Culture was, trade war, foolish war and class war | Number Theory

Almost everybody is describing the results as a “rebuke to Trump”. What really happened? How did Trump fritter away his massive gains in the 2024 elections?

Midterm elections in the US have historically been against the party holding the presidency. Most forecasts expected the Republican Party to lose the House, and even losing control of Congress was not ruled out by some. But what is surprising about the 2026 midterm results is the scale of the GOP’s losses. At 11:30pm India time, the Democratic Party was expected to gain 7 and 30 seats in the House and the Senate, respectively. Almost everybody is describing the results as a “rebuke to Trump”. What really happened? How did Trump fritter away his massive gains in the 2024 elections? Here are three charts that explain this.

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  The battle went well beyond battleground states

  The scale of the Democratic victory was best described by pollster Nate Silver in a post on the microblogging site X. “If the remaining results go as expected, Democrats will hold governorships in states totaling 392 electoral votes”, he wrote. For context, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris won 226 electoral votes against Trump’s 312 in 2024. Even a rudimentary comparison of state-wise votes in the House elections– all 435 seats went to polls this time – shows that the GOP trailed in 12 states where it led in 2024 and saw its margin decline in all of them except Alaska. “One of Trump’s greatest assets—a MAGA movement that supported him with a rare intensity—is now damaged, if not fractured”, the Wall Street Journal wrote about the results.
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  The Iran war destroyed consumer sentiment in the US...

  If there is one number which should have foretold the result of these elections, it is the Index of Consumer Sentiment data published by the University of Michigan. The index barely moved between September and October 2026, at 48 and 48.1, respectively. It hit its lowest-ever value of 44.8 in May 2026, three months after the Iran war started. It stood at 74 in December 2024, the month after Trump won his second presidency. Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs had already dealt the first blow; the index fell to 52.2 in April and May. Perhaps Trump saw it coming. That is why he announced a $5,000 cash transfer. But the damage, it seems, was done.
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  ... and united almost everyone against Trump’s handling of the economy

  The US is one of the most polarised polities in the world, with most voters committed to either the Democratic or Republican party. This makes swing voters extremely important. The key to an electoral victory is the ability of a party or candidate to win over independent voters rather than just their committed supporters. This is where Trump’s economic management, or rather lack of it, hurt the GOP the most. The most convincing data point, again, came from a survey on Expected Outcomes and Economic Implications of Midterm Elections by the University of Michigan. A similar survey was conducted before the 2022 midterms as well. The results are striking, to say the least. In the 2022 survey, every demographic cohort--based on political partisanship, age, income, education and stock wealth--except Democrats favoured the Republican Party on the question of which party was better for the national economy and personal finances. By 2026, the tables had turned in favour of the Democrats, with even Republicans losing faith in their own party.
• What comes next? With Trump, one never knows. Under existing rules, he cannot seek another term in 2028. The GOP will likely rediscover its opposition to Trump, or at least to his economically damaging policies. The Democratic Party, too, has a bigger battle ahead, this time within the party rather than outside it. The progressives/socialist camp in the Democratic Party has never been so strong. It has now discovered the appeal of fighting a class war rather than a culture war, which generated tailwinds for Trump and his larger politics. The progressive camp in the Democratic Party must thank Trump for unleashing a trade war and then a foolish war against Iran, giving it wings to scale hitherto unscalable red walls.