Experts Describe the Midterm Results in One Word

I believe tonight truly marks the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency. Republicans lost across the country because they were in lockstep with Trump’s policies that are punishing voters’ wallets: tariffs, the Iran war and out of control corruption. Democrats were able to break MAGA’s grip on our country because they embraced a big tent. We saw Democratic candidates of different ideologies and across geographies win by focusing on the issues that matter most to voters: cost of living and corruption.

Now it’s incumbent on Democrats to demonstrate that they’ve earned the trust voters have placed in them by delivering on lower costs, ending the pervasive corruption in this administration and ending the war. That’s the agenda for a big tent that can deliver victory in 2028.

Neera Tanden is CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Republicans will lose control of both houses of Congress, which in their limp compliance with President Donald Trump’s demands — both the spaniel Senate and the robotically tail-wagging House — bound their fate to his popularity. That should mean the reemergence of genuine checks and balances on confirmations and spending power, for starters, assuming it’s not too late for the Constitutional order to right itself.

But what fascinates me is the other dimension in how we divide power in America: between the national government and the states. That layer of politics, too, has been reshaped by public revulsion at Trump’s misconduct. With Georgia, Ohio and even Texas joining the ranks of states with Democratic governors, expect the states to become a more vigorous counterweight to whatever Trump tries in his final years in office.

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.

Despite a moderately expanding economy with (mostly) steady real wage growth, voters are clear that they abhor this economy. Consumer sentiment is at an all-time low, and President Trump’s economic approval rating is shockingly negative. Plausible explanations abound: persistent inflation, AI anxiety, unpalatable inequality, shrinking discretionary income and general pessimism over personal finances.

The depth of the pessimism suggests it is not a single issue, but rather a smattering of discontent. And the fact that typically safe Republican districts voted against the president suggests the dissatisfaction is personal. Trump campaigned on a series of sweeping promises: cheaper food, cheaper housing and sharply cheaper gas. All of these things cost much more today than when his term began. But the real challenge for the president is that voters connect his policies to his unfulfilled promises. Tariffs raise the cost of food, stunted immigration means fewer new homes, and a hastily conceived war in the Middle East surely means higher gas prices.

And then there is AI. Anxiety over artificial intelligence is widespread, with workers fearing for their livelihoods and parents worried about their children’s job prospects. The White House’s laissez-faire approach to AI regulation has done little to quell these fears.

Voters are convinced the U.S. economy is sick. They are seeking a remedy and are skeptical one will come from the Oval Office.

Ben Harris is the vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, where he also holds the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Chair.

I’m really struck by how much tonight’s GOP debacle reflects President Donald Trump’s bad decisions — on policy, on candidates and on his midterm redistricting ploy.

Voters, including many who supported him two years ago, offered an emphatic thumbs down on his signature initiatives — especially tariffs and his impulsive attack on Iran — which have made working families’ cost-of-living crisis worse. Then there’s Trump’s spectacularly bad judgment in foisting weak candidates — like Ken Paxton, Michael Whatley, Darline Graham and Vivek Ramaswamy — on his party. He sure can’t pick ’em! This enabled Democrats to pull off stunning upsets deep in the red zone and perhaps create more battleground states. Nor have the president’s imperious instructions to GOP state leaders to gerrymander their way to victory paid off. In fact, it appears that Republicans are even managing to lose races in districts redrawn to give them a supposedly insurmountable advantage.

Midterm setbacks are common, but it’s hard to think of another midterm election in which a sitting president did more to create the basic conditions for his party’s sweeping defeat. This is a catastrophe for Trump and for Republicans who have obeyed him with cultish fervor.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.

We knew Republicans were likely to lose both chambers, but tonight they got the worst version of that outcome: losses so deep that even Texas and South Carolina flipped.

The question was never simply whether Republicans would lose. It was how badly, and where. When the damage extends into territory the party should have been able to defend, Republicans have to reckon with something more fundamental than the usual midterm backlash.

Americans gave Republicans control of Washington and an opportunity to deliver. Voters wanted lower costs, stability and leadership focused on their lives. Too often, they got chaos, corruption and excuses. Congressional Republicans could have exercised oversight, challenged the Trump administration’s failures and demonstrated that their loyalty belonged to the people they represent. Too many chose otherwise. Tonight is the consequence.

Republicans will be tempted to blame messaging, individual candidates or voters themselves. That would be another failure of leadership. None of that will fix a party unwilling to acknowledge the gap between what it promised and how it governed.

Democrats should not interpret these results as unconditional approval of their agenda. Rejecting Republican leadership does not mean Americans have embraced every Democratic position.

But Republicans now face a choice: continue defending the conduct that produced this result, or offer a conservatism grounded in competence, compassion, constitutional limits and public service. The opportunity to change direction exists. The question is whether anyone in the party has the courage to take it.

Brittany Martinez is executive director of Principles First.

If anything is clear from this election, it is that Americans want policymakers to let political squabbling end on Election Day and turn their full focus to solving our nation’s mounting challenges. Two years will go quickly. Members of Congress, along with governors and state legislators, must concentrate on issues from the cost of living to strengthening public education to paying down the growing national debt and addressing social safety net programs. They will have to work across party lines to do it, because no single party can solve these problems. In an era of elections that regularly flip control between the parties, all policymakers would be well served by such focus. The big challenges the country faces require long-term leadership by both parties, which demands cooperation and an emphasis on the future rather than the past.

Margaret Spellings is president and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Ten years ago, Donald Trump slipped through a fractured field to capture the GOP nomination. His celebrity, built over decades and peaking with his very popular television program, “The Apprentice,” helped fuel his rise. Today, a majority of American voters have loudly declared, “You’re fired.”

As is so often the case with Trump, it is not he who suffers for his blunders but those who trusted him. Myriad Republicans abandoned their principles and long-held policy positions to defend the president’s idiosyncratic populism and wrongheaded policies.

Trump repaid them by hectoring GOP legislators who questioned his judgment and by primarying “disloyal” Republicans who dared to vote their conscience or stand up for their constituents.

Entering this election year, Trump could have tried to tackle inflation. Instead, he started the Iran war in late February. As gas, diesel and heating oil prices took a bigger bite out of Americans’ wallets, the president did all he could to look like an out-of-touch billionaire. He boasted about his ballroom and new helipad, put gold paint on public statues, and shut the Kennedy Center, refusing to reopen it unless his name graced the exterior. He waved away concerns about affordability. All the while, he insisted everything was going great and, when it wasn’t, he blamed others. Few congressional Republicans spoke up.

Although polls showed that fewer than 4 in 10 Americans approved of him, Trump told voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” They obliged, and Republicans were washed out of Congress.

Kevin R. Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, hosts the podcast “Understanding Congress.”