Republican bloodbath a reminder elections still are about the economy, first and foremost

Democrats swept elections coast to coast on Tuesday night and seized control of Congress and prized statehouses in the deep red South, as Americans punished Republicans for failing to finish the job of taming inflation and fixing an economy about to be transformed by artificial intelligence.Hispanic, young and independent voters who powered Donald Trump’s improbable comeback in 2024 markedly shifted their allegiance to Democrats in the midterms, even putting a Democrat in a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas for the first time in a century and a Hispanic newcomer into the Texas gubernatorial mansion.Exit polls showed voters were fed up with high gas prices and inflation overall, and angry that Trump put America into a prolonged conflict with Iran before fixing the inflation he inherited from Joe Biden’s administration.Three quarters of voters in Tuesday’s election described the U.S. economy as in “rough shape,” and 39% said it was the primary reason for how they voted. Forty-four percent said their finances were worse today than when Trump took office.
In many ways, Tuesday night resembled — in reverse — the 1994 election that ousted Democrats from power coast to coast during the Gingrich revolution and set the GOP on its modern path to power over similar frustration about affordability.
“I don’t think we should over-analyze it,” conservative pollster Rich Baris, who first sounded warnings of a GOP election bloodbath this summer, told Just the News early Wednesday. “Republicans were the party that promised to fix the economy and inflation, put America first, ahead of the war lobby and the Washington grifters, and we didn’t do it. And they punished us for it. And we deserved it.”
Scott Rasmussen, a veteran GOP pollster who created a scoreboard that predicted Tuesday’s outcomes accurately, agreed that Americans fired Republicans for failing to get the job done more than placing their trust in the left.
“Last night was an expression of economic frustration. It’s the same message they sent two years ago when they sent Trump back to the White House,” Rasmussen told Just the News. “Voters had hoped Trump would make the economy work for all Americans. Instead, the war in Iran pushed up gas prices and left voters just as frustrated as they were under Biden.”The losses for Republicans were staggering: three decades of statewide GOP rule in Texas were swept away, long-held Republican Senate seats in Iowa, Kansas and Ohio were lost alongside the governor’s mansions and enough seats in the House were seized nationwide to give Democrats a substantial working majority.The losses thrust the last two years of Trump’s second presidency into hostile territory, a painful reality for a president who held 29 rallies, 40-plus telephone rallies, spent $450 million of his own PAC money in a relentless bid to keep Republicans in control in the final month of the election. Trump promised to accept the results.
“I think we’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll get along very well with them,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “If we don’t, we’ll be very tough on them, they’ll be very tough on us.”
He said the Iran war was “a piece of” the election dynamic, particularly its impact on gas prices, but that he had no regrets on his decision to bomb Iran.
“I don’t think about it. I did the right thing. I would have done it again,” he said.
The night produced numerous firsts: black Democrat governors in Georgia and Wisconsin, a Hispanic female governor in the Lone Star State, numerous socialists in Congress and state Legislatures and a U.S. senator-elect who ran as a pastor believing God was nonbinary and humans have six genders.And while many liberal pundits declared the election was an affirmation of a far-left lurch in America, exit polls showed anger and distrust for both parties and a clear rejection of socialism becoming mainstreamed in American politics.
Fifty-seven percent of voters favored capitalism compared to just 33% who said they held a favorable view of socialism.
“I talked with lots of voters these last few weeks. It’s very clear that they did not embrace the left, they just repudiated us,” Baris said. “I know just from speaking to voters they didn’t want to do it to us, but they felt they had to do it. And they did.”
Tuesday’s results will do more than just realign the balance of power in Washington. It will realign the forces that shape the 2028 election.
Trump’s top lieutenants and most likely successors, Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, won’t easily be able to escape Tuesday’s verdict, opening the door for possible contenders to test the waters from outside the Trump orbit. And that race begins in earnest on Wednesday in both parties.

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