The Aftermath of the Blue Tsunami of 2026

Wow. It turns out that I chose poorly regarding which polling to value during the 2026 midterm elections.

Atlas Intel polling turned out to be right on the money. The Democrats won the (projected) generic vote by 14 points and thereby won over 250 House seats and net eight seats (and maybe more) in the Senate. Their poll on Texas was also basically correct, with the 52.2 to 46.2 James Talarico lead only slightly undercounting Talarico’s eventual victory margin of 55 to 43 percent. 

Atlas deserves immense credit for this accuracy. Once again, this is rather irritating to me. I sang their praises in 2024, only to rely on them in 2025 on the New Jersey governor’s race, where they failed completely. This made me far less willing to believe them in 2026. As well as the fact that they didn’t release their polling until near the end. I guess this should reinforce a lesson – even the better pollsters are never 100 percent accurate.

The RCP average overall severely undercounted the Democrat “blue tsunami,” finally settling in at 8.8 percent.

I could give the NYT’s polling some credit too, but I don’t think I will. Like the proverbial stopped watch, which tells the correct time twice a day, it got things basically right by doing what it always does, by pushing the idea of a blue wave. 

Now, for the voting specifics, from RCP’s Sean Trende. It turns out, there wasn’t any mass defection among the Republican vote:

Democrats and Democratic leaners made up 48% of the electorate, while Republicans and Republican leaners made up 44%. That’s not a mass collapse in Republican participation. Republican candidates won 92% of the vote among self-identified Republicans, while Democratic candidates won 97% of the vote among self-identified Democrats. That’s erosion, but it doesn’t show a mass defection to Democrats.

The loss was partly at the hands of independents. "Republicans lost Independents by 17 points; 22 when we include leaners. In 2018, they lost them by 12. In 2024, Trump lost them by 3." CNN and NBC Exit polls confirm this.

But the main reason for the GOP loss was that the Democrat coalition came out at presidential levels – 98 percent of their 2024 vote – while the GOP coalition didn’t – 68 percent of their 2024 vote. In some states, things were even worse. In Texas, where the Democrats swept the table, even as the GOP governor “EXCEEDED his 2022 midterms performance by 100K votes (and counting),” garnering “more votes than any Republican Gubernatorial candidate in Texas history.” Nevertheless, he was beaten by a Democrat who somehow “got 400K more votes in Texas than Kamala Harris in 2024.” 

This is very similar to what happened in 2025.

In terms of the voting subgroups, Latinos were actually better for the Republicans than they were in 2020, but millennials, Gen Z, and the suburbs were worse. And the share of white non-college voters decreased. American Jews moved towards the GOP as well. 

As a Republican and a supporter of the president – with his warts and all – I am greatly disappointed by the Republican Party’s electoral “thumping.” I fear for this nation, as the Democrats are all socialists now, and they continue to be increasingly anti-American. This devastation of the Democrats comes directly from the education establishment, which is increasingly far-left and constantly miseducates the youth, leading to results like in 2026. I long for a time when something is done about this propaganda. 

I am also disappointed that I got my predictions so wrong, unlike two years ago. Looking back, it seems that I let my objectivity get in the way of (some of) the polling. But, in my defense, there was plenty of polling out there that was from normally good firms – like Echelon, Rasmussen, Quantus, etc. – that did not predict a blue tsunami. This tripped me up. And so did the RCP average, which still ended at 8.8 and – based on 2024 and other elections – could have understated the GOP vote by 2 points or more. 

But now we must move on to determine why the “thumping” occurred. Which I will do in Part 2.

PS: This is worth a listen if you are depressed but want to prepare for what comes next. 

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