The signs were there from the outset. About 30 minutes after the polls in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District closed at 6 p.m., the first numbers from rural counties began trickling in. It was no surprise that they favored Republican Ralph Alvarado over Democrat Zach Dembo. The district was reliably Democratic until 2012, when Andy Barr, a Republican who is now running to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate, eked out a win. Since then, the GOP has gerrymandered the district to all but ensure it stayed in the fold.
The real story, though, could be found in the margins. Alvarado was underperforming Barr’s 2024 results by around 20 percentage points — a staggering drop, indicating that a significant number of Republicans had either stayed home or decided to take a chance on Dembo. Off the Democratic map for the last 14 years, by 9:15 p.m., when it was reported that Alvarado had conceded, the district had become a microcosm of what was unfolding nationwide.
The blue landslide, long predicted by pundits but mentioned with fingers crossed by Democrats, was becoming an avalanche.
Further south in Georgia, an earlier-than-expected call for Jon Ossoff buoyed Democratic hopes, followed by a pickup in the North Carolina Senate race, which saw Gov. Roy Cooper projected to defeat former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley. Democrats even put up a fight in ruby-red Florida’s statewide races, with David Jolly, the nominee for governor, and Angie Nixon, the democratic socialist Senate candidate, running ahead of their opponents until the conservative Panhandle’s votes were counted.
Then came South Carolina, where Darline Graham, who was foisted upon the state’s Republican Party by Donald Trump to succeed her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, after his death, went down to an historic defeat. The Palmetto State hasn’t seen a Democrat elected to the Senate since 1998.
Amy Acton, Ohio’s Democratic nominee for governor, routed her opponent Vivek Ramaswamy after he released a widely condemned ad that weaponized a horrific part of her childhood. In Texas, James Talarico is projected for a stunning win over scandal-plagued Ken Paxton, and Gina Hinojosa ousted the incumbent Greg Abbott from the governor’s mansion.
Other elections around the country — Senate races in Michigan, Kansas and Iowa; pivotal House contests and gubernatorial races — appear to be trending for Democrats.
For a decade, the party has wondered when, or if, a reckoning would arrive for Trump and MAGA. That moment has arrived.
Again and again, Republicans have followed the president over the cliff, no more so than during the past 22 months. In 2024, Trump expanded on the coalition that had carried him to success in 2016 by making inroads with Black men, Latinos and young voters. It was a success that, at least in part, led Republicans to launch a national gerrymandering scheme largely thwarted by Democrats, as well as an unfavorable economic climate of the president’s own making.
But Trump also made the grievous error of attacking the very communities that helped return him to the White House. The combination of his assaults on voting rights and Black history, as well as the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, ensured that Black voters turned out overwhelmingly for Democrats. After more than a year of ICE raids, mass deportations and threats against naturalized citizens, Latinos have swung to the Democrats en masse, playing a decisive role in Talarico’s win. Trump’s attacks on civil rights, immigrants’ rights and the social safety net have cut across demographic groups, and have had a strong negative impact on young voters. Drunk on his own power, the president has spent the better part of two years splintering his own coalition — and giving Democrats an opening they were happy to exploit.
The monumental defeat suffered by Republicans offers a sobering lesson for Democrats — to not forget what brought them to this night of victory.
The message voters are sending is loud and clear: They want fighters, leaders who are willing to throw out conventional wisdom and do battle for working-class interests. That’s what Ossoff sensed last fall, when he was considered to be the nation’s most endangered Democrat. Instead of playing it safe, he staked his candidacy on affordability issues, particularly subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. In the midst of the longest government shutdown on record, Ossoff held firm: He would not vote to reopen the federal government unless the tax credits were restored.
Other Democratic candidates got the message. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan proved steadfast in linking the billions in federal funding that continue to subsidize Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza to skyrocketing consumer prices on the homefront. Another physician, Dr. Annie Andrews, who defeated Graham, unabashedly campaigned on creating a healthcare public option and gun control measures in South Carolina — and won.
Right now, Democrats are feeling the wind at their backs. But after the excitement fades from tonight’s successes, they will realize they are now facing an even bigger challenge: To stay true to the mandate they have been given by voters, grudgingly in some cases, and to not, as they have done so often in the past, slip on the proverbial banana peel that is always waiting for them around the corner.
Throughout his campaign for the Senate, Paxton was fond of saying, “If we lose Texas, we lose America.” Tonight, Democrats put Texas solidly in their column — and America is still standing.
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