The end of Maga as we know it
The Republican party is heading into a regrouping after a 2026 US midterm defeat that Democrats and commentators described as the most sweeping repudiation of a sitting president since the Watergate election of 1974. Democrats took both chambers of Congress and broke through in deep-red states including Kansas and South Carolina, while once-Republican suburbs such as Round Rock, north of Austin in Texas Hill Country, swung back over the Iran war and dissatisfaction with Donald Trump. In Texas, James Talarico’s Senate win was Democrats’ first there since 1988 — the year before he was born — and senator Ted Cruz is now the last statewide Republican still standing.
On Round Rock’s main street, Tarik Bakir, 41, a financial adviser who served with the US military in Afghanistan, said he had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2024 but returned to the Democrats in 2026. He cited unhappiness with the Iran war and an economy that was “OK, but not great,” calling the vote a rebuttal to Trump. Pollster Frank Luntz, who convened a focus group of 2024 Trump voters switching to Democrats, said affordability hit paycheck-to-paycheck supporters especially hard on food and fuel; they had been promised lower prices, no forever wars and a drained swamp, and used 2026 to hold Republicans accountable rather than to reward Democrats. Luntz argued Trump “lost the plot,” talking about vanity projects, legal grievances and spats instead of costs such as diesel and fertiliser for farmers.
Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama White House official and distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said the result busted models across demographics and geography and that anyone claiming they were unsurprised was lying. He attributed the Maga fracture to broken pledges — sweeping tariffs, the unpopular Iran conflict, cryptocurrency self-enrichment schemes and federal immigration overreach that terrorised local communities — and said Trump’s approval in the low 30s had broken his psychological hold on the party. Florida governor Ron DeSantis called it close to an extinction-level event in many parts of the country; Cruz said the party got an “ass-kicking” after Trump publicly praised Ohio senator Jon Husted’s “ass.”
Continue in the app — vote & join in ➔