Okay, seriously, how significant are Tuesday’s results?

Politics & Elections
41

A lot of this is semantics as if you lose less of your voters showed up, but there were certainly less Democratic voters in 2025 than 2024, so I don’t think saying Democrats came out this time is as accurate as saying the Democrats did a better job of maintaining it’s voters from 2024 as the GOP did. Some of this was to be expected, but the scale to which it happened was certainly on the high side of expectations.

I also don’t think Democrats staying home is the best description of the 2024 problem either. While turnout was lower than 4 years ago, it was still the 3rd highest in the last 50 years and there were other signs like voter registrations shifting sharply conservative that the issue was more convincing voters to become and vote democratic than Democrats just deciding to take the year off.

42

It’s a good thing. Take the win. It’s a small win, it doesn’t change all that much, but it’s a win.

At the very least it shows we do have a somewhat functioning democracy for now. That’s was by no means guaranteed a few months ago (and could still change before 2028 or 2026)

43

You don’t understand. When Trump says his numbers have never been higher, he means that they have never been lower. Every word out of his mouth has to be interpreted as a lie.

For an interesting discussion of this question see www.electoralvote.com for Wed and yesterday. They have charts showing the correlation (quite strong) between elections in years 4n+1 and the following year’s congressional vote. E.g. a strong showing in 2017 was followed by a Democratic wave in 2018.

44

I am baffled by this, so perhaps I am not understanding. Are you suggesting that “everybody left of center” expects Chuck Schumer to … resign? step down as Minority Leader? and that if he doesn’t they’ll lose enthusiasm (and perhaps not vote in the upcoming midterms)?

45

No, what I’m saying is that if Chuck Schumer continues in his leadership role, it won’t indicate any shift of significance in the Democratic Party, no movement to a new guard, and a lack of awareness of how they (current leadership) are perceived. It’s good that Pelosi is retiring. Although I support nearly everything she has stood for over the last 40+ years (I’m in California, so she’s been a factor in my political world for a long time), I’m glad she’ll be making way.

I thought the DNC’s kicking David Hogg to the curb was a mistake, and I hope they won’t compound it now.

46

The Democrats need to find the issues that really matter to young people today. They had strong support back in the civil rights era. Race is still significant but the need is to educate the people on how culture is involved. My father was strong supporter of the right for black people to be white. The real issue is that black people have the right to be black and we all need to live and let live. Framing the issue as immigration encourages cultural discrimination.

The old cold war paranoia over communism could really make the republicans look stuck in the last century. Looka at how many times deregulation has gone wrong. People like AOC and Momdani could get a real discussion about where capitalism works and where it doesn’t. Health care is more of a concern for the older generation though.

We need to admit that real solutions to climate change are necessary but are not going to be easy. The numbers need to really work. Not everybody has the extra money for an new EV or a garage in which he can install a charger. What happens when the company that owns your solar panels goes out of business? If you rent your housing, it gets really complicated.

We need a major party for the 21st century. Both of today’s parties are stuck in the 20th.

47

‘Flip floppers.’ This I don’t understand at all. How could any one ‘flip flop’ about a man that intends to destroy the county and their lives?

48

At this point, I don’t think that there are “flip-floppers” in the sense that they are changing their mind about Trump – and, by extension, the GOP under Trump, as he has now completely co-opted the Republican Party to support him and his goals.

There is clearly somewhere around 35% of Americans who are all-in on MAGA, and support Trump no matter what. There is likely also about 40% of Americans who despise him, and would never support him.

That leaves the other 25-ish percent, who are probably low-information voters, don’t particularly like or trust either party very much, and if they’re motivated to vote, it’s probably on one or two personal agenda items; in 2024, Trump likely won in large part by convincing them that inflation was entirely the Democrats fault, and that he’d fix it on day one. He lied, of course.

The votes of these people might “flip flop” based on the election and issues in question, but I don’t think that they are rethinking and changing their minds about Trump (or Harris, or whoever) between elections. I know some people like this: they tell me “Trump is terrible, but they all are,” and if they vote, they vote purely on things like “the economy sucks, I’ll give the other guy a chance.”

49

I think the Democrats would be unwise to read to much into winning a handful of blue seats at this stage. They need to stand for more than the fact Trump is currently unpopular in certain regions.

50

I’m not going to get too excited sadly. Elections are about turnout. If you have an election and party A gets 2 million votes and party B gets 1.9 million votes, party A wins. But if you have that same election and party A gets 650k votes and party B gets 680k votes, party B wins.

Generally when one party controls the presidency, people of that party are less motivated to vote. People’s motivation to vote depends on the election. In regards to turnout, it generally goes like this:

Presidential general election

Midterm general election

Off year general election

Special general election

On top of that, each one of those has a primary where turnout is even lower. Turnout in a primary can be as low as 10% in many cases.

I think what happened is because the GOP controls the white house and both houses of congress, republicans are less motivated to show up to vote in less important elections. Democrats are more motivated, so they showed up. I assume the democrats will win in 2026, but not by as large of margins as they won in 2025 because GOP turnout in 2026 will be higher than it was in 2025.

This happened in special elections in 2017 after Trump won in 2016. The democrats were winning special elections by huge margins, but that was just because the GOP stayed home because since they were already in power, they didn’t bother to vote.

Sadly I think America is looking at decades of shifting back and forth between the two parties. One party will win the white house and congress, then the voters will put the other party in congress, then the voters will put the other party in the white house with that party’s congress. Wash-rinse-repeat. That seems to be the pattern since Clinton. Basically one party will control the executive and both houses of congress, but only for 2 years, 4 at most.

One very positive thing is that exit polls showed the democrats doing much better among latinos. Democrats normally win 60-70% of the latino vote, but Trump cut into that margin quite a bit in 2024. Hopefully 2025 was a return to normal and latinos will go back to voting democrat 60-70%. We will see.

51

Right. This is what I’m getting at. The thing is, there’s always going to be problems of some kind. It was inflation in 2024, but that doesn’t really matter. It could be health care, like it was in 1994 (Hillarycare) and 2010 (Obamacare). It could be the response to COVID-19, or war in the Middle East, or transgender women playing sports with cis-women, or gun control, or any other number of things. What matters is this.

  1. There is some kind of problem.

  2. The most obvious person / party to blame is whoever is in power, regardless of the facts, and especially when the out of power party is playing up that message.

Republicans are especially talented at the second part, which is why we are where we are. Those 25-ish percent low information voters fall for the lies, forget the past, and knee jerk decide to “throw the bums out” because “they’re all the same” despite the fact that they aren’t all bums and they aren’t all the same.

52

Love this. So true.

53

Sorry, gotta trot this gem out one more time…

54

Not a lot of time. At work some guy told me he got his snap added because the Democrats wouldn’t “let,” the benefits go through till after the election. :roll_eyes:

55

They won a lot more than blue seats. They had major statewide victories in Pennsylvania and Georgia, for example. They flipped 13 seats in the Virginia legislature.

I’m not saying this means the 2026 midterms are a lock. The future is hard to predict. But I am saying that by every conceivable measure, the election this week was a huge, huge success for the Democrats.

56

Sure. But not liking Trump is no substitute for coherent policy, and they should not let one good week get to their heads.