Analysis | Stucci Media
In Florida, a state Donald Trump carried by about 13 points two years ago, Republican Byron Donalds won the governor’s race on Tuesday by roughly 107,700 votes out of more than 8 million cast. That is the 2026 midterm results in one number. Republicans held their best state, on a congressional map they redrew this spring to grab four more seats, and still came within a single point of losing the top job. Democrats won or led in all four Democratic-held districts that map was built to flip.
The second number is for the people we write for most. A record 258 military veterans ran for Congress this year, according to Military Times. When the next Congress is sworn in, veterans will hold about 15 percent of its seats, down from 19 percent. The war with Iran helped decide this election, and the Congress that will oversee it will have fewer people in it who have worn the uniform.
The 2026 midterm results by the numbers
Democrats needed a net gain of four Senate seats and three House seats. They blew past both.
- Senate: NBC News projects Democrats at 54 seats, counting the two independents who caucus with them, after flipping seven Republican seats. Republicans went into Tuesday with 53.
- House: CNN counted Democrats at 240 seats by Wednesday afternoon, with dozens of races still uncalled. Republicans held 218 going in.
- Still out: Alaska and Mississippi Senate races are too close to call and could take days or weeks, USA Today reports. In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola led Sen. Dan Sullivan by fewer than 700 votes in early counts.
Exit polls cited by Rutgers’ Eagleton Center show how wide the swing was. Democrats won independents by 17 points, women by 18, and Latino voters 62 percent to 35 percent, and they tied Republicans among men. Nearly 9 in 10 voters called the cost of living a crucial or major factor, according to the Rutgers analysis. Democrats also ran several points ahead of their final polls.
Seven Senate flips, and some of them should not have happened
A wave is one thing. Texas, Kansas and South Carolina are another. Here is the list, per Roll Call and the AP:
- Texas: State Rep. James Talarico beat Attorney General Ken Paxton. He is the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate race since 1988. Paxton, impeached by the Republican-led Texas House in 2023 and acquitted by the state Senate, beat Sen. John Cornyn in a May runoff after Trump endorsed him a week before the vote.
- Kansas: Adam Hamilton, the pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country, unseated Sen. Roger Marshall. Kansas had not elected a Democrat to the Senate in 94 years.
- South Carolina: Pediatrician Annie Andrews beat Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed to the seat after her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, died in July. South Carolina last elected a Democratic senator in 1998.
- Maine: Troy Jackson, a logger who entered the race in late July, ended Susan Collins’s 30-year Senate career. Collins conceded early Wednesday.
- Ohio: Sherrod Brown won his way back, beating Sen. Jon Husted.
- North Carolina: Former Gov. Roy Cooper beat Michael Whatley for an open seat.
- Iowa: Josh Turek beat Rep. Ashley Hinson for the seat Joni Ernst is leaving.
Democrats also held Georgia, where Sen. Jon Ossoff beat Rep. Mike Collins, plus Michigan, New Hampshire and Minnesota.
Governors: Texas falls, Florida bends
The governor’s races hit just as hard. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa beat Gov. Greg Abbott, ending 36 years of Republican control of the Texas governor’s office. In Ohio, Dr. Amy Acton became the first Democrat elected governor in 20 years. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms won and became the first Black woman elected governor in the country, according to Northeastern University’s election analysis.
Florida was the Republican firewall, and it held, barely. Donalds beat David Jolly 50 percent to 49 percent and becomes Florida’s first Black governor. Sen. Ashley Moody beat Democrat Angie Nixon 51 to 48, and Republicans swept the Cabinet races by about 2 points each, according to News4JAX results. In the House, Kathy Castor held a Tampa-area district redrawn to vote for Trump by 11 points, and Jared Moskowitz and newcomer Pia Dandiya held South Florida seats. Darren Soto led narrowly in District 9. Republicans held on in races that were supposed to be safe, including Anna Paulina Luna’s 13th District, by less than a point.
The promises that were on the ballot
Trump told voters this fall to “pretend” he was on the ballot. They did. So it is fair to set what he promised next to what voters got.
- “I will end inflation.” That was the 2024 pitch. Inflation was 3 percent when he took office and 3.7 percent in September, the AP reported. On the trail, Trump claimed it was under 2 percent and “under control.” It was not, and voters buy groceries.
- Cheaper gas. Before the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on Feb. 28, the national average was just under $3 a gallon. By Labor Day it was $4.14, a record for the holiday, according to AAA figures reported by PBS NewsHour. Trump called higher gas prices an “inexpensive price to pay” for the war.
- No new wars. Trump ran as the president who would end wars, not start them. The war with Iran is now in its ninth month. On Wednesday he said, “I would have done nothing different.”
- The “golden age.” Trump spent the final weeks telling crowds the country was doing “better now than ever before.” Three-quarters of exit poll voters rated the national economy negatively.
- The map. Republicans redrew congressional districts in Florida, Texas and North Carolina mid-decade to lock in the House. NBC News reported Democrats swept through many of the seats Republicans targeted.
Tariffs did not help. The AP noted double-digit tariffs on the European Union, Japan, Canada, Mexico and India, and voters it interviewed tied them to what they pay at the store.
The hype machine ran on both sides
None of this makes the Democratic campaign a model of honesty. Their closing pitch, as summarized by Border Report, was to lower the cost of groceries and gas “beginning on day one,” the same promise Trump made in 2024 and could not keep. Congress does not set the price of gas. Whoever runs the House in January will learn that fast.
The money was out of control everywhere. Maine’s Senate race was the most expensive in the state’s history, with hundreds of millions in outside spending that dwarfed what the candidates raised themselves, the Maine Morning Star reported. National Republicans and allied PACs poured hundreds of millions into Paxton’s Texas race and lost anyway.
And the winners are already talking about payback, not results. “We’ve got to do exactly what McConnell did to us,” Sen. Ruben Gallego said Tuesday night, per Roll Call. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said very few of Trump’s nominees “are going to get through.” Trump answered by posting a red hat reading “VETO” and calling himself “Mr. Veto.” Voters asked for relief on prices. Both sides are promising a two-year standoff.
Why Republicans lost the 2026 midterms, in their own words
The most honest read came from inside the White House. “The reason we lost is the war,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X Wednesday morning. He told Republicans who want to argue the war was worth “losing the Senate for the next 6 years” to make that case openly, and said “everyone knows why we lost,” Politico reported.
Trump told reporters he was “a little bit surprised” and “thought we would do better,” ABC7 reported. He said he did not want to blame anybody, then said voters “didn’t like the candidates in most cases” and pointed to high gas prices. He said Abbott would not have lost if he “hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months.” Asked about Vance’s post, he said, “I knew the war was going to impact it.”
That is a sitting vice president breaking with his own administration’s signature war the morning after an election. Watch that split. It will shape the next two years more than any bill.
What it means for veterans and military families
Start with the war. A Democratic Senate and House now control the money and the oversight for a conflict that has run since February. Expect hearings on war costs, troop deployments and strategy. Expect fights over war powers. Military families should watch the defense budget and any supplemental spending fights closely, because pay, housing and deployment schedules ride on them.
Then the people. With Honor counts at least 69 veterans elected Tuesday, 65 to the House and 4 to the Senate, and at least 11 women veterans in the next Congress, the most ever, according to the group’s post-election release. The new veteran class is also more balanced: at least 46 Republicans and 33 Democrats, compared with 72 and 28 in the current Congress. Retired Navy admiral Nancy Lacore, who spent 35 years in the Navy before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed her, is projected to flip a Republican House seat in South Carolina, with a recount possible, Military.com reported.
Fewer veterans overall, more of them from the other party, and one of them fired by the current Pentagon leadership. The Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees will look different in January. We covered why ballots from troops overseas still count after Election Day in our piece on military ballots arriving late, and that matters now in the close races that are still being counted.
What is still being counted
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting if no one clears 50 percent, so the Peltola and Sullivan race could take weeks. Mississippi’s Senate race is also uncalled. In Florida, several Miami-Dade and Central Florida House races finished just outside the 0.5 percent recount threshold. The final House count could move by several seats.
The economic backdrop has not changed. We broke down the September numbers in inflation hitting 3.7 percent and the 2027 COLA, and what oil near $100 meant for the Fed in our October rate preview. Oil fell below $90 a barrel Wednesday after Vance’s post, CNBC reported. More of our coverage is on the Politics page.
This was madness, and it blew everybody’s socks off. Kansas. Texas. South Carolina. Susan Collins gone. Nobody in this business predicted that map. Anybody who tells you this morning they saw it coming is selling something.
But don’t call it a mystery. Trump promised to end inflation, and it went up. He promised cheaper gas, and families paid record prices at the pump this summer. He promised no new wars and started one. Then he spent the whole fall telling people it was a golden age while they stared at their grocery receipts. You can’t sell people a story that their own wallets call a lie. Voters weren’t fooled by the hype. They punished it.
The vice president said it himself: the reason they lost is the war. When your own number two says that out loud the morning after, the spin is over. The people who carry that war are the troops and their families, and they deserve a Congress that asks hard questions about it.
Now the warning for the winners. Democrats did not win because the country fell in love with their agenda. They won because the other side broke its promises. If they spend two years on payback and promise “day one” fixes they can’t deliver either, the same voters will throw them out in 2028. Both parties sold the American people a show this year. One got caught. Prove me wrong by lowering a bill.
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Rocci J. Stucci is the founder and CEO of Stucci Media and host of The Rocci Stucci Show.
