Within a day of losing both chambers, Republicans were offering competing explanations, from Trump’s primary picks to his focus on his own priorities.
Republicans lost the House and the Senate on Tuesday, and the party’s own voices began arguing about why before the last races were called. Some blamed Trump’s choices in the primaries. Trump blamed the candidates. A White House official said he had promoted them better than they promoted themselves.
The party’s own diagnosis
Republican strategist Doug Heye called the night a “Trump Quake” and said Trump “spent the year telling voters what was important to him, not to them.” A Reuters analysis found that Trump repeatedly backed loyalists over more established Republicans with proven statewide records.
Texas is the clearest case. Trump backed Attorney General Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn in the primary, and Paxton lost to James Talarico, who became the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas since 1994. Analyst Thomas Kahn told Reuters that Cornyn “would have been a slam dunk for Republicans to win.”
In North Carolina, Michael Whatley lost to former Gov. Roy Cooper, who Kahn said “would not have run if Thom Tillis had run for re-election.” Former Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, said the primary fight in South Carolina “really divided the party.”
The White House view
Trump wrote on Tuesday night, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” He later said Democrats “did a good job” and blamed Republican candidates for the losses. He called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who lost to Democrat Gina Hinojosa, a “RINO.” A White House official told Reuters that Trump “did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves.”
What voters said
Trump carried Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa and Kansas in 2024, and Democrats won the Senate race in all seven on Tuesday. In the AP Voter Poll, two-thirds of voters said Trump’s policies made the economy worse, and about six in 10 said he puts his own interests ahead of the country’s. About seven in 10 said Congress is not doing enough to check the president, including about four in 10 Republicans.
The warning signs were public for a year. A Brookings analysis in December 2025 found that Trump’s approval had fallen 8 points in two months, and that special elections had swung toward Democrats by margins “well into double digits.” A senior White House official told Reuters that internal polling six weeks before the election showed Republicans losing both chambers.
The DSA question
Democratic Socialists of America also had a strong night. At least five new DSA-endorsed members won House seats, which with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib brings the group’s House contingent from two to about seven, out of 435 seats. Newsweek’s tracker shows every one of those winners in a safe Democratic district. Angie Nixon, a DSA-linked Democrat, lost the Florida Senate special election to Republican Ashley Moody.
The Senate majority came from elsewhere. Cooper, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Talarico are not DSA members. Michigan’s winner, Abdul El-Sayed, has said he is not a socialist, though Sen. Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez backed him.
Sources
• Trump hand-picked Senate candidates. Republicans paid the price, Reuters via The Korea Times
• Trump says Democrats “did a good job,” blames Republican candidates for midterm losses, PBS NewsHour (includes AP Voter Poll findings)
• How Trump and Republicans lost the 2026 midterm elections, according to the AP Voter Poll, AP via WSLS
• Talarico wins Texas Senate race, Yahoo News
• As President Trump loses support, Republican prospects in the 2026 midterms grow darker, Brookings Institution, Dec. 4, 2025
• 5 DSA candidates are elected to the House, NPR via KPBS
• Full list of socialists who ran for office, Newsweek
• Is Abdul El-Sayed a socialist?, Britannica
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