Insight Into The U.S. House Midterm Election Results

In House elections this year, Republicans lost in every section of the country, in urban, suburban, exurban and rural districts, among Black, Hispanic, Asian and white voters. Young voters, the future of this democracy, switched parties at an enormous rate.

As for me, on Election Eve 2026, I was focused on the returns in the 8th Congressional District in Colorado. This newly created seat, just north of Denver, was designed to be bipartisan. Yadira Caravedo, a Democrat, won the 2022 election in that district by 1,632 votes, a margin of 0.69%. Gabe Evans, a Republican, won the 2024 election by 2,449 votes, a margin of 0.73%.

This time, Manny Rutinel, a progressive state legislator, ran against Evans. This race attracted millions of dollars in TV advertising, since the 2022 and 2024 margins were so close.

Rutinel won by 42,182 votes; a margin of nearly 15%. That’s right, 15%!

But that wasn’t the only exciting win.

Lauren Boebert, the pro-MAGA firebrand who moved to a different congressional district in Colorado in 2024 because she narrowly won her old district in 2022, lost her bid for re-election this year. The Colorado congressional delegation went from a 4-4 Democratic-Republican split to 7 Democrats and 1 Republican.

The same was true in Texas, a state in which every statewide elective office used to be held by Republicans. Now, Ted Cruz is the only Republican elected to office on a statewide basis in the Lone Star State.

North Carolina, a state that was redistricted by a Republican-controlled state legislature to favor Republicans, went from 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats, in 2024, to 4 Republicans and 10 Democrats in 2026. The whole state’s congressional delegation flipped.

The Cook Political Report divided all 435 House seats, just before the election, into seven categories: Safe Democratic, Likely Democratic, Leans Democratic, Tossup, Leans Republican, Likely Republican, and Safe Republican. There were 204 Safe and Likely Democratic and 177 Safe and Likely Republican seats, per Cook, and 18 seats in each of the remaining categories.

The results of the 2026 House elections:

• Democrats carried every one of the 204 Safe and Likely Democratic seats.
• Democrats won every one of the 18 Lean Democratic seats. 11 of those victories were flips, that is, seats in which a Democratic challenger defeated a Republican incumbent.
• Democrats won every one of the 18 Tossup seats. 11 of those elections were flips. Bobby Polido, a Latin Grammy musician, won his seat in Texas by a 25-point margin.
• Democrats won 10 of the 18 Lean Republican seats. 4 of those elections were flips. Don Leonard and Katy Padilla Stout won their districts in Ohio and Texas, respectively, by 7- and 8-point margins.
• Democrats, even more remarkably, won 9 of the 177 Safe and Likely Republican seats. Every one of those victories was a flip.

Democrats were able to win these seats by using the 2026 variant of James Carville’s famous slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The 2026 message was: “Prices are too damn high because of Trump’s war and Trump’s tariffs. Trump and his Republican allies care about their billionaire friends, not about you.”

This message resonated among Democrats, independents and even some Republican voters, including in parts of the country and among demographic groups that have tended to vote Republican in recent years. Here are some of the preliminary results:

• The gender gap persisted, with 61% of women and 51% of men voting for Democrats. However, the gender gap was narrower than in 2024. A majority of men voted for Democrats, a 17-point gain from 2024.
• The percentage of Hispanics who voted for Democrats was 30% higher than it was in 2024. That includes 64% of Hispanic men and 75% of Hispanic women. The Hispanic vote was crucial in Texas, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley.
• The turnout percentages for Black voters in the South were at close to presidential levels. In Georgia, 57.6 % of white voters and only 45.5% of Black voters in 2022 turned out to vote, a 12.1% gap. In 2026, the percentages were 55.7% and 54.5%, a gap of only 2.2%.
• Black voters in the South turned out at these rates as a direct response to Louisiana v. Callais and the targeted elimination of majority-Black congressional districts.
• Republican efforts to add new seats by redistricting failed miserably. Democrats gained 6 new net seats in North Carolina, 3 in Ohio, and 1 in Texas. Republicans gained no net seats in Florida, Alabama and Tennessee, after they had tried to gain 4, 1 and 1 new net seats in those states.
• 33% of younger voters switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party. 60% of white voters between the ages of 18 and 29, and 56% of white voters between the ages of 30 and 44, voted for Democrats.
• As a measure of the working-class vote, 50% of high school graduates voted for Democrats, a 19-point swing from 2024.

In another measure of working-class power, 16 of the newly elected Democrats were members or officials of labor unions, joining the approximately 25 union members currently serving in the House.

The House in 2027 will have at least 255 Democrats, an increase of at least 41 seats. That number will probably increase, since 12 House seats are currently undecided.

There are historic election results. In the words of Obama in 2010 and Bush in 2006, after their midterm election losses, it was a “shellacking” “thumping.”

Written By Barry Roseman, SU4W Board Member