The Blue Tsunami of 2026

The results of the November 3 midterm elections were a stunning rebuke to President Trump and the Republican Party.

At the time of writing, votes are still being tallied around the country. But the picture of extent of the Democratic Party’s victory is coming into view. At the level of the U.S. Congress, Democrats will take office in January 2027 with majorities in both houses that were at the upper end of expectations before the election.

In fact, the national popular vote margin in favor of the Democrats is the largest since the mid-1970s Watergate era, and Democrats could end up with as many as 56 (of 100) U.S. senators, from their current number of 47. That would be the largest Senate majority of either party since 2009. Media estimates predict a House majority of at least 250 Democrats (of a total of 435 House members). That would be the largest House majority for either party since the early 1990s.

Democrats won senate seats in longtime conservative Republican strongholds like Kansas (which hadn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932), Texas and South Carolina. Democrats made gains in every demographic group and region, compared to Kamala Harris’s performance in the 2024 presidential election.

In 2024, Harris lost a close race to Trump largely because, as the incumbent vice president, she carried the can for the Biden administration’s inability to tackle inflation that was eroding working-class living standards. Key to Trump’s victory was his ability to add small, but significant, numbers of inflation-strapped voters among young people and people of color (especially Latinos) to his “base” of white, middle class Christian conservatives.

But Trump’s policies, from his erratic tariffs to the war against Iran, to huge cuts to medical assistance to fuel tax cuts to the rich, worsened the ability to afford necessities. What’s more, the administration’s unleashing of camouflaged thugs to arrest, imprison and deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants outraged millions. Democrats also tapped into disgust with the open corruption of Trump and his cronies, along with their disdain for the struggles of ordinary people.

The impact of these Trump actions repulsed all the groups who took a chance on Trump in 2024. Going into the 2026 midterm, opinion polls showed Trump to be the most unpopular president since Harry S. Truman in 1946. So, a pro-Democratic “wave” election wasn’t really in doubt. The question was how high the wave would be when it crested.

As has happened historically, Democratic gains rode atop a surge of Black (and more recently, Latino) voters. After the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act last summer, many civil rights advocates feared the return to political Jim Crow and a strengthening of one-party Republican rule in the southern states. But Black voters’ outrage expressed on November 3 had the impact of breaking through Republican domination in states like North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and even Mississippi.

In Texas, Latino voters forced a generational change and statewide sweep of the state that had become the cradle of post-civil rights era Republican politics. If the Republicans as they are currently constituted “lose” Texas, they will lose any sort of national political viability for a generation.

By no means do the November 3 results undermine the case for new civil rights and voting rights protections to undo the damage that Trump and the Supreme Court have inflicted on the gains of the 1960s civil rights movement. But they show that breaking what former AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer calls the “Greater Confederacy” is possible.

Trump and the Republicans had nothing positive to offer to voters. And they and their deep-pocketed donors spent billions attempting to excite their base with non-stop anti-trans and racist messaging against their Democratic opponents. Abdul el-Sayed, the Democratic senator elect from Michigan, took the full brunt of an Islamophobic campaign against him—not only from his Republican opponent, but also from pro-Zionist Democratic Party politicians and operatives.

But all of this failed to rescue Republicans, even in their long-time strongholds. The voting majority rejected these “culture war” appeals, seeing them as deliberate attempts to distract from Republican malfeasance and catering to the rich. When all is said and done, Elon Musk will have figuratively lit half a billion dollars on fire.

It’s important to understand the election as a repudiation of Trump and Republican rule but not an endorsement of whatever it is the Democratic Party stands for. In many ways, and in many parts of the country, the electorate voted for progressive ballot measures. Voters in Missouri and Virginia codified abortion as a state constitutional right. Virginia voters ended the lifetime denial of voting rights to convicted felons and upheld same-sex marriage. In almost every locality where a moratorium or regulation on AI data centers—hated symbols of Big Tech oligarchs—was on the ballot, it passed.

But while the progressive tide on ballot measures was undeniable, it wasn’t universal. For example, some anti-trans measures passed, Idaho’s abortion ban remains in place, and Oklahoma elected a governor who wants to jail abortion patients. The proposed “billionaire’s tax” lost in California, mostly because many Democratic politicians opposed it.

And there is no denying the reactionary policies of some Democratic politicians, like Texas senator-elect James Talarico or Iowa senator-elect Josh Turek, who opportunistically threw trans people under the bus, or who insisted that they were for “border security.” That’s a reminder that while the Democrats may be the other option to the GOP on most ballots, they are not an opposition party. The Democratic Party is a corporate-backed entity dedicated to supporting the success of American capitalism and U.S. empire.

Democrats campaigned on vague promises to bring “affordability” to ordinary Americans and “accountability” to the criminals in the Trump administration. But now that they have won Congressional majorities, the voters who enabled those majorities will want to see real action. Half-hearted measures crafted to get around a Trump veto won’t suffice.

The corporate Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who is set to become Speaker of the House in January, is already trying to soft-soap pledges to hold Trump and his minions accountable for corruption and law-breaking. Dems will also come under pressure not to “cut and run” from the Middle East if congressional majorities move to cut off funds for Trump’s war. Already, Big Tech is looking to hire Democrat-connected lobbyists to defend its interests on Capitol Hill.

The voters rejected what they saw as a corrupt status quo rigged in favor of a handful of billionaires and oligarchs. They are not looking for the Democrats to reconstruct that status quo on slightly more polite terms. If Democrats don’ t realize that, they are setting themselves up for an even bigger defeat than 2024’s in the future.

One last point. When Trump came into office touting a mandate for a reordering of society along hard-right, ethnonationalist lines, about every major “liberal” institution capitulated to him. Law firms. Universities. Businesses that had touted their commitment to diversity. Even some labor unions, like the Teamsters. A considerable number of Democrats voted to support Trump’s program of mass arrests and deportations. For a few months, Trumpism appeared to be a juggernaut.

But ordinary people weren’t as cowed. Their bravery, particularly in organizing to defend immigrants from raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, and, most importantly, Minneapolis, gave confidence to millions. Minneapolis unions and activists mounted a mass political strike in January of this year. Without these efforts to fight back against Trump’s depredations, the collapse of his support would not have been as rapid or as thorough as it was. No politician did that.

That will be an important lesson to remember in what will continue to be a long struggle to send Trumpism into the dustbin of history.