Democrats win House and Senate in 2026 midterms

NPR analysis examines Trump approval and Latino shifts after Republican losses

Democrats won control of the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms, the first time since 2006 that the party had won back both chambers. Montanaro wrote that signs before the election had pointed toward Democratic victories and that the outcome was always possible, but nothing indicated the depth and breadth of the result. He called election night a reminder that the pendulum of American politics continues to swing and that politics is never permanent. An accompanying NPR report said tens of millions of people cast ballots despite worries about Trump’s interference.

Trump’s unpopularity was a warning sign for Republicans, according to NPR. Montanaro wrote that Trump wanted the election to be about him and that the choice hurt the Republican Party. Since the Iran war, Trump’s approval ratings had fallen from 48% to as low as 36% in an average of polls. The voter poll commissioned by broadcast networks and the Associated Press found that 62% of voters disapproved of his job performance. That poll combined pre-Election Day polling of early voters with Election Day exit polls.

Three-quarters of voters in the poll said they were angry or dissatisfied with the direction of the country. A plurality named the economy as the most important issue, and two-thirds said Trump’s policies had made economic conditions worse. Corruption also rose as an issue during the months before the election, while 62% said Trump prioritized his own interests over the country’s.

Montanaro argued that Trump had waged the kind of war he said he would not get into and that the conflict was dragging on, raising gas prices and adding to pressures on people already experiencing economic hardship. He said Trump was paying a political price for the war.

Montanaro’s analysis concluded that the polls got the direction of the result right and, if anything, underestimated Democratic support. He said that for a decade, polls had underestimated Republican support, but that pattern did not hold in these elections; in some places, polls underestimated Democratic support. The national generic congressional ballot, which asks whom respondents would support if the election were held that day, favored Democrats by about 8 percentage points, while the voter poll looked as though it produced an advantage of at least 18 points. Montanaro said polling was difficult amid the significant political realignment of the Trump era.

Texas results, Latino voting and GOP redistricting

NPR’s analysis said the election’s fundamentals seemed to mirror the 2006 midterms amid the Iraq War, the last time Democrats won back both chambers. Montanaro said Democratic gains may have been limited by structural disadvantages, primarily through Republican efforts to tilt the playing field through redistricting. Trump had strongly encouraged conservative-led states to redistrict over the previous year in hopes of gaining Republican House seats.

Montanaro said Republicans tried to redraw districts to avoid large congressional losses, but the redistricting effort did not pay off and was particularly damaging in South Texas. His analysis said Republicans weakened safe districts, making them competitive, and described the result as a cautionary tale of the “dummymander.”

Montanaro tied the South Texas result to a change in Latino voting, saying that Latinos did not vote as they had in the 2024 presidential election. Trump had lost the group by only 5 points in that election. Montanaro said the movement toward Trump was driven largely by inflation and the belief that he would bring down prices. He said those expectations were not fulfilled over the next two years. Montanaro also said Trump angered many people in the community with aggressive deportation tactics that targeted more than just hardened criminals, as he had promised.

The voter poll found that roughly 60% of respondents disapproved of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The same poll reported that Sixty-eight percent of Hispanics disapproved of how ICE was handling its job. Montanaro cautioned that Latino voters were not a monolith, noting differences in backgrounds and priorities among voters in South Florida, South Texas, California and New York. NPR described Latinos as the country’s largest-growing group, a true swing group that was underrepresented at the polls and had considerable political power. Montanaro said the strong movement away from Trump and Republicans made that shift electorally significant.

Texas produced the breadth of the Democratic victories. James Talarico won the Senate race by roughly 12 points, or 1.1 million votes, becoming the first Democrat sent to the Senate from Texas since 1988. Gina Hinojosa won the governor’s race by 7 percentage points, or almost 700,000 votes. Democrats also flipped two congressional districts that Trump had won in 2024 by at least 14 points and took the lieutenant governor, attorney general and railroad commissioner posts, along with other offices. An accompanying NPR report also highlighted 9 candidates for governor who had made history.

NPR left open whether Democrats were renting power in Texas or whether the change represented something bigger. Texas has 40 electoral votes. If the state became legitimately competitive for Democrats, NPR said, it would reshape the presidential map in a way rivaled only by California’s shift toward Democrats beginning in 1992. California had voted Republican in all but one election between 1952 and 1988. Large amounts of spending in 2028 would test whether the Texas gains were permanent. Republicans spent more than $413 million on the Texas Senate race and lost, providing what NPR called a lesson that money isn’t everything.

Democrats face governing limits and 2028 tests

Democrats now have an opportunity to show they can authentically represent their states and try to hold onto the inroads they made in lots of red states and districts. NPR said people would expect results now that the party had control of Congress. New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, whom NPR described as the former majority leader who may want to return to the job, promised overnight that “relief is on the way.”

Montanaro said Democrats could not simply wave a magic wand, even if they had serious policy proposals for the country’s economic problems. They would not have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and were unlikely to have an eager negotiating partner in congressional Republicans or Trump. Just before midnight on election night, Trump posted an image on his social media platform of a large red hat bearing the word “VETO.”

Montanaro warned that Democrats were in danger of overpromising and underdelivering, “which has become all too common in politics, and leads to voters becoming jaded.” He said Democrats had to be careful with their messaging and how they govern. Montanaro wrote, “There will undoubtedly be more investigations and oversight of the Trump administration. But how far will they go? Another Trump impeachment attempt, for example, could be politically fraught.”

NPR concluded there was no doubt that Republicans had been rejected, but it also said Democrats were not much better liked. The voter poll rated Republicans 41% favorable and 59% unfavorable, compared with Democrats at 47% favorable and 53% unfavorable. Democrats had lower approval ratings earlier in Trump’s second term, mostly because of disaffected Democrats, but the party rallied to win the midterms. Montanaro said fissures on the left were simmering below the surface and were about to become far more apparent in the 2028 presidential Democratic primaries.

Montanaro wrote, “If Trump was supposed to be the kingmaker in the 2028 Republican presidential primary, think again. These midterms will have heavy reverberations for the presidential election. It will likely mean more GOP candidates will enter the race, and they will be more likely to present a wider view of what the direction of the party could be — rather than simply trying to carry the Trump torch.” His analysis concluded that Trump could not be assumed to serve as the party’s kingmaker.

For Democrats to have a real chance of expanding the presidential map, Montanaro said, they must determine how to appeal to red-state and rural voters. The 2026 results showed that they could do so, but they would not have Trump as their “rocket fuel.” Texas has been a majority-minority state for some time, and its demography had previously given Democrats false hope. Montanaro asked whether Texas had become a new Georgia or would return to its conservative roots.