Every segment of American society has rejected Donald Trump and the Republican party, according to an analysis that describes the 2026 midterm elections as a wholesale repudiation of the president and his agenda.
Writing in the Guardian, political data analyst Ben Davis argues that the results could come to be seen as the death knell of Trumpism and the MAGA movement, despite Trump having indelibly changed the face of American politics and the basic structure of American institutions.
A rejection across all groups
Davis contends that nearly everyone's lives are worse than they were a decade ago, and that people had been willing to tolerate the coarseness, the attacks on American democratic norms and the global foreign policy order only because they believed they would get economic and physical security in return.
He argues that Trump's second term has shattered that myth and fundamentally shattered the much-prophesied realignment of the Republican party as a working-class party.
Wave elections and their stories
The analysis notes that wave elections usually have a specific story. It points to 2016 as the collapse of the blue wall and working-class white Democratic support, 2018 as a Republican collapse among college-educated voters in the suburbs, and 2020 as a continuation of educational realignment and a sign of Trump's surprising continued strength with non-voters.
Davis adds that 2022 was a story about the Dobbs decision and Republican overreach causing backlash, particularly in midwestern swing states, and of backlash in blue states to Democratic government over crime and other concerns. Two years ago, the 2024 election was a story about the collapse of a gerontocratic Democratic party with, in particular, young and non-white voters.
The scale of the blue wave
This year's story, according to Davis, is not the Republican party's collapse or underperformance with a specific group, a specific region, or for one specific reason. Instead, it is a wholesale rejection of Trump and the Republican party by every single segment of American society.
Republicans have hemorrhaged support up and down the ballot from coast to coast. Pre-election polls showed a massive blue wave, one so large even the pollsters themselves were tripping over themselves to say they didn't trust the data.
Davis writes that even the rosy polls missed the sheer scale of the blue wave. For a long time there seemed to be two Americas, a blue and a red one, with 90% of people voting for the same party in every election. Red states such as Texas, Kansas or South Carolina could not go blue because the country was too polarized. Trump has managed something incredible: he has depolarized America, with red and blue America able to put aside their differences and agree on hating Donald Trump.
