On Wednesday, the day after the midterms, Anat and I sat down with G. Elliott Morris of Strength In Numbers to make sense of the results. (We’re posting the recap today, Friday, because Elliott shared some of his analysis with us before he’d published it himself.)
Some of the big takeaways:
It was a historic swing, and nearly every group moved toward Democrats. The biggest shifts came among Latino, Asian, young, and rural voters. Rural margins are back to 2006 levels. In Webb County, Texas, James Talarico won by 49 points, roughly a 50-point swing from 2024. So much for the Latino “realignment.”
The big exception? White evangelicals. They held at about 80-20 Republican, which is almost unheard of in a wave. “Evangelical” is an identity people organize around every Sunday; a pollster category like “non-college” isn’t. Evangelicals make up at least half of the Republican primary vote in the 27 states of what I call the Greater Confederacy, and church-endorsed candidates don’t lose those primaries. This is also why I’ve predicted that these losses won’t make the Republican Party more moderate.
Elliott’s independent polling got it right. Elliott’s subscriber-funded Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll had Democrats up 12 on the generic House ballot two weeks out. That makes it tied for the most accurate in the field. The polls that missed underestimated Democrats, and the Senate polling error is on track to be one of the largest in decades.
This was an anti-MAGA wave, not a pro-Democratic one. As I reiterated on Tuesday, voters fired the party in power in the House, Senate, or White House in 10 of the last 11 elections. Americans, especially young people, are fed up with a system that doesn’t work for them.
It wasn’t just about the economy. Among Trump defectors, Elliott noted, cost of living topped the list of concerns — but about 40% also cited immigration or Trump’s personal conduct, and immigration was the top reason for young defectors and ran higher among Latinos. Voters reacted viscerally to the abductions, camps, and crimes against humanity they saw with their own eyes.
Run on your values, not from them. Anat’s closing point was that you win by being attractive, and like any magnet, that means repelling some people too. I added that the problem, too often, is that the people whose campaigns get funded actually do run on their values.
