If anything, Democrats should have picked up more seats than they did

Since Election Day saw Democrats flip 43 seats in the House and seven in the Senate, the media predictably have been fizzing. Among the outlets calling the results “stunning” are CNBC, the AP, the Boston Globe, Axios, the Financial Times and even the usually more staid Wall Street Journal. NBC called it a “landslide,” while even Fox News called it a “wipeout.” The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times called the results “historic.”

Everyone needs to take a deep breath. There is nothing stunning about the opposition party picking up a relatively large number of seats in a midterm election. It’s the historic norm. President Donald Trump’s turgid approval ratings – he was at 37% going into Election Day, above his historic low of 31% three weeks earlier – all but guaranteed a significant “blue wave.”

Democrats picked up 43 seats. That’s not not a big deal. It’s tied for the third worst midterm loss by a sitting president’s party in the last 50 years. The worst was the Democrats’ “shellacking” in 2010, two years into Barack Obama’s first term, when the Democrats lost 63 seats. In 1994, two years into Bill Clinton’s first term, the Democrats lost 54 seats. Other big losses included the Republicans’ loss of 26 seats in 1982 and 30 seats in 2006. The party’s losses last week mirror their loss of 41 seats two years into Trump’s first term, in 2018.

The conventional wisdom notes an important distinction between 2026 and those precedents that makes this year’s victory more significant and impressive. The country is far more polarized today, meaning that seats are safer than in the past. There are fewer “purple” districts. After 2006 and 2008, Democrats held dozens of seats in districts John McCain carried, many of them old Blue Dog seats in the South and rural Midwest. Those seats were ripe to fall. In contrast, in 2026 Republicans held few seats on the other side’s turf. The moderate Democratic think tank Third Way counted just 8 Harris-won districts with a Republican House member. Add in the Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting, and the 2026 map gave Democrats far fewer easy pickups than 2010 gave Republicans. Ticket-splitting has also collapsed since 1994 and 2010, which shrinks every wave.

All of which is true, with a caveat on the other side. Outside of the Deep South and parts of the Midwest, red districts have been trending purple for at least the last fifteen years. This is a result of a combination of increased urbanization, population migration from blue states to red states and more liberal-leaning Boomers replacing the more conservative Greatest Generation as the country’s oldest and most likely voters. Cities like Nashville, Charlotte, Fort Worth and Phoenix were longtime Republican strongholds that have become competitive. This helped Democratic fortunes in 2026.

Demographics played a role, too, thought it’s too early to know how big. According to early analysis by the Brennan Center, white voter turnout in George was two points below 2024 while black turnout was nine points higher. This analysis confirms reporting that suggested conservative white voter turnout was depressed by erstwhile Trump supporters who feel he and the MAGA GOP betrayed them, particularly when it comes to the war in Iran. If the trend holds, it’s another reason the Democrats should temper their excitement.

Trump is a historically unpopular president entering the lame duck phase of his second term. Both Clinton and, especially, Obama, were popular early in their first terms. Both are considered generational political talents. The week of the 2010 midterms, Obama’s approval rating was 46%. Clinton stood at 48% the week of the 1994 midterms. And while Obama continued the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither he nor Clinton had started a war. Both were dealing with the fallout of recessions for which they were not responsible, but neither faced anything remotely like the cumulative political baggage Trump carries around. Both saw their party perform worse.

Location, location, location – with an asterisk

One thing about which the pundits do have a point is the places where Democrats lodged victories. They flipped a Texas Senate seat for the first time in 40 years. They won districts in Kansas, Ohio, South Carolina and Iowa in which many voters had previously considered their party toxic. In Kansas, a pastor named Adam Hamilton is the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1932. Some of these individual victories qualify as historic – with an asterisk.

It’s not just where the Democrats won, the asterisk is how they won. With a few predictable exceptions in coastal blue states, a majority of victorious Democrats ran centrist campaigns. Gone was talk about gender, the Green New Deal, defunding the police, mass immigration, DEI and other far left shibboleths. Those messages were replaced by economic populism, fiscal discipline, strong borders, law enforcement and strong communities.

Some Democrats sounded downright, well, MAGA. In the Mississippi Senate race, Barack Obama recorded an ad praising Democratic nominee Scott Colom’s crime-fighting record “Guided by his Christian faith, Scott made his communities safer, prosecuting violent crimes as district attorney and fighting corruption.”

A campaign ad for Democratic former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper, who cruised to victory in his Senate race, declared “He bucked his party to oppose defunding the police, worked with Republicans to strengthen bail laws and partnered with President Trump to crack down on fentanyl.”

That’s worth repeating: a Democrat won by, in part, bragging about “partnering” with Donald Trump. There’s an interesting shade of blue in this wave.

Remember when Democrats argued that voter ID is racist and discriminatory? Along with Colom, winning Democratic nominees who voiced support for voter ID laws included Texas Senator-elect James Talarico, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Overall, Third Way estimates that 31 of the 43 victorious Democratic House candidates qualify as center-left.

None of this means the Democrats, and the country, are out of the woods. With the exception of one city council seat the Democratic Socialists of America ran the table in Los Angeles. Four of five Senate candidates endorsed by Bernie Sanders won. AOC is the topic of serious discussions as a presidential candidate. And a handful of truly cretinous candidates won seats in the House, particularly New York City’s Darializa Avila Chevalier.

Overall, though, the center held, as it did during peak MAGA. Election Night 2026 wasn’t stunning or historic, and for that Americans should breathe a collective sigh of relief. We remain a country of free and fair elections, the rule of law, majority rule and loyal opposition. Democrats should be proud of their performance, while heeding the lessons that the caveats and asterisks offer.

Your move, Republicans.