The signs were there from the outset. About 30 minutes after the polls in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District closed at 6 p.m., the first numbers from rural counties began trickling in. It was no surprise that they favored Republican Ralph Alvarado over Democrat Zach Dembo. The district was reliably Democratic until 2012, when Andy Barr, a Republican who is now running to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate, eked out a win. Since then, the GOP has gerrymandered the district to all but ensure it stayed in the fold. 

The real story, though, could be found in the margins. Alvarado was underperforming Barr’s 2024 results by around 20 percentage points — a staggering drop, indicating that a significant number of Republicans had either stayed home or decided to take a chance on Dembo. Off the Democratic map for the last 14 years, by 9:15 p.m., when it was reported that Alvarado had conceded, the district had become a microcosm of what was unfolding nationwide.

The blue landslide, long predicted by pundits but mentioned with fingers crossed by Democrats, was becoming an avalanche.

Further south in Georgia, an earlier-than-expected call for Jon Ossoff buoyed Democratic hopes, followed by a pickup in the North Carolina Senate race, which saw Gov. Roy Cooper projected to defeat former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley. Democrats even put up a fight in ruby-red Florida’s statewide races, with David Jolly, the nominee for governor, and Angie Nixon, the democratic socialist Senate candidate, running ahead of their opponents until the conservative Panhandle’s votes were counted.

Then came South Carolina, where Darline Graham, who was foisted upon the state’s Republican Party by Donald Trump to succeed her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, after his death, went down to an historic defeat. The Palmetto State hasn’t seen a Democrat elected to the Senate since 1998. 

Amy Acton, Ohio’s Democratic nominee for governor, routed her opponent Vivek Ramaswamy after he released a widely condemned ad that weaponized a horrific part of her childhood. In Texas, James Talarico is projected for a stunning win over scandal-plagued Ken Paxton, and Gina Hinojosa ousted the incumbent Greg Abbott from the governor’s mansion. 

Other elections around the country — Senate races in Michigan, Kansas and Iowa; pivotal House contests and gubernatorial races — appear to be trending for Democrats.

For a decade, the party has wondered when, or if, a reckoning would arrive for Trump and MAGA. That moment has arrived.

Again and again, Republicans have followed the president over the cliff, no more so than during the past 22 months. In 2024, Trump expanded on the coalition that had carried him to success in 2016 by making inroads with Black men, Latinos and young voters. It was a success that, at least in part, led Republicans to launch a national gerrymandering scheme largely thwarted by Democrats, as well as an unfavorable economic climate of the president’s own making. 

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But Trump also made the grievous error of attacking the very communities that helped return him to the White House. The combination of his assaults on voting rights and Black history, as well as the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, ensured that Black voters turned out overwhelmingly for Democrats. After more than a year of ICE raids, mass deportations and threats against naturalized citizens, Latinos have swung to the Democrats en masse, playing a decisive role in Talarico’s win. Trump’s attacks on civil rights, immigrants’ rights and the social safety net have cut across demographic groups, and have had a strong negative impact on young voters. Drunk on his own power, the president has spent the better part of two years splintering his own coalition — and giving Democrats an opening they were happy to exploit.

The monumental defeat suffered by Republicans offers a sobering lesson for Democrats — to not forget what brought them to this night of victory. 

The message voters are sending is loud and clear: They want fighters, leaders who are willing to throw out conventional wisdom and do battle for working-class interests. That’s what Ossoff sensed last fall, when he was considered to be the nation’s most endangered Democrat. Instead of playing it safe, he staked his candidacy on affordability issues, particularly subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. In the midst of the longest government shutdown on record, Ossoff held firm: He would not vote to reopen the federal government unless the tax credits were restored.

Other Democratic candidates got the message. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan proved steadfast in linking the billions in federal funding that continue to subsidize Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza to skyrocketing consumer prices on the homefront. Another physician, Dr. Annie Andrews, who defeated Graham, unabashedly campaigned on creating a healthcare public option and gun control measures in South Carolina — and won. 

Right now, Democrats are feeling the wind at their backs. But after the excitement fades from tonight’s successes, they will realize they are now facing an even bigger challenge: To stay true to the mandate they have been given by voters, grudgingly in some cases, and to not, as they have done so often in the past, slip on the proverbial banana peel that is always waiting for them around the corner. 

Throughout his campaign for the Senate, Paxton was fond of saying, “If we lose Texas, we lose America.” Tonight, Democrats put Texas solidly in their column — and America is still standing.

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Dr. Annie Andrews will be the first Democratic senator from South Carolina since 1998, according to AP projections. In a stunning upset, she defeated the incumbent Republican Darline Graham, who was hand-picked by Donald Trump to succeed her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, following his death in July. 

A pediatrician, Andrews positioned herself as an antidote to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA agenda. Her campaign launch video hinged on measles outbreaks and the harm of anti-vax sentiments at the highest levels of public health. She described Kennedy as the “brain worm guy” and slammed Trump’s Cabinet as uniquely unsuited to their positions. 

The race was never supposed to be close. South Carolina is about as red as you can imagine. The haven of cheap gas and fireworks hasn’t elected any Democrat to statewide office since 2006. Trump carried the state by 17 points in 2024.

Unlike her sibling, who shifted from staunch Trump critic to late-in-life ally, Graham was joined at the hip to the Trump administration from the outset. The president’s high disapproval ratings worked to turn the typical GOP lay-up into a closely contested race. 

But Graham, a novice politician, did herself no favors. She flubbed softball questions around foreign affairs on the debate stage, a strong suit of her hawkish brother. Her dismal poll numbers pushed Trump to rally for Graham repeatedly in the state, cementing even stronger associations between the Republican nominee and Trump’s unpopular policies. 

High early turnout among Black voters in the state also spelled trouble for Graham. The community, which is largely Democratic, turned out in high relative numbers and helped swing the race toward Andrews. 

The Democratic candidate worked to avoid the associations with national party leaders that hamstrung Graham, refraining from appearances with prominent Democrats in the race’s final weeks. Andrews painted herself as a pragmatist, willing to work with national Republicans to score wins for South Carolinians. Late last month, Andrews received a shocking bipartisan endorsement from two former governors of South Carolina. Republican David Beasley joined Democrat Jim Hodges to support Andrews over Trump-backed Graham, saying Andrews was the only candidate focused on “making things better.”

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Across the country, voters are making their way to the polls in the climax of a vitriolic midterm election cycle set against the backdrop of an electorate souring on Donald Trump and Republicans. Inflation is up, consumer confidence is down, gas and diesel prices are through the roof, largely due to the president’s war of choice in Iran. The cruelty of his MAGA agenda has roiled the country and left a bad taste even in the mouths of some of his erstwhile supporters. 

Each election is billed as being consequential; this one lives up to the hype. As we await the results, it’s worth taking note of several questions:

How big will the blue wave be?

A tsunami, a trickle — or something in the middle? All are possible, but signs are pointing to significant Democratic gains, likely up to 25 seats in the House, as well as a Senate majority. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed looks increasingly likely to win in Michigan, and James Talarico has Democratic hopes up in Texas. Senate races in Maine, Kansas, Iowa and Alaska are in play, and it’s worth keeping an eye on South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana as well.

One sign will come at 6 p.m. when polls close in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, where Democrat Zach Dembo is facing off against Republican Ralph Alvarado. Once a Democratic stronghold, the seat went Republican in 2012 and, despite a close call in 2018, has remained in GOP hands since. Although the district has been gerrymandered to favor Republicans, the energy on the ground is with Dembo. If he posts and maintains a healthy lead, look for significant Democratic gains to unfold throughout the night.

What effect did redistricting have on the GOP’s chances?

The midterms will be the first test of the GOP’s redistricting strategy, which saw the party redraw congressional districts in Florida, Texas and other states, partly in response to the gains Trump made with Black and Latino voters in 2024. But polls show those margins have been largely erased as the electorate has turned on the president after nearly two tumultuous years in office, while Democratic legislatures in California and Virginia have imposed their own gerrymanders. According to a Politico poll, the GOP increasingly sees the coalition that returned Trump to office as “crumbling,” and may have gained little or nothing from all this adventurous map-drawing.

Will progressives be bolstered or chastened?

The size of the blue wave could well come to be seen as a measure of progressives’ influence and power within the Democratic Party. Losses — or even narrow wins — by progressive candidates could be used as more evidence by the party’s establishment wing of the need to tack toward the middle ahead of the 2028 presidential election. Larger wins — and victories in unexpected places, such as Michigan’s 7th Congressional District where William Lawrence, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, stands a real chance of unseating incumbent Republican Tom Barrett — would provide rocket fuel to the movement. 

Progressive groups are already on the offensive, getting a head start on spinning tonight’s election results, particularly in anticipation of a narrow El-Sayed win in Michigan. “Expect to hear narrow victories cited as evidence of weak electability,” a Progressive Change Campaign Committee memo obtained by Politico reads. “But a candidate’s first winning margin is not their electoral ceiling.”

Will the Haley Stevens drama matter in Michigan?

Haley Stevens, the Democratic congresswoman who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in Michigan’s Senate primary, has brought the drama in the race’s closing days. As late as Saturday night, she pledged to colleagues and friends that she was backing El-Sayed, only to turn up hours later at a church service with his Republican opponent Mike Rogers, and endorse the former congressman in a video. The cold-dish move has virtually drowned out El-Sayed’s closing message, with Stevens being formally kicked out of the Michigan Democratic Party.

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The question now is if any of it will matter, especially in light of a New York Times/Siena poll taken before Stevens’ move that showed El-Sayed leading Rogers by 11 points. Michigan Republicans seem to think it won’t, telling Politico they wish the congresswoman had crossed the aisle earlier. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report agrees, moving the race in their ratings to “Leans Democratic,” a shift that was already in the works before Stevens detonated her bomb. 

Still, the results in the state’s Democratic primary were far narrower than the polls showed, with El-Sayed besting Stevens by only 1%, or 14,893 votes. 

Will Elon Musk get his money’s worth?

The New York Times reported yesterday that the world’s first trillionaire has dropped a staggering $474 million this election cycle, an historic first. The amount has been spread out across a variety of groups, PACs and funds, but it doesn’t include the “dark-money donations” the Times reports he has also made. Most of the $168 million he contributed to the Senate Leadership Fund has served to shore up Ken Paxton, the GOP nominee for Senate in Texas, who is locked in a tight race with Talarico.

Musk has a lot riding on Tuesday’s results. Beyond the simple math of whether he got enough bang for his buck, there is also the issue of what will surely face him in the event of a Democratic congressional majority: investigations. If the blue wave materializes, Musk can expect congressional inquiries of his activities, including his reported interventions in Russia’s war against Ukraine and his leadership of DOGE during the early months of Trump’s second administration. 

Where will the surprises be?

Each election brings surprises. Think not one but both of Georgia’s Senate seats going to Democrats in 2020, or Republicans making big gains in New York two years later. 

This is the year we could hear the echo of Georgia’s 2020 election results in another Southern state. Despite boasting large Black populations, Senate seats in South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana have long been out of reach for Democrats. But there is now a path to victory for the party’s candidates in each of those states.

In South Carolina, the GOP incumbent Darline Graham, who was appointed to the seat at Donald Trump’s command following the death of her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, has proven to be a lackluster candidate, alarming even some Republicans with her performance in debates and on the stump. Democrat Annie Andrews has run a more nimble campaign, and between Graham’s performance and the national state of affairs, she appears to have narrowed the gap.

Mississippi’s incumbent GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has also run a lazy campaign, expecting to coast to victory. But the national political environment under Trump, coupled with campaign gaffes, large Black turnout in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act and clever campaigning by Scott Colom, her Democratic opponent, have helped to put the race in play. 

Louisiana is also a wild card. The state, which is one-third African American, has also seen a surge in early voting among Black residents, and according to a recent poll, the race between Republican Julia Letlow and Democrat Jamie Davis, who is Black, is tied.

Polls are not predictive. The political history of these states continues to favor Republicans, but any of them could deliver one of 2026’s electoral surprises. If that happens, it will signal that the blue wave has become a blue tsunami.

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