Voters Aren’t After Far-Left Policies; They Simply Loathe Republican Ones.
In this week’s vote, North Carolina residents ousted no fewer than five sitting Republican lawmakers, even as they greenlit measures limiting property tax hikes and slashing the top state income tax rate from 7% to 3.5%.
Across Arizona—mirroring moves in Colorado and Washington—the electorate approved tightened rules governing transgender athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports, even as Democrats appear poised to seize full control of state government for the first time since the 1960s.
Meanwhile in California, arguably the most liberal state during a wave that was its bluest in memory, voters seem to be turning down a proposed wealth tax while backing a measure to ban new levies on personal property or retirement accounts. (Neither decision had been officially settled at the time, but the leads were substantial in both directions.)
Interpreting these results requires stepping beyond the conventional red-vs-blue framework that often dominates American politics. This week delivered a staggering, sweeping win for Democrats—even in places where they were not expected to prevail—while simultaneously rejecting several high-profile left-wing proposals and boosting conservative ones, like tax cuts.
This election was not a triumph for progressives. Rather, it stood as a thunderous repudiation of the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s presidency.
Indeed, Democrats feeling empowered by Tuesday’s outcomes should consult the exit polls. When NBC News asked voters for their views on the two major parties, a clear majority said they held an unfavorable opinion of Democrats.
Of course, an even larger majority dislikes Republicans. And even larger majorities said Trump was doing a poor job as president—in the poll, 63 percent of voters disapproved of the job he has done and 62 percent said he has prioritized his personal interests over those of the country.
The scale of Tuesday’s blue surge has sparked a fresh round of memes and quips about the looming “Woke 2.0”—and the urge to tuck pronouns back into email signatures, among other things. Some of them are genuinely amusing! (My colleagues Robby Soave and Christian Britschgi delivered a pretty good bit about this on their podcast.)
Jokes aside, it would be a grave misreading for Democrats to interpret this result as a nationwide endorsement of their most radical and redistributionist goals. Or to interpret a political result as a broader cultural shift. The red districts that voted for Democrats are still inhabited by the same voters as last week. Kansas has its first Democratic senator since the 1930s, but that doesn’t instantly transform the state into Brooklyn.
The Democrats who stood out this week are the moderates. Adam Hamilton, who captured that Senate seat in Kansas, was a Republican registered until earlier this year. Gina Hinojosa, who achieved a stunning upset in the Texas governor’s race, has urged Democrats to “shove it with your culture wars.” In a late-cycle ad, she described her pronouns as “mom, Texan, and soon-to-be governor.” When Democrats can joke about the excesses of the “woke” era, that’s a healthy sign.
But what about all the far-left candidates who won, like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan?
Yes, progressives did win on Tuesday. That happened because they secured the Democratic primaries earlier in the year. And in a climate where any Democrat was viewed as preferable to any Republican, that was enough for a sizable slice of the electorate.
Even within that context, progressive candidates underperformed relative to their more moderate peers. Bernie Sanders–backed candidates underperformed across the board, as Jeff Maurer noted on his Substack. They still prevailed in many races, of course, because Republicans have become utterly toxic in the Trump era. But that’s not a mandate for progressive policies.
Turn back to the NBC News exit poll: only 18 percent of the midterm electorate identified as a democratic socialist. That figure trails the 24 percent who identified as MAGA—yes, the political coalition that just endured a historic wipeout.
This election represented a revolution by independent and centrist voters, now the largest voting bloc in the country, who rejected the Republican Party. It was shaped by “ordinary” Americans, as political commentator Noah Smith described, which is to say most of the country (outside the echo chambers of social media).
To be clear, the fact that voters aren’t signaling a craving for “Woke 2.0” doesn’t guarantee we won’t head there eventually. It wouldn’t be the first time voters ended up with something different from what they claimed to want—after all, Trump won in 2024 on a promise of “no new wars.”
It’s probably reasonable to expect that Democrats will draw some misguided lessons from this election—and that Republicans won’t absorb enough of the right ones. Democrats might push a trillion-dollar expansion of socialized health care that could fuel inflation. They might reignite culture wars or impose price controls—or pursue other far-out ideas.
But I remain skeptical about that. Trump remains president—and he has signaled a robust use of veto power (though he also expressed willingness to work with Sanders, so time will tell). The Supreme Court still holds a conservative majority. Democratic attempts to abolish the filibuster or to pack the court are likely to backfire. When they overreach, the same voters who punished Republicans on Tuesday night will trudge back to the polls to punish the Democrats.
For now, though, one thing is clear. Voters in the 2026 midterms were not rushing to embrace a broad array of left-leaning Democratic policies. They simply despised what the Republicans had been doing.
