Republicans soared in the recent US elections, but Democrats have reasons for optimism for 2026

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

74% : Trump also won the national popular vote by 49.8-48.3% over Harris, becoming the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004.
64% : In December 2017, Democrats gained a Senate seat in Alabama at a special election during Trump's first term, despite Trump winning Alabama by over 25 points in his three presidential elections.
62% : At this election, the tipping-point state was Pennsylvania, which Trump won by 1.7%.
53% : While this was a clear victory for Trump, a 1.5% win in the popular vote is not a landslide.
53% : The swing to Trump with Hispanics at this election can be explained by decreasing racial polarisation but increasing educational polarisation in the US.
52% : In 2008 and 2012, Democrat Barack Obama won more electoral votes than Trump in 2024 (365 in 2008, 332 in 2012).
51% : The main cause for this narrowing in the Republicans' Electoral College advantage is that Hispanics swung big to Trump.
49% : This happened because whites without a university education swung big to Trump from the 2012 election.
48% : The rest are in states Trump won by at least a ten-point margin.
45% : Prior to the 2024 election, Democrats and allied independents held a 51-49 Senate majority, but they were defending 23 of the 33 seats up for election, including three in states Trump won easily: Ohio, Montana and West Virginia.
42% : If Democrats had lost Senate contests in all the states Trump won, Republicans would have taken a 57-43 Senate majority.
41% : On a uniform swing, if Trump had lost the popular vote by less than 3.9% in 2020, he would have still won the presidency.
39% : Trump is sure to anger Democrats with many of his decisions.
38% : Hispanics used to vote for Democratic candidates on the basis of race, but are now increasingly voting for Trump like whites without a university education.
36% : Trump was never popular during his first term, helping the Democrats gain control of the House at the 2018 midterm elections.
30% : In the US, "special elections" (the same thing as a byelection) will be needed to replace those House members (in addition to Republican Matt Gaetz, who resigned from his House seat when Trump nominated him to be attorney general, but has subsequently withdrawn from consideration).
29% : The Senate alone is responsible for confirming presidential cabinet-level and judicial appointments, so Trump is unlikely to have trouble with these appointments for the next two years.
22% : If Democrats benefit from higher turnout among their voters and Trump is unpopular, they could heavily defeat Republicans in 2026.
21% : Trump has selected two House Republicans for his administration, and they will need to resign if confirmed by the Senate.
13% : In raw vote terms, Trump defeated Harris by 77.3 million votes to 75.0 million.
11% : In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in the Electoral College by 306 to 232 electoral votes.
11% : After the 2016 US election, I wrote that Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College by 306 electoral votes to 232, despite losing the popular vote by 2.1%.

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