, which has become all too common in politics, and leads to voters becoming jaded. Democrats have to be careful with their messaging and how they govern. There will undoubtedly be more investigations and oversight of the Trump administration. But how far will they go? Another Trump impeachment attempt, for example, could be politically fraught.
No doubt, the GOP was soundly rejected Tuesday night, but Democrats aren't much better liked. The voter poll showed Republicans underwater with a 41% favorable and 59% unfavorable rating. Democrats were 47%-53%. Democrats had lower approval ratings earlier in Trump's second term, mostly because of disaffected Democrats. They rallied together to win in these midterms, but fissures on the left are simmering below the surface and are about to become far more apparent in the 2028 presidential Democratic primaries.
6. The polls got the direction right. If anything, they underestimated Democratic support
For a decade, polls have underestimated Republican support. In these elections, that was not the case. In fact, in some places they underestimated Democratic support.
For example, the national generic congressional ballot — the question of who people would vote for if the election was held the day of the poll — favored Democrats by about 8 percentage points. The voter poll looks like it turned out to be at least +18.
It's important to understand that it's hard to poll when the country has been going through as significant a political realignment as it has been in the Trump era.
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