by Anthony L. Fisher | Nov 5, 2026 | Congress, culture, elections, Opinion, White House
The final tally of Republicans’ midterm electoral carnage wasn’t even close to being counted Tuesday when it became the proverbial Night of the Long MAGA Knives.
As Democrats took decisive control of the House and Senate, flipping numerous “safe” Republican seats along the way and even turning Texas — Texas!! — blue by winning every statewide office up for election, President Donald Trump’s heretofore powerful MAGA coalition took to the internet, and its “thought leaders” began lashing out at anyone they could blame for the historic electoral collapse. Often the targets were one another.
Chaya Raichik — the far-right operator of the Libs of TikTok X account — blamed Democrats, who she falsely claimed “imported millions of foreigners, handed them a bunch of free shit, and then registered them to vote,” adding, “If we ever want to win again we need deportations and denaturalizations ramped up on steroids or our country will forever be lost to the communists.”
Laura Loomer — the self-described “pro-white nationalism” influencer known for pushing false, racist conspiracy theories and for being Trump’s McCarthyite loyalty enforcer — spread the blame around too. She said it “would have been best to ban Tik Tok,” called out Christian nationalists (“Where was your God last night?”) and blamed the GOP’s humiliating defeat on America’s racial diversity (“America was always intended to be a majority White country. Not a cesspool for third world minorities”).
Surging fuel prices, exacerbated inflation, financial instability and apparent failure to achieve any of the administration’s oft-shifting goals for the war cannot be hidden from the American public.
“Pizzagate” propagandist Mike Cernovich blamed the post-Charlie Kirk leadership of Turning Point USA,
by Eric Garcia | Nov 5, 2026 | Congress, elections, Opinion
On Nov. 5, 2024, I sat in the back of a ballroom at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Houston, covering Sen. Ted Cruz’s victory speech. Results from the majority-Hispanic Rio Grande Valley caused a political earthquake, as these ancestrally Democratic counties along the border with Mexico shifted hard right to Donald Trump.
Cruz, ever the sports fan, could not help but spike the football six years after he nearly lost to Beto O’Rourke.
“Tonight, we are witnessing incredible results, especially with Hispanics, across the state of Texas,” Cruz said.
Ever since Barack Obama’s presidency, Democrats had dreamed of a blue Texas; Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley were the linchpin in this strategy.
What a difference two years makes. The Democratic blue wave that swept over the country Tuesday would not have been as tall without the backlash from Latino voters against President Trump. Between his draconian immigration regime (crafted by Stephen Miller), his tariffs making daily goods more expensive and his Iran war driving up the price of gas, Hispanic voters had enough. Nowhere did that buoy Democrats more than in Texas, where Hispanics in the state moved 32 points to the left.
That swing didn’t just send James Talarico to the Senate and Gina Hinojosa to the governor’s mansion. It powered Democrats to win every top statewide office, flip the four state Supreme Court seats on the ballot this year and capture the Statehouse. And it decimated Texan and national Republicans’ plans to shore up the GOP majority in the House of Representatives by creating five Republican-leaning seats in Congress in heavily Hispanic parts of the state.
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Latino voters boost Dems in Texas
by John Kasich | Nov 5, 2026 | elections, Opinion
Across the country, you could feel the anger and frustration bubbling up long before Election Day. There were signs people were tired of the chaos and the name-calling. They were disgusted by the meanness they saw coming from the Republican Party. They wanted the economy to get better, and many wanted an end to the war with Iran.
Too many Republicans in Washington had little to offer on the issues that concerned people most. What voters saw instead was blind loyalty to President Donald Trump. When Republicans lost the House and the Senate, it was a devastating blow, and they earned it.
When Republicans lost the House and the Senate, it was a devastating blow, and they earned it.
But for all that, this could actually be an exciting time to be a Republican. A party with a long and important history in this country has a chance to rebuild around the ideas and values that once drew people to it. I’m talking here about fiscal responsibility, which helps create the conditions for economic growth.
And to do that, the party had better make room for some of the loyal Republicans it left behind in recent years. I count myself among them.
I’m thinking of people who spent much of their lives working for what they understood to be conservative Republican principles and who, somewhere along the way, found themselves on the outside of a party they had helped build. These folks, including leaders like former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who has publicly criticized Trump and the Republican Party’s loyalty to him, have more to offer than their votes in the next
by G. Elliott Morris | Nov 5, 2026 | Congress, elections, Opinion, White House
The Democratic Party is on track to win its biggest midterm victory since 1974, when a wave of anti-Republican sentiment followed the Watergate scandal. Pending final counts in about two dozen seats, the Democrats will emerge from the 2026 midterm elections with at least 250 seats in the House of Representatives and 54 seats in the Senate — and with as many as 260 and 56 in the House and Senate, respectively, if votes break their way.
The victory represents a monumental crackup of the coalition that put Donald Trump in the White House in 2024. According to a review of vote-choice estimates from the MS NOW Voter Poll among a dozen demographic groups, the Republicans lost the most ground with Latinos, young people and lower-income Americans — three groups that also swung hard to Trump from 2020 to 2024. My analysis of county-level returns also shows Democrats making disproportionate gains with these groups.
An anti-Trump re-realignment
The backlash against Trump and the Republican Party is largest among Latino voters. According to estimates calculated by the Pew Research Center, Latinos gave 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris a 3-percentage-point margin over Trump nationally in 2024. But the MS NOW Voter Poll shows Latinos giving Democrats a whopping 27-point margin last night. My best guess, based on a statistical model extrapolating the current election results to counties without final vote tallies, is that the Democrats will end up with a 14-point margin in the House popular vote, an increase from their current 10-point margin. (This could be as low as 12 or as high as 15 points, depending on how ballots break in California,
by Kaivan Shroff | Nov 5, 2026 | Congress, elections, Opinion
After Democrats’ devastating losses across the country in 2024, a quiet consensus seemed to form among not only the pundit class but even some senior Democratic operatives. They noted that Hillary Clinton, the first woman nominee, lost to Donald Trump. Joe Biden defeated him. Then Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and first South Asian nominee, lost amid an apparent anti-“woke” backlash.
“Some Democratic leaders, donors and strategists,” Axios reported earlier this year, wondered “whether the party’s best bet for winning back the presidency in 2028 is to nominate a man — perhaps a straight, white, Christian man.” Even former first lady Michelle Obama demurred that the country was “not ready for a woman.”
Tuesday’s blue tidal wave, powered by minority and female candidates across the nation, forcefully rejected that narrative.
Nowhere, though, was the list of “firsts” longer than in the gubernatorial races.
As the night wore on, the list of “firsts” grew and grew. In the Senate, Abdul El-Sayed overcame an onslaught of Islamophobic attacks to become the first Muslim elected to the chamber. He will join New Hampshire’s Chris Pappas, the first openly gay man elected to the Senate; Annie Andrews, the first woman elected to the Senate from South Carolina; and Peggy Flanagan, the first Native American woman elected to the Senate.
In the House, the history makers abound. To name but a few: Adam Hamawy, the first Muslim elected to Congress from New Jersey; Denise Powell, the first Latina elected to Congress from Nebraska; Melat Kiros, the first Black woman elected to Congress from Colorado; and Claire Valdez, the first Indigenous women elected to Congress from New York. Cait Conley
by Carolyn Fiddler | Nov 5, 2026 | elections, Opinion
Democrats scored massive midterm wins at every level of the ballot on Tuesday, flipping both chambers of Congress and winning amazing gubernatorial triumphs across the country.
But as consequential as those victories were, the most important wins for Democrats on Tuesday were the less-noticed ones quite a bit further down the ballot. The party made historic progress in state legislative elections in virtually every single chamber that was on the ballot this year.
Democrats secured at least 12 new legislative chamber majorities in the 2026 midterms and captured at least 300 seats previously held by Republicans. Most notably, they picked up enough seats in both statehouse chambers in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to secure trifecta control in those states, some for the first time in decades.
Democrats will use their unified control of these six crucial swing states to show why voters should trust them with the presidency in 2028.
Nevada Democrats added a sixth trifecta to the party’s roster when current state Attorney General Aaron Ford flipped that governorship, to go along with a comfortable majority in the state Senate and a supermajority in the state Assembly.
Democrats now have an unprecedented chance to completely control policymaking across those six states — all of which will likely play essential roles in the 2028 presidential election.
As I wrote for MS NOW before Election Day, these new governing trifectas will mean more for Democrats’ affordability agenda than full majority control of Congress. Many of the changes the U.S. House and Senate will propose on Capitol Hill to improve Americans’ lives will founder against President Donald Trump’s veto power.
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Gov.-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms on her historic
