Americans vote and bury MAGA

Donald Trump turned the midterm election into a plebiscite on himself. Americans accepted the invitation and answered. In CBS's exit poll, six in ten voters said Trump weighed on their vote for the House, and only 38% approved of the president, on track to be the worst mark for a president in a midterm election. On the Democratic side, the main reason to leave the house and vote was opposition to him.

The result went the same way. According to NBC, Democrats took the Senate, with seven flips and 54 seats on the morning of Wednesday, November 4, and the House, with an estimated 258 seats to 177. In the states, they flipped four governorships. The night's coverage is in this report and on the vote-count dashboard.

Trump's picks

The most direct test of Trumpism was the candidates Trump himself chose. In Michigan, he led the Republican unity effort around Mike Rogers. In Iowa, he joined the backing of Ashley Hinson. In North Carolina, he gave his endorsement to Michael Whatley, former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

All three lost. Rogers got 45.6% to El-Sayed's 52.4%. Hinson got 46.4% to Turek's 50.5%, in a seat that was Republican. Whatley took a beating of almost 20 points from Roy Cooper: 39.1% to 58.7%.

Neither the banner nor the middle ground

The defeat spared no version of the party. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, lost a Republican seat, with 43% to his rival's 55.1%. Susan Collins, the moderate Republican from Maine, also fell. Vivek Ramaswamy lost the Ohio governorship to Amy Acton.

Trump's approval was negative in almost every state that decided the Senate, including those he won by more than ten points in 2024. The voter who gave Trump the White House two years ago took Congress away from him.

A death foretold, by the man himself

On the morning of the election, Trump was already preparing the explanation: he said that “the sitting president doesn't win” midterm elections. It is true that the president's party usually loses seats. Losing both Houses, four governorships and all of his picks in the key states is something else.

The movement has not vanished: Trump remains in the White House until 2029 and the Republican Party is still his. But from January on, every law, every appointment and every budget will pass through a Congress that voters handed to the opposition. MAGA as a project of unchecked power was buried at the polls on November 3, and the ones who picked up the shovel were the American people.