At least 55 Democrats won House districts Trump carried
Democrats from districts Trump carried will make up the largest such group in 20 years, judging by the arithmetic of the party’s midterm victories. At least 55 Democrats won House districts in the midterms that President Trump carried two years ago, including 37 who won seats now held by Republicans. That is the largest group in 20 years of Democrats from districts that backed the GOP in the prior presidential election, and it will account for more than one in five Democrats in the next Congress.
The New Democrat Coalition, the party’s moderate caucus in the House, says it will have 142 members next year, up from 114 now — more than half of all Democratic House members and, in the assessment of The Wall Street Journal, a formidable voice on legislation.
“We’re the majority-makers,” said Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D., Ill.), the group’s new leader. “We’re the Democrats who run in red areas and purple areas, and we win, and we stay focused on policy that speaks to most people in America, who are in the middle.”
The Congressional Progressive Caucus is growing too. The caucus says it is gaining 25 new members, several of whom also joined centrist or conservative caucuses, and will include more than 100 lawmakers, including several who call themselves Democratic socialists.
The numbers shape what the new majorities are positioned to attempt. Moderates are positioned to act as a check on the party’s most ambitious progressive goals, with centrist lawmakers looking for immediate, if less transformative, policy wins to show the swing voters and Trump supporters who helped elect them that they are focused on cost-of-living issues.
Conversations among new and veteran lawmakers at a conference in Denver this past week converged on a common set of goals: a ban on stock trading by House and Senate members, framed as a response to anger over perceived self-dealing in government, and reversing cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies that Trump and the Republican-led Congress approved. A higher federal minimum wage and a bill to ease labor union organizing also arose as top priorities in the discussions. The conference was sponsored by a group called Majority Democrats and drew more than 3,500 people, organizers said.
“We can have the wish list, but we need to make sure that we’re focused on a task list, that is, things we know we can deliver,” said Rep.-elect Paige Cognetti, the mayor of Scranton, Pa., who flipped a Republican-held House district that Trump had carried by more than 8 percentage points in 2024.
James Talarico, who won an upset victory in the state’s Senate race, stood before hundreds of Democrats gathered in Denver to plot a new course for their party and called for Congress to pass an agenda as bold as Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. “We have a mandate the size of Texas,” he said, ticking off universal health coverage, a national ban on gerrymandering and other policy ambitions during his remarks Thursday.
Talarico also promised to stand up to his party to defend oil and gas industry jobs, and he stopped short of endorsing a Medicare for All system that replaces private insurance, a top progressive priority.
The party’s unexpected gain of eight Senate seats, with hopes of picking up a ninth seat once the tally is final in Alaska, rests in large part on centrist candidates winning in states Trump carried.
Many in the party are already thinking about how to hold the seats and states they have won, saying Democrats in the next election can’t count on Trump to generate the same voter anger that hurt GOP candidates this year.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D., N.Y.), who won re-election in a district that Trump carried by about 4 points in 2024, said the overwhelming majority of Democrats who flipped Republican House districts were centrists who would face competitive races in 2028. He cautioned the party against picking up progressive policy goals, such as the call to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.
“Those are some of the stupidest words ever in the history of politics,” he said. “Right after, ‘defund the police.’”
Suozzi also called Medicare for All the wrong approach to expanding health coverage. “The objective is a noble objective, but it’s not going to happen politically,” he said.
Most of the progressive caucus’s new members come from solidly Democratic communities, but about six won districts Trump carried in 2024. They include Randy Villegas, a college professor who won 68% of the vote in a California district Trump carried by 2 points.
“What we have proven in my election is that you can win with a progressive populist platform, not just in safe blue seats but in swing districts anywhere across this country,” Villegas said at a progressive caucus event this month.
Other incoming members of the progressive caucus said they would push for a range of new and enhanced social programs. “We have a system right now that is rigged for the elite and the wealthy,” said Daniel Koh, newly elected in a heavily Democratic district in Massachusetts. He promised to “unrig the system” by raising taxes on corporations and high-income earners.
“It means taking that money and making sure that we cap people’s rent, cap their utility bills, free child care, reinstituting the child tax credit, and, finally, passing Medicare for All,” he said. Koh carried a district that Trump lost by 20 points.
Lawmakers from more politically fluid districts say they are wary of the most ambitious progressive goals, such as Medicare for All.
“The healthcare industry is a huge portion of the American economy, and so changing anything with our healthcare system is something we need to be humble about, or we can make it worse,” said Jamie Ager, a North Carolina farmer who won handily in a district that Trump had carried by about 10 points.
Adam Frisch, a two-time Colorado congressional candidate now working with the centrist group Welcome PAC, said Democrats in Trump-leaning districts might not want to unpack their bags in Washington if they won their races by less than 3 or 4 percentage points.
“We’re going to have an experiment over the next two years to see what flavors of Democrats are able to own their seats, rather than rent them,” he said. “I’d be very careful to be sure that your economic policies are in the center of your district, not the center of your party.”