The MAGA movement should be very worried about its political survival.
If Democrats stick to the blueprint the 2025 elections provided, MAGA could be extinct before the end of the decade. But this is entirely dependent on whether Democratic candidates learn the lessons the most recent elections provided, and if the people keep the pressure on Democrats to remain laser-focused on the key issue driving them to vote.
November of 2025 saw massive Democratic victories not just in marquee gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, a statewide ballot initiative in California, and the high-profile New York City mayoral election, but also in many down-ballot races in deep-red states:
- The Guardian reported that Erie County, Pennsylvania (which President Donald Trump won in 2024), elected a Democrat as county executive by a 24-point margin.
- Democrats also fought off Republicans’ attempt to oust three Democratic justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, ensuring they maintain a majority through at least the 2028 election. This is particularly significant given Pennsylvania’s reputation as a must-win swing state, whose supreme court is likely to decide multiple election-related lawsuits in both 2026 and 2028.
- Voters in Maine soundly rejected Question 1, which would have put additional restrictions in place on mail-in voting, cut the number of ballot drop boxes in each county to one, and mandated that voters present a photo ID before being allowed to cast a ballot. 64 percent of Mainers voted against Question 1.
- Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval easily won another term as mayor of Ohio’s largest city (which is technically a nonpartisan position), defeating Vice President JD Vance’s half-brother with 78 percent of the vote.
- In Virginia, Democrats not only recaptured the governorship, but also increased their majority in the 100-seat House of Delegates from 51 to 64. This will make it possible for Virginia Democrats to redraw Congressional district maps to counter Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts in Texas and elsewhere.
- In Georgia, Democrats won both elections for seats on the Public Service Commission (which regulates utilities like electricity, phone lines, and gas) by nearly 100,000 votes apiece. Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon remarked that those elections were Georgia Democrats’ first statewide victories in 30 years.
- Even ruby-red Mississippi saw two Republican-held state senate seats flip, breaking the GOP supermajority in the Mississippi state senate that’s been in place since 2019.
These dominant victories by Democrats in November prove that MAGA is vulnerable, though it’s critical that Democrats apply the lessons from 2025 in the correct way and not allow themselves to be sidetracked.
The most important lesson for Democrats to follow in 2026 and 2028
Even though New York City is a deep-blue urban stronghold, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D) showed that a relentless focus on making life more affordable can topple New York’s preeminent political dynasty and its billionaire-funded political machine. In February of this year, Mamdani was polling at just 2 percecnt in the Democratic primary—ranking him 7th out of nine candidates—while former Governor Andrew Cuomo (the son of former three-term Governor Mario Cuomo) polled at 40 percent.
Mamdani went on to not only defeat Cuomo (who ran as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary) and Republican Curtis Sliwa, but also a massive billionaire-funded effort to prevent him from becoming the most powerful elected official in America’s largest city.
TIME reported that former Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent $13.3 million against Mamdani, while other billionaires like Estée Lauder scion Ronald Lauder, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, Expedia Group chairman Barry Diller, casino magnate Steve Wynn, and Walmart heir Alice Walton collectively spent more than $7.5 million in their failed effort to stop Mamdani. All told, Cuomo’s campaign spent roughly $65 for each of its 854,995 votes.
The reason for Mamdani’s improbable-yet-lopsided victory is simple: He—like other successful Democrats who were elected in 2025—focused almost exclusively on making basic needs like housing and groceries more affordable. He frequently conducted campaign events in front of signs that read: “A City We Can Afford.” His website declared that he was “running for mayor to lower the cost of living for working class New Yorkers.”
“Life doesn’t have to be this hard,” Mamdani strategist Morris Katz told the Hill. “New York can be more affordable and it’s [the] government’s job to deliver that.”
New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) and Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) also ran up the score on their Republican opponents by hammering home their own “affordability” messages. Pollster Frank Luntz—who is also a longtime Republican messaging guru—told CNN the day after the election that it was important for candidates to make the distinction between the economy/inflation, and the simple fact that basic needs are becoming vastly more unaffordable for many working-class people.
Luntz called the election results a “wake-up call” for both Democrats and Republicans. He emphasized that Trump was able to win in 2024 by getting ahead of Democrats by harping on high prices, while former President Joe Biden (and Vice President Kamala Harris by extension) unsuccessfully tried to win over voters by focusing on more abstract economic data like GDP growth and unemployment numbers.
Fortune’s Jason Ma wrote that an objective point of view from an economist would be that the U.S. is in a relatively healthy economic period, with inflation slightly increasing but not spiking as it did during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the jobless rate remaining relatively steady, real wages (adjusted for inflation) slowly climbing, and the stock market continuing to hit regular record highs. But he also noted that touting these figures while ignoring prices amounted to missing the forest for the trees.
“It’s not enough to tout the annual rate of inflation,” Ma wrote. “What matters more is how much prices for bread, milk, cars, homes and insurance are.”
Trump could make it impossible for Republicans to win reelection
Ironically, Trump is currently making the same mistake Biden made in 2024, when he celebrated the success of “Bidenomics” as Americans were failing to notice the gains the US economy was making due to the high prices of items they buy on a daily basis. During a November event at the White House with Central Asian leaders, Trump answered one reporter’s question about Republicans’ 2025 election losses by erupting at Democrats for owning the word “affordability.”
“I don’t want to hear about the affordability, because right now we’re much less. If you look at energy, we’re getting close to $2/gallon gasoline,” Trump said, even though AAA’s national gas price index in early November showed prices hovering around $3/gallon (and nearly $4/gallon for diesel fuel).
The president also repeated his debunked claim that Walmart’s price for Thanksgiving dinner staples in 2025 is lower than its 2024 list. As NBC reported, the 2025 list includes six fewer items than the previous year’s shopping list. And several of the products omitted are produce items that the US imports from Canada and Mexico, both of which have been hit by Trump’s tariffs.
Trump is even hearing from his own voters that he’s not listening to their concerns on high prices of basic needs. Fox News’ Bret Baier read a message directly to Trump during a post-election interview from a three-time Trump voter in North Carolina.
“I want the Republicans to keep control of Congress in 2026, but something HAS to be done fast!” Trump supporter Regina Foley said. “I don’t see the best economy right now. Wall Street numbers do not reflect my Main Street money.”
Like Biden, Trump couldn’t help but dig in and maintain that his management of the economy was superior, and condescended to the voter that the struggles of her daily life were not in line with reality.
“We’ve done so much, energy is way down. Look at energy. We’ll have $2 gas. That brings everything else down. Groceries are way down other than beef,” Trump said. “… Our country is doing well. The stock market is hitting record highs, like 48 times during my nine months … They have this new word called affordability and they don’t talk about it enough. The Democrats did, and the Democrats make it up because we took over a mess. Think of energy. Energy was so expensive, and now I have it down to half what it was.”
Given how successful Democrats were in November, even in red states like Georgia and Mississippi, shows how weak the MAGA brand is less than a year into Trump’s second term. In fact, Republicans in some rural red states may be in particularly dire straits next year, given the unpopularity of Trump’s plan to increase imports of beef from Argentina as his solution to offset the high cost of beef in the United States. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) conceded that the prospect of flooding the market with Argentinian beef had “created a lot of uncertainty.”
Democrats only need to flip four Republican seats next November in order to retake the majority in the House of Representatives. And as CNN data analyst Harry Enten said in October, every time Democrats have swept the off-year New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections and the New York City mayoral race, they went on to win a majority in the House. That feat has only been accomplished five times in the past 90 years in 1953, 1957, 1961, 1989, and 2017.
Democrats will also need to flip four Republican seats in the U.S. Senate to retake the upper chamber of Congress. While statewide wins are harder than individual districts, Republicans are defending 20 seats in 2026, while Democrats are defending 13. Elections for Democratic Senate seats in battleground states like Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire will likely be close, but the remaining nine races are in the safe blue states of Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
Of the 20 Republican seats up for grabs next year, four are very vulnerable to flipping. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) are in for tough reelection battles, but Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) is retiring and not seeking another term in the Senate in a state with a Democratic governor, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is in the midst of a bitter primary against MAGA-aligned Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is deeply unpopular and plagued by scandal.
North Carolina and Texas also have strong Democratic candidates in former two-term Governor Roy Cooper and state representative James Talarico, respectively. Cooper won both of his elections in 2016 and 2020, when he shared a ballot with Trump. And a Democratic win in Texas may not be far off: In the 2018 Democratic wave midterm elections, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) finished less than three percentage points shy of unseating Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). A University of Houston-Texas Southern University poll conducted in September found Talarico competitive with Paxton in a hypothetical matchup.
And as Politico reported, Democrats have felt emboldened by their wins in November of 2025 and are communicating their intent to swing for the fences in November of 2026. Independent Dan Osborn is aiming to unseat Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska), after coming within striking distance of Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) last year. Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) narrowly lost her at-large US House seat by three points in 2024, and is being actively recruited to run against Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska).
Even if Democrats only win back the House and not the Senate, recapturing the speaker’s gavel would allow Democrats to also take over the powerful House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, giving them the power to subpoena Trump administration officials and subject them to questioning in high-profile public hearings. And the energy provided by the 2026 midterms could provide the momentum needed to take back the White House in 2028 (whether the candidate is Trump seeking a third term or another Republican).
Trump’s second term has shown what the fascist movement in America seeks to do: Force democratic institutions to either bend the knee or be torn to shreds, use the full force of the federal government (and even the U.S. military) to oppress vulnerable groups like immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community, and engage in rampant corruption to further consolidate wealth among the richest segment of society. Democrats can’t afford to strike out on the opportunities that 2026 and 2028 will provide. If they fail to adhere to the playbook that 2025 provided, they may not get another chance.
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