Since 1934, the party in the White House has only gained seats in three midterm elections. While the Democratic gains in 2026 did not set a record, the party did win dozens of House races, state governor contests and Senate seats, including in states where the party had not been competitive for decades.
Before Tuesday, Democrats had not won a Senate seat in Kansas since 1932, and had not won a statewide race in Texas in more than three decades. The party also notched surprise upsets in other reliably red states like South Carolina that were thought to be safe seats for Republicans just weeks before Election Day.
Trump and Vice-President JD Vance held dozens of campaign rallies in the run-up to the midterms. The principal Trump-aligned Super PAC, MAGA Inc., spent hundreds of millions backing Republican candidates.
Trump allies said it was unfair to hold him responsible for the party’s election losses. They pointed to the history of midterm elections, and said the party was saddled with weak Republican candidates in battleground states like Georgia, Michigan and Texas.
Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate nominee in Texas, ran “the worst Senate campaign in the country from either side of the aisle,” said another Texas Republican operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If Ken’s campaign knocked on 100,000 doors I’d be shocked,” the source said. The person added that Paxton’s victorious Democratic opponent, James Talarico, ran “a really good and smart campaign.”
Others defended Trump’s autumn campaign schedule, noting that he had to balance his day job of running the country with midterm travel.
“He’s the president. He’s not going to spend his time campaigning 24/7,” said Krish Mathrani, the Michigan Republican Party’s youth chair. Mathrani said Trump’s campaign rallies helped drive up enthusiasm among Republican voters. “President Trump is a turnout machine,” he said.
That’s true in presidential elections. But Trump’s vaunted turnout operation has failed to deliver in elections when he’s not on the ballot, and 2026 proved no different.
Voters rejected Trump’s argument that the economy was better on his watch and that he was achieving his aims in the war with Iran. The effort by Trump to portray Democrats as extreme socialists also fell flat, as voters handed victories to moderates like Roy Cooper in North Carolina.
“That just didn’t work with Cooper,” said a Cooper campaign official. “Trying to tag him as some socialist liberal, that wasn’t going to fly.”
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