Minnesota state senator Jim Abeler loses reelection bid

Abeler knocked on doors at about 80% of his district’s homes

In reporting for The Guardian, Jim Abeler, a Republican state senator in Minnesota who lost his reelection bid this month, knocked on the doors of about 80% of the homes in his district. He said he encountered a lot of “outright hostility” toward Trump over gas prices and the Iran war, and some voters refused to talk to him because of it. Half of the people he talked to were “unforgiving,” he said.

Abeler said he did not hear voters say Trump’s rhetoric or his attempts to explain away economic concerns were the problem; the problem, he said, was the economics themselves. One woman who said she usually voted for Democrats but had also voted for Abeler in previous elections said she could not do so this year. Abeler recalled her saying, “I’m sorry, it’s just a bad year to be you.”

Tom Galvin, a Republican on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in Arizona, said “one by one,” “everything that was important” to the coalition that carried Trump back to power in 2024 fell by the wayside. “For example, if you wanted the Epstein files, that didn’t happen,” he said. “If you wanted to address inflation because Biden had runaway inflation, well, that didn’t happen. If you wanted to see a relief in gas prices, that didn’t happen. If you didn’t want us to get into ‘foreign wars or senseless wars’, that didn’t happen.”

Chris Madel, a Minneapolis attorney who was running in the Republican primary for Minnesota governor until he dropped out and criticized his party over deportations into the state, said he knew in January, amid Operation Metro Surge, that “this would end poorly for Republicans.” He said: “The people that were showing that fealty towards him and towards this one person.” He added: “The tone deafness was really without equal.”

Madel said he asked his Trump-supporting family members whether they “think it’s OK” for the US president to accept “a 747 for free” from Qatar. The attorney said he never expected the United States to look like “a banana republic with respect to corruption.” A photograph accompanying the report showed federal agents tackling and arresting a protester in Minneapolis in February.

Democratic candidates said for months that voters, including those in red-leaning areas, just wanted to feel heard. They centered their campaigns around in-person town halls, went to county fairs, and returned to retail politics.

Rebecca Cooke, a Democrat running for a Republican-held congressional district in western Wisconsin, said just before the election that people “don’t feel that the federal government really gives a damn about them.” She won.

Erin Klaus, who owns a small business in Cooke’s district that will close at the end of this year after weathering economic pains the last two years, said it has felt like the message from the government was that her problems weren’t really happening. “The federal government can say that the prices are going down, and inflation is going down. But, I mean, that’s just not true in our daily lives,” Klaus told The Guardian in October. “I think it’s really hard to continue to be told these things that we know aren’t true and feel almost like we’re getting mocked for the hardships that we’re enduring – both as business owners and as just regular folks, trying to live their lives.”

Bob Brooks, a Democrat who flipped Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district, said voters were “frustrated with a guy who was promising them one thing” but gave them “something completely different.” In short, “they felt lied to by the Trump organization, anybody that supported him, and they’re looking for change,” he added. “The status quo is not OK.”

Voters in Tuesday’s election said the economy — particularly their inability to afford their lives — was central to their decisions, The Guardian reported. Corruption under Trump, the Iran war, tariffs, datacenters, healthcare costs and the administration’s deportation campaign also weighed into their votes. Jim Conrad, an Ohio voter, said, “There’s a war that nobody wants right now.” Ron Miller, in Kansas, said he was for Trump but acknowledged the president “hasn’t done anything” to lower the cost of living. Todd Cox, in Maine, cited “the disregard for the rule of law.” Linda Olson, a previous Trump voter in Kansas, said the president was working to “make himself richer instead of really helping the people.”

Voters who usually split their tickets between the two parties’ candidates said they wanted to send a message. Stacey, an Iowa voter, told The Guardian: “I wanted to vote for no Republicans.”

The Guardian wrote: “This ‘mirror world’ – Trump’s constructed reality, casting his enemies as democracy-stealing villains and himself as the savior – was a central pillar of his victorious bid to reclaim the White House two years ago.” It added: “As votes were counted on Tuesday night, though, it became clear the mirror had shattered.”

The outlet reported that Trump claimed a “golden age” even as prices rose sharply and the Iran war continued. Americans, including people who had voted for Trump before, did not approve of the Iran war and were not experiencing a “golden age” as they filled up their cars and paid for groceries. The voters The Guardian spoke to did consider Trump’s administration and agenda to be on the ballot — “much to the devastation of Republicans running for office up and down the ballot.”

Trump repeatedly declared that a new “golden age of America” was under way in his final pitch. The war in Iran “was not really a war, because we’ve done very little fighting,” he stressed. He said the stock market had hit 88 all-time highs. “They’re saying,” he said, that on his watch the United States had become “the hottest country anywhere in the world.” Speaking at Washington’s Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on the campaign’s last day, he claimed the country had “achieved more in less than two years than any administration in American history, and I’ve kept every single promise I made – except far more.” He added: “I’ve actually kept far more promises than I made. We’ve done much more than I promised.”

As Americans prepared to cast votes in hundreds of congressional races across the country, Trump implored them to “pretend I’m on the ballot” and vote on the policies he had enacted. A photograph accompanying the report showed Trump holding an image of the reflecting pool at a press conference just before election day.

The Guardian wrote: “Rather than acknowledge voters’ woes, Trump tried for months to explain, or dismiss, them.” Affordability, he said last year, was a “con job” perpetrated by Democrats. In October, he said fuel prices may be high for consumers, but “the United States oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars.” That summer, he said people who did not want datacenters in their communities would end up “backwards and poor.” In Kansas just before the election, he said he was “willing to do tariffs” and “they have helped US companies.”

Paul Bentz, an independent pollster and strategist at HighGround, an Arizona public affairs firm, said, “You don’t see the stock market on the side of the road. But you drive down a street, you see the gas prices.” He said: “The tone-deaf nature of his approach on things, talking about issues that other folks don’t care about, ignoring and pretending like there aren’t struggles going on, just was not the right strategy.”

The Federal Reserve Economic Data SP500 series listed the S&P 500 at 7,353.73 on Nov. 8, 2026. Bentz’s colleague described the midterm election as the reflecting pool election. Trump delivered his final speech before an algae-beset pool of water he spent 14m renovating that showed him his own reflection: “Narcissism 101,” the colleague called it, a metaphor for the midterms.

Later in the week, Trump elevated Stephen Miller, whom The Guardian described as one of the administration’s most controversial figures, to chief of staff. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday: “I JUST WASN’T ON THE BALLOT. IF I WERE, WE WOULD HAVE WON IN A LANDSLIDE!”

Following the midterm losses, Republican leaders were searching for what came next and considering how tied their futures were to Trump. Republicans did not seriously attempt to distance themselves from him during the campaign because breaking with him would have carried major political risk in Republican primaries, where the party faithful remained supportive, The Guardian reported.

Galvin said people in his party who either stayed home or voted the other way were trying to send a message: stop excusing corruption and trafficking in election lies and get to work on real issues that matter to voters. He had argued that tariffs were wrong and said he heard from voters concerned about corruption in Washington after seeing what looked like pay-to-play pardon schemes. “I didn’t see any federal officials in Arizona, or federal candidates in Arizona on our side, say anything about that,” he said. “Federal candidates in Arizona did not fully convey that they appreciate people’s pain,” he said, adding that he thought they “whistled past the graveyard.” Still, Galvin said, “there is a lane to do the right thing” in the Republican Party.

By the time polls closed on Nov. 3, Arizona Republicans had lost handily up and down the ballot. Both chambers of the state legislature flipped, and the Democratic governor won her reelection bid by nearly 13 points in a battleground state. A photograph accompanying the report showed Democrats celebrating at an election-night watch party in New York on Tuesday.

Joe Pitts, a Republican who leads the Arizona think tank 1912 Institute, said he was not ready to count out Trump or his influence in the party. He said many of the quick conclusions offered that week would look wrong in a few months. “So long as Trump is president and frankly, so long as Trump is alive, he will exercise significant influence over the Republican Party,” Pitts said.

Pitts warned that the significant shifts did not signal broad approval for Democrats, but that “these demographics” were up for grabs and willing to change their minds. He said the massive losses could, in time, mean opportunities for Republicans. Abeler predicted that the presidential election could go better for Republicans because people had gotten protest votes off their chests.

Democrats were also careful not to interpret the results as a broad endorsement of their party, describing them instead as a sign that people were sick of politics as usual, including the way the president talked about the issues affecting them directly. “People are just tired of nonsense. They’re tired of people performing in front of them,” Brooks said. “People are tired of the show. I don’t want to be a show. I just want to help people.”

Christine Hunschofsky, a Florida state representative and the incoming House Democratic leader in the state, said in a media call that week that elected officials in both parties should see the results as a call to listen to voters and address their concerns, or they would be voted out no matter how safe a seat seemed. Voters no longer trusted that government would respond to their needs because they continued hearing candidates say they cared without seeing action once those candidates took office, she said. “Every elected official has such a responsibility right now to restore that trust,” Hunschofsky said. “Because once that trust is gone, I have even bigger concerns for my country.”