(AFP) – President Donald Trump urged Republicans to “pretend I’m on the ballot” in the US midterms. And they did, except not in the way he hoped, with the 80-year-old’s unpopularity driving Latino, young voters, and other parts of his coalition to vote Democrat or stay home. Democrats seized both chambers of Congress on Tuesday, only the fifth time since World War II that a party has flipped the House and Senate together in a midterm. The rout, driven primarily by economic anxiety and the Iran war, reached deep into Republican territory, including Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina.
“Trump wasn’t on the ballot, but make no mistake, his name was written all over it,” veteran political strategist Mike Fahey told AFP. “For Republicans, the party label became a scarlet letter.” An exit poll by NBC News pointed to a broad rejection of Trump’s record. The economy was voters’ top concern, and about two-thirds said his policies and tariffs had hurt it. Around six in 10 called the war on Iran the wrong decision and said his immigration crackdown had gone too far. Trump had promised to make life cheaper and avoid new foreign conflicts. Instead, the war sent fuel prices soaring.
Vice President JD Vance, a possible 2028 candidate who is reportedly skeptical of the conflict, blamed the defeat on it outright. “The reason we lost is the war,” he wrote on X on Wednesday. Trump said only that Iran was “part of it,” and voters cited the cost of living even more widely.
– The ‘manosphere’ cracks –
Trump’s 2024 victory depended on narrowing the Democratic advantage among groups including Latinos and voters under 30. Those gains appear to have largely vanished. Democrats won Latinos by about 30 points in the exit poll, up from five for Kamala Harris in 2024, and their margin among voters under 30 more than quadrupled. Young men, a constituency Trump had courted through podcasts and the online “manosphere,” also favored Democrats heavily in a pre-election Harvard University survey.
Results pointed the same way. Democrats surged in heavily Latino counties, including along the Texas border, where Republicans had redrawn congressional maps assuming Trump’s gains would last. Men and white voters, who both backed Trump comfortably in 2024, split almost evenly. His core, however, held, with white voters without college degrees and white evangelicals remaining firmly Republican. Vance said “many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.” The NBC poll suggests relatively few did, with more than nine in 10 self-described Trump voters staying Republican. Instead, those voters made up a smaller share of the electorate than Harris voters, even though Trump won the 2024 popular vote — a sign that many stayed home. The erosion also predated the war, which began in late February. An Equis Research survey found Trump already deeply unpopular among Latino voters in October 2025.
– Reckoning begins –
Trump repeatedly cast the election as a referendum on himself, but nearly three times as many voters said they were opposing him as supporting him. His final campaign speech dwelled on renovations to Washington’s Reflecting Pool, and he waited 26 minutes to mention the midterms. His personal picks also fared badly. In Texas, he backed scandal-plagued attorney general Ken Paxton over sitting senator John Cornyn. In South Carolina, which he carried by nearly 18 points in the 2024 presidential election, he anointed newcomer Darline Graham. Both lost what should have been safe seats.
The internal party reckoning has begun. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would not seek re-election as the party’s leader in the chamber. Utah Senator John Curtis called the result a “shellacking” and warned against blaming the media, polls, or voters. “We might start by looking in the mirror,” he wrote. Trump, though, had a different explanation. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he posted.
– Frankie TAGGART
© 2024 AFP
