Midterm wins give Democrats new paths to 270 electoral votes in 2028

DeSantis warns Republicans are not viable nationally without Texas

The midterm outcome that gave Democrats control of Congress and a majority of governor’s offices has created new potential pathways for the party in the 2028 presidential race. The results in Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina and Texas have scrambled early thinking in both parties about how to assemble the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, according to The Wall Street Journal, and point to a battleground set to expand beyond the six states that have anchored presidential competition since President Trump first ran in 2016.

Democrats won the governor’s office in Texas, Ohio and Iowa on Tuesday, along with Senate races in all three states. The wins give the party organizational and fundraising power that can boost a presidential campaign. Democrats carried Iowa and Ohio as recently as 2012, before voters in both states swung behind Trump, and have not carried Texas since Jimmy Carter won it in 1976.

The party also won the governor’s races in all six of the familiar presidential swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in the industrial North, and Georgia, Arizona and Nevada in the Sunbelt — states that have shifted between the parties at least once since 2016. Only New Hampshire, the smallest of the recent battlegrounds, retained a Republican governor; the state has consistently backed Democrats for president in recent elections.

Veteran strategists in both parties said the map has changed. “The election was a game-changer,” said Jeff Rusnak, an Ohio Democrat who has worked on presidential and statewide campaigns since 1988. “It opens up a variety of paths for Democrats.” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, called the results the “best map for Democrats in decades.”

Alex Conant, a Republican consultant who led communications for Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, said North Carolina and Georgia now look like lean-blue states and that his party cannot take Texas or South Carolina for granted. “There are going to be more swing states in 2028 than we have seen in a really, really long time,” he said.

Republicans are particularly worried about Texas, which carries 40 electoral votes — the largest cache after California — and where the party lost every statewide race this week. “If the Republican Party doesn’t have Texas as an anchor, then we are not going to be viable nationally going forward,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned at a postelection press conference, calling the state “the crown jewel of Republican politics.” He noted that of the 10 largest states in the country, Florida will be the only one under Republican control.

Jim Messina, who managed President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign after serving as his national chief of staff in 2008, said having a governor of one’s own party in place is a big help in presidential races, calling it “one of the most predictive factors of who wins a battleground state.” New governors arrive with infrastructure and staffs just tested in contested races, he said. “You have infrastructure. You know who the good people are — especially new governors, because they just won contested races. You can’t overestimate their importance,” Messina said.

Messina said the Democratic nominee will face new choices, including whether to compete in Texas and how durable the shift in North Carolina has been — a state that has eluded Democrats at the presidential level since 2008 but now has a Democratic governor and, as of January, a Democratic senator. Money is a constraint, he said: he recalled telling Obama during the 2012 race that competing in Florida was “a $100 million decision,” adding, “Texas is probably a half-billion dollar decision.”

In North Carolina, Democrats retained the governor’s office in 2024 and on Tuesday elected Roy Cooper, a former governor, to the Senate by 20 points. In Georgia, a state Trump won in 2024, voters chose Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms to succeed the state’s Republican governor and re-elected Sen. Jon Ossoff by an 18-point margin. Florida stayed Republican, but governor-elect Byron Donalds won by little more than a point, prompting some Democrats to push for greater investments there ahead of 2028.

Aaron Pickrell, who directed Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign in Ohio, said the state — a longtime battleground before the Trump era — has “a good chance of being one again” after electing a Democratic governor this week. “It’s a winnable state for Democrats,” he said. “Democratic governors matter when it comes to having a presidential campaign go in there.” Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa Democratic governor and U.S. agriculture secretary, said Iowa could be in play in 2028 if Democratic Gov.-elect Rob Sand governs in a bipartisan way and the party shows discipline in Washington. “It requires the Democrats in D.C. to focus on those issues that helped them win and make sure that what they do is not an overreach,” he said.

Midterm setbacks do not always point to losses in the next presidential election. Big Democratic losses in 1994 and 2010 did not prevent Bill Clinton and Barack Obama from winning re-election two years later. The biggest factors for 2028, the Journal reported, will be the profile of the nominee each party chooses, along with how much money and organizational skill that person has.

Some Democrats warn the ground gained this week could be lost if the party moves too far to the left — even as a slate of progressive victories this week suggests the party’s left flank is a source of energy. “If Democrats fail to nominate a moderate, they will put all these seats, particularly in stretch-red places, at risk for 2028 and beyond,” said Jonathan Cowan, president of Third Way, a policy group pushing the party to moderate.

The stakes extend beyond 2028. Because of population shifts, as many as 11 congressional seats — and therefore 11 electoral votes — are projected to move out of Democratic-leaning states after the 2030 census, creating new problems for the party in the 2032 presidential election. Most of those seats are likely to shift into states that have leaned Republican, at least until recently: under some projections, Texas would gain as many as four electoral votes and Florida two to four.

Still, the 2026 results suggest strongly that the 2028 election will be fought on an expanded battleground — one that includes states that have not voted Democratic since Obama was in office or, in the case of Texas, for decades.