About 10% of Trump voters defected, handing Democrats a 13-point blowout

MAGA's grip on the party alienated traditional conservatives — even in Texas

Reuniting the base looms as the defining challenge for would-be GOP successors

Protesters opposed to President Donald Trump's plan to build a triumphal arch demonstrate in Arlington, Virginia, on Thursday (local time). [AP]
Protesters opposed to President Donald Trump's plan to build a triumphal arch demonstrate in Arlington, Virginia, on Thursday (local time). [AP]

The Republican Party is in open revolt after a crushing midterm election defeat. The party entered the cycle already on the back foot, with soaring prices driven by the Iran war dominating voter concerns — yet Donald Trump, who bears the greatest responsibility for that war, has refused to accept blame, instead pointing fingers at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and at individual candidates. Rank-and-file Republicans are furious, arguing that Trump and the MAGA movement have gutted the traditional conservative values the party once stood for.

Lawmakers gave voice to long-suppressed anger almost immediately after the results came in. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said even Abraham Lincoln could not have won under these conditions, arguing that Trump's deep unpopularity had put the party at an extreme disadvantage.

Bobby Charles, who lost his bid for governor of Maine, told Politico: "This may sound a bit paradoxical, but I'm still optimistic about the future — because Trump will be gone in two years."

The backlash was fueled not only by the defeat itself but by Trump's conduct in its immediate aftermath. Watching election returns Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that Republicans would have won "if I had been on the ballot," shifting blame onto the candidates. The following day, Thursday, he acknowledged to reporters that the Iran war had been a factor in the loss — yet he denied calls to fire Hegseth, appearing to redirect responsibility for the war onto the defense secretary while refusing to accept any personal accountability.

Even loyal supporters have turned on a party that shows no sign of course-correcting after a disaster of Trump's own making. Analysis of the results found that traditional Republican voters, angered that Trump and the MAGA movement had betrayed the party's core conservative principles, either stayed home or crossed over to vote Democratic.

CNN, citing an SSRS exit poll, reported that roughly 10 percent of voters who backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election switched to Democratic candidates this cycle. That defection rate was recorded across five Republican-leaning battleground states — Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa and South Carolina — where Democrats flipped Senate seats.

The defections proved decisive in Democrats' 13-percentage-point blowout in the overall House popular vote — the widest margin in a midterm election since 1974, when the Watergate scandal swept the country.

Vice President JD Vance, in a post-mortem on social media Thursday, said: "The main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump-Vance in 2024 voted Democratic in 2026." Even within the party, the role of defections as the primary cause of defeat is now widely acknowledged.

The criticism is especially sharp among Republicans outside the MAGA orbit. Half of men under 30 who had formed part of the "Trump coalition" two years ago said they now disapprove of the president's job performance. About one-third of non-MAGA Republicans said they do not support Trump's performance in office.

Texas offered the starkest illustration of this shift. Trump carried the state by 14 percentage points in 2024. This time, Texas voters chose Democrats for both the Senate seat — won by James Talarico — and the governorship, won by Gina Hinojosa. Though Texas had long been flagged as a potential battleground, Talarico cruised to victory by 12 points from early in the count.

Talarico's win stung the GOP all the more because his opponent was a Trump-endorsed pick. Trump had bypassed incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in favor of Ken Paxton, a MAGA favorite despite a record clouded by corruption allegations and an extramarital affair. Trump traveled to Texas three times in a single month to campaign for Paxton.

Republicans still lost everything. The party was swept not only in the Senate and governor's races but in every statewide contest, including seats on the state Supreme Court.

New York Times columnist David French, who spoke with Texas voters during the campaign, said the mood among anti-Paxton Republicans was unmistakable. "I felt a mix of anger and fear emanating from Republicans who opposed Paxton," French wrote, adding that they were furious at Paxton's MAGA supporters, who had "insulted, mocked and driven them out of Republican politics."

French's diagnosis: MAGA Republicans' hostility toward non-MAGA members of their own party produced a wave of "anger votes" for Democrats — and outright abstentions — that delivered Talarico his victory.

French said he was skeptical that a fractured Republican Party could recover in time for the presidential election two years from now. The White House, even after the rout, put out a statement declaring that "your president is still Trump." As long as Trump remains the center of the party and commands the cult-like devotion of the MAGA movement — with a significant number of lawmakers still in tow — the internal divisions seem unlikely to heal within two years.

CNN said it remains uncertain whether whoever succeeds Trump as the Republican presidential standard-bearer will be able to reunite a party that is visibly cracking.


kate01@heraldcorp.com