Democratic wave ousts Republican incumbents as MAGA confronts historic defeat

Loyalists dismiss the rout as a fluke while strategists forecast decline

Republican incumbents lost across the country in Tuesday’s midterm elections to a Democratic wave whose scale few had anticipated, leaving President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement to digest a historic defeat. By the end of the night, the House and Senate had fallen to Democrats.

In West Palm Beach, Fla., the reversal carried a particular symbolism. Meg Weinberger, the Republican state House incumbent who aligned herself so closely with Trump two years ago in her campaign for a seat representing a slice of Palm Beach County that she became known as “MAGA Meg,” walked into a local Italian restaurant just after 8:15 p.m. for an election party that seemed destined to be a victory celebration. An hour later, a downcast Weinberger was consoling supporters in a thinning room. In office, her signature accomplishment was co-sponsoring legislation that renamed Palm Beach International Airport and part of a local boulevard for Trump.

Weinberger lost to Democrat Elizabeth Holmes (not that Elizabeth Holmes), a first-time candidate and schoolteacher who raised just $53,000 to Weinberger’s more than $600,000. “It’s time for MAGA to go,” said Holmes, who entered the race, as she put it, “after a bad day at work.” MAGA, Holmes argued, represented hate and corruption and the wealthy few over the struggling many. “I mean, I just want to see it fizzle out,” she said.

Scenes like Weinberger’s played out again and again across the country — including in West Palm Beach, where Trump celebrated his restoration to the presidency at a sparkly party two years earlier. The MAGA faithful were left to digest a historic election defeat while trying to imagine a future for their movement without their leader and talisman. On that question, many simply could not. Through a decade of rallies and arena-sized bonding sessions, Trump had appealed to communities both parties had long overlooked or misunderstood, assembling a heavily white working-class coalition whose zeal and unswerving loyalty made him the dominant force of this political era. Now, pundits are forecasting what one called an “asteroid level extinction event for MAGA” — a reckoning that hardcore followers from Arizona to Florida to Pennsylvania are not ready to accept.

In Lancaster, Pa., Tom Cook, a 56-year-old software engineer who rallied at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump insisted the election had been stolen, absorbed the losses over eggs and coffee at Alice’s Diner on Wednesday morning. A day earlier, Cook had predicted Republicans would hold Congress. By Wednesday, he framed the rout as a fluke that would correct itself, with Trump, as always, regaining his standing. “There is no way that GOP candidates run on an anti-Trump platform in 2028,” Cook said. “His presidential library is probably going to be the biggest tourist attraction in America.”

Blake Marnell, known at MAGA rallies as “the Wall guy” for the brick-patterned suit he wears, acknowledged that the results caught him off guard. Even so, he said: “I do not think this is a death knell for MAGA.” At its heart, Marnell argued, the movement is about the restoration of American patriotism and an optimistic vision of the country’s future — something Trump tapped into. “With that as the groundwork, it doesn’t really go away,” he said.

Some analysts believe the decline is already underway. Daniel Faraci, a Washington, D.C.-based political strategist, views MAGA as the latest in a series of populist eruptions on the right — from the nativist campaigns of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot to the Tea Party — and expects the next iteration to arrive under a different guise. “That core loyalist group will still be there,” Faraci said. “But as far as this broad-based movement, I don’t see it sustaining itself as a big force in future elections.”

By Wednesday morning, MAGA supporters were pointing fingers in different directions — at Israel and the Iran War, and at the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. On the Facebook page “Ladies of MAGA,” which counts nearly 200,000 members, posters pivoted from despair and talk of moving to deep-red Idaho to debating whether Vice President JD Vance or another contender was best placed to succeed Trump as the movement’s standard-bearer. It was time “to start planning and praying,” one member wrote.

On podcasts and talk radio, the postmortems came fast. “Now, I’m not here to say MAGA is officially dead, but I know what we witnessed last night felt like a political funeral,” Charlamagne tha God said on his syndicated show, “The Breakfast Club.” The pro-Trump media offered little solace. “There is certainly not a guarantee that MAGA people will rise from the ashes,” Bradley Jaye, Breitbart News’s political editor, said on the outlet’s daily podcast. Jaye argued the movement would need to regroup to fight Republican elites — “the establishment folks, the Washington, D.C. consultant class” — whom he described as re-energized. “It’s a war,” Jaye said. “It’s a new war for the ‘America First’ types.”

For many adherents, MAGA has been as much a social and cultural movement as a political one. Lynne Levin, 73, began attending a MAGA meetup about six years ago, after moving to Florida from New Jersey and feeling isolated by Covid-19 restrictions. “These people saved my life. Basically saved my life,” Levin said.

The social club behind the meetup, Trumpsterz Tuesdays, was started by two friends, Tommy Gianquitti and Lisa Menk, who felt ostracized by the anti-Trump people in their lives. “I can’t talk to my friends. I can’t talk to my family. I can’t talk to my co-workers. We need to meet,” Menk said of its formation. The club now counts more than 3,000 members and hosts pirate-themed parties, its own Mardi Gras, an early Christmas and other events that would not be unusual in a sociable retirement community. One man said he joined to meet women.

On Tuesday evening, the Trumpsterz gathered at the Palm Beach Kennel Club, a former dog track turned gambling hall near the airport, in a crowd that was mostly older. The style ran to red-white-and-blue patriotism with a dash of Tommy Bahama. As at other MAGA election-night gatherings, the festive evening opened on a confident note: one attendee after another dismissed the ominous polls and insisted Republicans would prevail — unless their opponents cheated. “Trump’s gonna win, and I’m gonna get $5,000,” Gianquitti, one of the club’s hosts, predicted. The room sang along to Lee Greenwood’s MAGA anthem “God Bless the U.S.A.,” which Gianquitti played twice in a row, and to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “The Hustle” and other ’70s hits played as well.

Then, just before 8 p.m., the mood turned. Gianquitti began reading early results showing the progressive Democrat Angie Nixon leading a Republican in a U.S. Senate race in Florida. “Hey, I’m just the messenger,” he reminded the crowd as boos rained down. More troubling signs followed: Democrat David Jolly was leading Republican Byron Donalds in the Florida governor’s race. Both Nixon and Jolly ultimately lost, but the close contests rattled the room, and soon the House and Senate would fall to Democrats.

Across town at the Eatalia Pizza Pasta & Grill, where Weinberger’s party was winding down, Al Baldasaro, a retired Marine, dismissed the idea of a movement in retreat. “Trump motivated these people and it’s going to take many years before it goes away,” Baldasaro said. Of the president, now a lame duck, he said: “They will never beat that guy down. He will stand tall.”

Levin, for her part, had her own analysis as Weinberger’s fate became clear: “She shouldn’t have named the airport after him.”