Hispanics, Infrequent Voters Won Nov 4 – And Could Be the Key to Congress in 2026

Hy and Christopher discussed the results from last Tuesday. It was a GOP slaughter, but Hy says the Democrats won in Democratic states, while Christopher offers a warning.
Democrats in Mississippi broke the G.O.P.’s State House supermajority last Tuesday after a special election was forced by a court-ordered redistricting to offer Black voters a chance for more representation in the State Capital. Two Public Service Commission seats changed party hands in Georgia. For the first time ever, Democrats seized the District Attorney’s office and all nine school board seats in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a Republican stronghold as late as 2022 and the swing county which helped elect Donald Trump. Democrats similarly notched commanding victories in county executive races in Erie, Lehigh, and Northampton counties, all bellwether counties in recent presidential elections.
A Democratic special election for an Iowa state Senate seat—in a district that had been held by Republicans—broke the GOP's supermajority in the 50-member Iowa Senate, giving Democrats 17 seats to 33, forcing Republicans to seek the support of at least one Democrat to confirm appointments to state agencies and commissions by Gov. Kim Reynolds. In a surprising upset in Virginia, Democrat Jay Jones defeated incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares despite a texting scandal where Jones made death threats against the Virginia House Speaker and subsequently lost 9 percent of the voters who cast a ballot for Abigail Spanberger, the victorious Democratic contender for Governor who was widely expected to win. Jones was still carried to victory by high Black turnout and thanks to Hispanics who voted for Donald Trump but switched back to the Democrats across the country.
National attention focused on the New York Mayor’s race, the gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, and the California ballot initiative to gerrymander five more congressional seats for the Democrats, yet only a few media sources focused on how, in the down-ticket races in GOP-majority states, key Republican constituencies abandoned the party of Trump in favor of the Democrats. Hispanics, with whom the President made huge inroads in 2024, switched back to the Democrats en masse. African Americans went to their polling precincts in numbers not seen since Barack Obama’s first election in 2008.
“Is it any surprise that last night blue states voted blue?” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise quipped, claiming that last year’s presidential race was a better indication of the country’s political lean. Yet Trump’s former White House strategist Steve Bannon noted, “Modern politics now is about engaging low-propensity voters, and they clearly turned them out \[on Tuesday], and this is kind of the Trump model… This is very serious.”
Stacey Abrams’ efforts in 2020 swung Georgia for Biden and two Democratic Senate victories by convincing inconsistent voters to go to the polls. Over issues like affordability and inflation, which carried the day in so many places across the country, voters who often eschew going to the polls actually voted on November 4. Hispanics swung against Trump last Tuesday because more Hispanics in key districts cast a ballot than in 2024. Many of the victories in GOP strongholds came because African Americans, who normally do not go to the polls, decided to vote.
Turnout matters, Christopher concludes. The decision to vote can make all the difference, and as exit polls demonstrate, if voter turnout remains as high in the midterm congressional elections next year as it was on November 4, no amount of GOP gerrymandering will protect their U.S. House, or maybe even their Senate, majorities.
Hy and Christopher go on to talk about tariffs, the Supreme Court, and a story about how a Louisiana Manifesto of rights may have influenced the U.S. Declaration of Independence.