‘A blue sweep’: Victory bigger than most Democrats expected | This is America

Welcome to a special edition of This is America. I'm Alex Marquardt in Washington, D.C. Tuesday's midterm elections were a blistering rejection of the Trump presidency that has now given Democrats large majorities in both the House of Representatives as well as the Senate. The question now, just how big will those majorities be? Seats were flipped. They were long considered impossible for Democrats. In states where Republicans had been in office office for decades, they fell. One by one, pickups in deep red states like Texas, South Carolina and Kansas, all underscoring the anger of voters over high prices, immigration enforcement and the war in Iran. Today, Trump is blaming the candidates for the losses, not his record. His vice president, J.D. Vance, sees it a bit differently. He wrote, quote, The reason we lost is the war. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. The president has also been speaking in the last hour. Take a listen. I think it's largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term. And probably that's, probably it's true. But at the same time, if I had it to do again, I'd have to do it again. Because long term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. Look, I mean, if I were on the ballot, we would have won. You saw the people that were packed. Thousands and thousands of people at every rally. And if I was on the ballot, we would have won. One of the men that Trump will probably be clashing with more than before is Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. He is on the cusp of making history as the nation's first black speaker of the House. Here's what he had to say about the election results. Once every vote has been tallied, it's a historic majority in the 21st century. Democrats have taken back control of the Senate. Democrats have won governorships all across the country. We flipped legislative chambers in the North, in the South, in the East, in the West, and in the Midwest. It was a great victory for the American people. Let's go to my colleague, Scott McLean, who is at our decision desk. So, Scott, last night could have been even longer waiting for results, but the scale of the votes made it swift and decisive. That's right, Alex. There were plenty of signs early on as to which direction this one was going, and it was going toward the Democrats. So now they are in control of the United States House and the United States Senate. The only question now is how big are their majorities going to be? And frankly, we're still counting votes. Let's show you the big board here. This is the situation in the United States House of Representatives. You can see the Democrats already surpassed that magic number of 218 to retake control of the United States House. Now, by our count, there have been 28 Republican held districts that flipped over to the Democrats. By my count, there are more than a dozen still that. The Democrats are leading in districts held by Republicans. That would bring the total, if you're keeping track, to somewhere around 255, 257. This is the same number that Barack Obama had back in 2008, the first time that he was elected. That's the high watermark for Democrats in recent years. So what went wrong for Republicans? One of the big stories of the night has been redistricting gone very wrong. I'm going to show you the big video wall here just so you can understand. How this works. So this is the second district of Alabama. If you go back to 2024, I'll show you what this district looked like. It was this big, long blue stretch here. A lot of black voters here. They tend to vote with the Democrats in the first district down here. A lot of white voters. They tend to lean more toward the Republicans. Now, what the statehouse tried to do. Let's redraw the lines to get more of these white folks down here and turn the 2nd District from a Democratic district to a Republican one. Problem is, Shomari figures the incumbent, he got pretty well the same share of the vote almost as he did 2 years ago. Similar case in Florida, the 22nd Congressional District. Go back to 2024, you can see this was an urban district, the northern part or the northern suburbs of Miami. Fast forward to 2026, they tried to make this from blue. ...to red by taking in a rural, literally swampy swath of South Florida here to try to turn it Republican. Problem is, Pia Dandia, former high school principal, she had other ideas too. She won it anyways. So, the Republicans are 0 for 4 in Florida, they're 0 for 5 in Texas, they're 0 for 2 in Ohio. The list goes on and on. Alex Terazio, our signal pollster. It's with us to help dissect the one place, Alex, that they might eke out a victory here is in the 9th Congressional District. It is close, though, but they might end up losing the 4th District here anyways. That kind of cancels itself out. I want to ask you about North Carolina, though. This was the 1st Congressional District. Go back to 2024. This was won narrowly by the Democrat. The Republicans tried to redraw the district, get a few more of these Republican folks over here, flip the district, not working out for them so far. My question for you is about this third district, because in order to make the first district more Republican, you had to make the third district a little more Democrat. Look at the difference. I mean, 117, 583, 117, 350, only a couple hundred votes. Did the Republicans maybe go a little bit too far on this one? It looks like it's trending in that direction. So the only way that you get here is by. Taking voters that Republicans thought were reliable Republican voters from District 3 and reallocating them over into District 1, this part of the country, these are the Outer Banks. There's a lot of really nice houses here, a lot of vacation houses, a lot of second houses where the housing values have plummeted in a lot of cases. And so there's regional difficulties here which call into question if these were Republican voters. These are the kinds of Republican voters that are upset. And so they may even still be Republican, but they have voted the other way. It doesn't look like it's going to be enough to turn this to to enough of a Republican district to flip. The margin is even greater now than it was in 2024. Plus, it looks like District 3 is very possibly going to be a dummymander where you have cut too deeply and inadvertently suffered a loss because you took voters that you needed. So you tried to flip one and you ended up losing one of your own. Let me ask you about the United States Senate. Look, lots of the blue on this map are places where maybe you could see it happening. You could see it happening in Ohio, Iowa. swinging kind of district, North Carolina, we already knew the polls, but in places like Kansas, in places like Texas, I mean, I know you're a pollster, I know you do this for a living, but I mean, are you still not a little bit surprised by the margins here? I am surprised by the margins. We should all be surprised by the margins, but Texas was a toss-up. By the numbers. And so if you just look at the data, the data said that Ken Paxton was down, Tellerico was up. But sometimes we see the data and it conflicts with what we think reality should be and we don't really treat it as true. I think a lot of people did that with Texas. They thought there's no way. Texas isn't going to turn blue. The data turned out to be a lot more accurate than our impressions about what was going to happen in Texas. And so this was on the board. The states that were not on the board were Kansas as much. That was a lean. Some of the polls, again, the data showed that it was about this margin. Hasn't gone blue since the 30s. Nobody wanted to believe it. 1932 was the last time we had a Democratic senator, but they do elect Democratic governors. And in the state of Kansas, people were more down on the state of that state than they were nationally by about three, four points in signals polling. And so this one comports with the data, though not what we thought reality should be. South Carolina is another one like that, where we just thought simply there's no way. This is a red seat. This is a red state. Well, not this year. I think even her brother would have had a tough time. Maybe he could have pulled it out, but this would have been a difficult year. Donald Trump's blaming candidate quality. Interesting to note, Darlene Graham was his pick. And a lot of Republicans are probably looking at Darlene Graham and saying, yeah, candidate quality, possibly an issue. I want to ask you about Mississippi, though, because this is the big one. The numbers keep changing slightly. It is oh so close. This is deep, deep red. 462-792-462-857. I think that's, help me out here, 65 votes. In favor of the Democrat, I mean, maybe you can help us read the tea leaves a little bit when we dig down into this county-level data. This is Hinds County. This is a big population center, big lead for the Democrats. Rankin County, a bit of a lead for the Republican there. There's more population down here in the southern part of the state. I mean, is there anything that you can glean from this data to maybe tell us which way this is going? So the reason why this is not called yet is that in Hinds County, Scott Colvin, the Democrat, is up. by about 62 points, 60 points margin over Cindy Hyde-Smith. There are about 75,000 votes that have come in from this county, and we think about 10% outstanding. He will net most of those. 7,500-ish outstanding votes, given their margin of difference. That'll put him well over the top. However, there's a lot of states, and so there's a lot of tea leaves to read. And many of them, they don't add up to 75,000 total votes, but this one adds up to 50,000 here in Scott County. And there's quite a few of these that still have outstanding vote between maybe 15% to 5% left. Every single one of those votes matters, and so that's why we haven't called this yet. Yeah, so these are these very, very small counties, not a whole ton of votes here. The Republicans are winning lopsided in a lot of these places. I guess the question is whether or not there are enough votes in these red places to overcome the big dump of ballots that you're probably going to get in Hinds County. Before we let you run, let's talk about Alaska. This is the double Dan Sullivan situation, two men named Dan Sullivan on the ballot here. They also have a ranked choice voting system. Awesome. I mean, does this one really matter until we get to 50 percent? And I guess a better question is, there are about 3,500 people who voted for this other Dan Sullivan. Is there any doubt in your mind that this was maybe voter confusion? There is no doubt in my mind. I don't think that there's anybody who casts a protest vote against the senator incumbent Dan Sullivan by voting for his doppelganger on the ballot. Who is there because he was placed there. I think that's voter confusion. We see that in every election. And it doesn't take that many voters to be confused about who they're voting for in a race this tight to swing the race. However, because no candidate is at 50% yet, then we are very likely going to a scenario where we recalculate all the ballots. Ranked choice voting means that people get a second vote. Some people will not cast a second vote. And so we'll lose probably about 4% total votes. But he... I think he is very close to being able to pull this out right now, but we won't know this likely until late November. Days or weeks. I think weeks. Alex, we appreciate it. And Alex, upstairs, we should also let you know that Mississippi doesn't actually have a clear law on the books that allows for recounts. So this is another one where the law is a little murky or doesn't exist, and it could end up going to the courts as to whether a recount is even possible there. Still a lot of question marks in Mississippi. A lot of question marks. So we'll be watching Alaska and Mississippi closely on this day after Election Day. Thank you, Scott and Alex. Let's bring in our correspondents, Phil Lavelle in Texas and Eva McKendall in Maine. These were two critical states where Democrats picked up seats. Phil, I want to start with you. Tallarico, James Tallarico, was the big story last night. But Democrats in Texas, deep red Texas, they won statewide. Yeah, you know, that term political earthquake probably gets overused, but it is really hard to overstate just what a seismic thing happened here last night. I mean, think about it. Like you just said, deep red state. And yet James Tallarico, he was marginally ahead in the polls. Those polls closed. It was about two hours after polls closed, only about 70 percent into the vote when he was declared winner because those votes, that gap was so big. Collin County, which is Ken Paxton's home turf, it went heavily for Trump in 2024, swung 23 points. In the other direction. towards the Democrats, and then minutes later, we got the news that Texas had elected Gina Hinojosa, a Democratic governor, for the first time since the late 90s. Again, this was a race where she had kind of maybe been in the lead at points, but even Democrats would say it was a long shot, and yet she was declared winner minutes after James Talerico. And then you've got to look at these congressional districts, which were redrawn last year. The Republicans said they were doing it so they could absorb those Democratic areas into larger Republican areas and give them them a political advantage, making it almost seemingly. impossible for Democrats. And yet, despite all of that, they swung behind the Democrats. And it's absolutely phenomenal to think about just what a huge shift happened here late last night. So the question is, what happens next, right? And you've got to bear in mind that we're already talking about 2028. I know it seems a long way. It really is not. You've got to expect a lot of money, blue money. To be heading into this state now, because remember, when it comes to the electoral college system, which is how the presidential elections work, Texas is second only to California, which is a solid blue state in terms of the number of votes it gets. If the Democrats can hold California and they can hold Texas, that catapults them into a very strong position towards a potential Democrat in the White House come 2028. What can Republicans do to stop it? Democrats say this is a blue wave. Some Republicans are saying it's not. It's still a center-right state. This was a referendum on Trump. Either way, this place is going to be the epicenter of that fight over the next two years. Absolutely right. Texas turning purple, something Democrats have been hoping for for a very long time. Phil Lavelle at the state capitol in Texas, thank you very much. I want to go to Eva McKend, who is in Portland, Maine. Eva, this race between Troy Jackson and Susan Collins was expected to be one of the tightest in the country. What can we expect from Senator-elect Jackson? Well, the senator-elect says he wants to serve on the Appropriations Committee, fitting because Senator Susan Collins, the 30-year Republican incumbent that he beat, leaves Congress now serving as chair of that committee. He also added he wants to serve on as many committees as possible. But look, this is a historic moment for Maine Democrats, that a fifth-generation logger, so someone who grew up Working with his hands in the woods is now ascending to one of the highest offices in the country. And he did so his own way, running on an unapologetically progressive message, campaigning with AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren in the closing days and staying close to. Portland, that was a strategy he could have fanned out across the entire state that is geographically expansive. But he really stayed in this vote rich city and the surrounding areas to juice up those numbers. That strategy ended up working out for him. But something I want to note, Alex, is in processing this, Democrats very excited here, a little shocked. But the reception of this isn't overly partisan. They understand that about a third of the electorate supports neither Democrats or Republicans. They actually identify as unenrolled voters, which are independent voters. And they know that those voters are a key part of the coalition that pulled off this Jackson victory as well. Take a listen to how they are thinking about this moment. The commonality for all of us is about working hard and knowing the power of the dollar and that we all deserve to, that we have a piece of that, and that's something in Maine here that we really get with our neighbors, with one another, where we're from. So many of us are from Maine and are multi-generational Mainers. So that coming together is, I think, I think what has united us is that we do take care of our neighbors, and Hannah Pingree and Troy Jackson really pushed that hard. So Pingree that she mentioned there, of course, is the Democrat-elect for governor, but Maine Democrats could really see a clean sweep in this state. That's because the votes are still being counted in Congressional District 2. That is a red district that President Trump won in 2024 by nearly 10 points, but it's still a tight contest between Paul LePage and Matt Dunlap, If Dunlap is able to. To pull it off there, then every Democrat running in this state will have one office. Alex? Yeah, and it'll build the Democratic lead in the House even bigger. Eva McKend in Portland, Maine. Phil LaVelle in Austin, Texas. Thank you both for your terrific reporting. I want to go to Ohio now, one of the several states that had a Senate seat that also flipped to the Democratic side. Al Jazeera's Heidi Jo Castro checked in with voters in the capital, Columbus. We're inside of a very busy diner, Tommy's Diner, which is very close to the state capitol. And you can see on the tables there are a lot of coffee, because many of these very engaged voters were watching those election results last night in this historic midterms that here in Ohio did, as you say, flip a Senate seat to the Democrats, as well as have a Democrat take over the state governor. So we were checking in with these very nice people. This is Heidi. Scott, thank you guys so much for letting us interrupt. Heidi, what do these election results mean? What does this mean to you? I just feel happy this morning. I'm very grateful that intelligence and compassion showed up in Ohio. Which results do you think were very significant? Of course, the Senate flipping now to Democratic control is going to be significant for the entire country. That's correct. That and Dr. Amy Acton being elected, it's a good day in Columbus, a good day in Ohio. I want to ask you, Scott, a lot of voters we talked to yesterday throughout the polls were telling us that this vote for them... It was as much about repudiating Donald Trump as it was electing a Democrat. Does that ring true to you? I think so. I think it showed that Americans were—I think they were tired of the fear tactics of, you know, the different people, and it was exciting not only to see the Democrats That's being controlled for me, but also the younger people in different... Different walks of life, people running and winning office, and it's a new change. And I think it's just, you know, it's addressing some of the staleness and getting some new blood in both parties, not just Democrats, but the Republicans. Everybody had new people running, and I really think that's important. I want to bring in our midterm analyst. We have Malbert Smith, who is a Democratic strategist, and Mark Feifley, who is a former White House communications official and our midterms expert. Thank you both for being with me. Malley, I want to start with you. Alaska and Mississippi are still out when it comes to the Senate, so we're still trying to figure out how big the majority is going to be in the Senate and in the House, because as Eva noted, there's still another race in Maine and elsewhere. But Chuck Schumer is going to be, by all accounts, the Senate majority leader. Hakeem Jeffries, expected to be the House Speaker. How should they interpret this mandate that they've been given? Well, I think they should interpret it as both the voters saying that we need to focus on affordability and that we need to focus on holding the Trump administration accountable for their corruption. That involves... Going right out of the gate and trying to get legislation on the floor that helps with rising health care costs, helps with rising energy costs, helps with rising food costs. But it also means finding ways to provide oversight of the Trump administration on President Trump's self-dealing, like his enrichment with crypto or the funding of his ballroom. All of these things are legitimate inquiries of investigation. Now, they're going to have to toe the line because Americans want accountability when it comes to corruption, but they also do not want Democrats or Americans to focus on what they see as trivial and small things, and sometimes investigations can lead in that direction. Donald Trump today at the side of his ballroom, kind of picking up after these elections the way that he went into them. He was at the reflecting pool the day before the midterms. Two interesting things, Mark, from Donald Trump. He says that he will work with Democrats, and he congratulated them. That was rather magnanimous of him. But he's also continuing to insist in writing and in person that it was because he was not on the ballot. So many of these candidates were handpicked by him. So the narrative now is that this was a rebuke of Donald Trump. How big of a rebuke do you think it was? I think it was quite large. I think that the president is in a denial stage right now of grief. And there's a time when he has to figure out, all right, he's going to have to work, especially on domestic policy, with Chuck Schumer, with Hakeem Jeffries, to get things done. And then. The Democrats at the same time, it's easy on the campaign trail to say we need to do more on affordability, we need to get out of this war with Iran, we need to provide more health care money, but... Now you've actually got to provide the solutions that you don't do on a campaign trail and put policy behind the rhetoric. But help us understand, both of you, how that actually happens. Let's just say that all these Democrats won because of affordability and cost of living issues, because life has become so expensive. Life has become expensive because of the war in Iran, which has driven up fuel prices and inflation. The tariffs, the trade war with Canada and other countries, that has also driven up prices. So, Mally, as these Democrats go into Congress, They can't stop the war in Iran. How do they pressure the Trump administration to get rid of the tariffs? Well, that is a good question because the president has a lot of authority when it comes to instituting tariffs. He can say it's a national security concern and it gives him broad leeway. So Democrats can pass bills saying that they disapprove of the tariffs, but unless it's a veto-proof majority, President Trump can send it right back to them. So I think what you'll have is Democrats are going to pass bills, I think, on health care when it comes to the Affordable Care Act tax credits, trying to renew those tax credits. I think you're going to see them pass bills trying to stop the Medicaid cuts that have yet to come into effect but will in a few months. And it's going to put President Trump in a tough position because he can veto those bills, but he's going to be vetoing bills that would provide Americans health care. I do hope, though. That Trump and Democrats can find some small areas of agreement, whether it's on lessening tariffs or some way to mitigate health care costs, because I don't think Trump is going to agree to completely stop his Medicaid cuts. But we'll see. Mark, I want to ask you what you thought of the J.D. Vance reaction. He said in no uncertain terms that the reason we lost is the war. If you'd like to argue that it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. That's pretty remarkable. Vance is doing what a good communication strategist would tell him to do, which is get it out. Talk about this now. Don't let it linger. And yes, the number one issue was affordability and the Iran war. You put those two things together. As you said, that's why we have these high gas prices. Now, another thing is it's good to put out, this is what my data scientists tell me. It's another thing to say, here's the solutions that we're going to do to actually bring down these prices. And Vance is the one that Mr. Trump has told you will now lead the next delegation of negotiators with Tehran. So handing him kind of a really, really difficult plate full of garbage to have to deal with right away while he's also trying to figure out what his political future is, if anything. So for Vance, he is in the hot seat right now. He can say Iran was the reason, but now it comes up with how do we actually pressure to change the behavior of the Iranian regime so that we can end this and get gas prices at least back to somewhat of a normal state. J.D. Vance can put out as many tweets as he wants, but this Iran failure is a failure of the administration in total, and he is in the administration, and he is not going to be able to get. distance from this, and when he runs... But he's going to try to. He's going to try to, but the Vance Trump administration is going to have to be held accountable here, and when he runs in 2028, we will make sure that Americans know that the gas prices that have been high are because of his war. And who's been fairly quiet? Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio. So he's letting Vance take all of the... He said he's going to hit potentially a huge amount of infrastructure in Iran, which he's talked about before, which historically, that's what Bill Clinton did in his last two years as well. But he had NATO behind him. Trump would do this unilaterally, maybe with Israel. So he has some difficult decisions. How he's going to bring the Iranians to the negotiation table in a way that brings America a little bit better deal than the one he got out of before. Mally, I only have a couple moments left. What do you think this does to the MAGA brand? Does it survive? I think the MAGA brand is tattered, but I think the issue they're going to have is President Trump is still very popular with his base. We saw when he endorsed, his candidates won, but he's not popular with the broader electorate, and that's a terrible situation for the Republican Party. All right. Mally Smith, Mark Feifley, we have a lot to see in not just the next few hours, but of course, in the next two years, what it means for Republicans, how Democrats try to exert their power and use this mandate. Thank you both very much. And we will be back next hour with more on these historic midterm elections. But for now, I want to hand it back to our global headquarters in Doha.