It’s Wednesday, November 4. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. It’s the morning after the 2026 midterm elections, and yes, the blue tsunami arrived. Today: Last night’s results and what they mean.
Barely 15 minutes after the first polls closed on Tuesday night, the signs were there: The Democrats were going to win big. And that is exactly what happened. Republicans have lost control of the House and the Senate. Texas is blue—Democrats didn’t just win the Senate seat but, astonishingly, the governor’s race too. Kansas will have a Democratic senator for the first time since the Great Depression. Not to mention Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Iowa, and Maine.
It wasn’t just a blue tsunami, but as expert election watcher Sean Trende quipped on X last night, a “100-year flood.” For the Republicans, it was a disaster—and one that comes just two years after Donald Trump pulled off the greatest political comeback in living memory and was riding high with a unified government and a 6–3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court.
So how did it all go wrong for the president who told Americans to “pretend I’m on the ballot” when they cast their vote this election?
In our first offering today, Eli Lake tells the story of “broken campaign promises, a fractured coalition, and a president who prized loyalty over competence in both politics and governance” that means the “Trump era is all but over.”
As is always the case when big news breaks, we want to hear from the voices we trust the most. So, as the aftershocks of last night’s political earthquake were still rippling across the country, we asked Free Press regulars for their take. Click below for Niall Ferguson on the return of political presidency; Caitlin Flanagan on the Democrats’ miraculous revival; Joe Klein on the deep thinking to be done on both sides; Mene Ukueberuwa on a changed political map; Aaron MacLean on what the results mean for the ongoing war with Iran, and more.
But while many may be inclined to look at last night’s results and draw sweeping conclusions about the country’s future, Victor Davis Hanson says not so fast. Today, the historian lays out five lessons from the election, arguing that much remains uncertain: Midterm losses are nothing new for the party in power, Trump’s ability to advance his agenda may be less affected than it seems, and the political landscape heading into 2028 is still taking shape. In other words, he argues, the biggest takeaways from last night may be what we still don’t know.
Noah Bernstein spent the last stretch of the campaign in Texas. Perhaps no result was more symbolic of the national story than James Talarico’s victory in the Senate race last night. The Lone Star State has been a conservative bastion for decades. Trump won by nearly 14 points only two years ago. And yet, it was a shellacking for the Texas GOP right down the ticket, with Democrat Gina Hinojosa beating Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in the governor’s race, Democrats taking both chambers of the state legislature and on track to win the majority of the statewide races. What’s the lesson from the Talarico win? Read Noah’s report to understand what the victory means for the future of Texas politics.
If the GOP is licking its wounds and figuring out who to blame, last night’s results have the Democratic Party united in celebration. But how long will that unity last? Not long, according to Peter Savodnik. He’s been reporting on a party at war with itself for months—and once the hangovers among the activists and operatives have worn off today, the same divides will still be there. Read Peter on why tonight’s results only fuel the fight for the future of the Democrats.
The 2026 Midterms: Taking Stock
Over the past several months, The Free Press has brought you plenty of reporting on the most important or interesting races this cycle. To make sure you know how the story ends, here’s how those races turned out:
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Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan, in one of the most hotly contested races of the cycle. The victory came despite a last-minute endorsement of Rogers by Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens. On Monday night, Olivia Reingold spoke exclusively with Stevens, who told her she chose to back Rogers because she thinks “he loves the country.”
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In Florida, socialist Angie Nixon lost in an unexpectedly close race against Republican Ashley Moody. Moody was defending the seat she filled when Marco Rubio became Trump’s secretary of state. Audrey Fahlberg reported on the race back in August, where one DSA organizer told her, “The idea that socialism is anathema to getting elected in Florida is just cope.”
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Three House candidates backed by Zohran Mamdani—Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier—took home huge victories in New York City, the latest sign of the mayor’s political ascendancy. In August, Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, a founder of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, wrote in The Free Press about his concerns that their rise would hijack the Democratic Party.
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Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and retired Army doctor who testified as a defense witness for the terrorist mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was elected to the House in New Jersey as a Democrat with about 70 percent of the vote. In June, Hamawy’s campaign told Audrey Fahlberg that he was the victim of bad-faith attacks on Muslim and Arab candidates.
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Last week, Frannie Block reported on a constitutional amendment to lower property taxes across Florida, which caused a rift among Republicans. The amendment passed with 62 percent of the vote.
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Senate victories by Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Sherrod Brown in Ohio show the appeal of experienced Democrats with deep ties in their states, even though the party’s younger left wing dominated the headlines. Cooper, an affable former governor, “seems to mix a commonsense appreciation for businesses with a pragmatic understanding that their taxes are what finance progressive policy dreams,” wrote Mene Ukueberuwa in August.
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In July, River Page profiled a mechanic, a smoke jumper, and an ordinary firefighter who offered Democrats hope of winning back working-class voters. Two of those three candidates were leading in their Congressional races as of early Wednesday.
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More than 70 percent of voters in Massachusetts decided not to repeal the 2018 legalization of weed, despite some residents’ misgivings, as Josh Code detailed last week. Twenty-four U.S. states have legalized marijuana, and Massachusetts was the first to consider reversing course.
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New York attorney general Letitia James defeated Saritha Komatireddy, a Republican prosecutor who accused James of spending too much time going after Trump and too little fighting homelessness and subway violence. Last month, Josh Code wrote that Komatireddy faced an uphill battle due to New York’s deep-blue resistance to Trump.
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When Audrey Fahlberg went to Ohio in October, she heard Republican Vivek Ramaswamy describe Democratic gubernatorial opponent Amy Acton as someone “who is crazy, who is unstable, and who is a liar.” Ramaswamy’s campaign also ran an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, who lost custody of Acton and her brother in 1978 after Acton’s stepfather was arrested and charged for raping her when she was 12 years old. On Tuesday, Acton defeated Ramaswamy by nearly 7 percentage points, turning the Ohio governor’s office blue for the first time in 15 years.
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James Talarico wasn’t the only Democrat to successfully campaign for the Senate on his religious beliefs. In Kansas, United Methodist minister Adam Hamilton defeated incumbent Republican Roger Marshall. One of Hamilton’s supporters told River Page last month that criticism of Hamilton’s views by conservative evangelicals “doesn’t hold muster with his lifetime of service in that ministry.”
