On Tuesday night, Democrats have a chance to end the era of American politics President Donald Trump created with his shock win in 2016.
Trump’s initial rise to power came on the backs of white working-class voters, many of them living in rural areas, who switched from repeatedly backing President Barack Obama to supporting Trump in 2016. This flip turned Ohio and Iowa into solidly Republican states, and seemingly put a host of other states — Kansas, the Dakotas, Nebraska and the like — out of reach for Democrats entirely.
This post-Trump status quo has, for a decade, given Republicans a significant political advantage in numerous small, rural states, which in turn gives them a significant edge in the battle for the Senate. This means the party has little incentive to moderate on key issues and that it can control the appointment of federal judges, giving Republicans a free hand to make policy without facing democratic accountability.
But the winds are changing.
Democrats, right now, are favored to win in four states recently thought of as solidly red: Kansas, Texas, Alaska and Ohio. Three other GOP-friendly states — Iowa, South Carolina and Mississippi — are also seen as up for grabs in one way or another. Democrats are cautiously optimistic, with an emphasis on “cautiously”: The voters they are battling over are fundamentally conservative and voted for Trump multiple times.
Victories in these states would fundamentally alter the balance of political power in America, at least in the short term. GOP control of the Senate would require Republicans to moderate in a way few in the party have truly considered since Trump’s ascension. It would weaken the GOP’s grip on the courts, potentially giving Democrats a chance to block the replacement of two elderly conservative Supreme Court Justices.
Trump has alienated rural voters with his tariff regime, which disproportionately hits agriculture; his decision to launch a war in Iran, which spiked diesel prices by more than two-thirds; and his love of data centers, which are often fiercely resisted in rural communities. Democrats are unlikely to get such an opportunity again, and a failure to capitalize on it should prompt the party to wonder whether it needs to do more to moderate on cultural issues.
Here are three other things HuffPost reporters are watching on Election Day.
The 2028 Primary Begins The Second The Polls Close
While many Americans may be reluctant to face the impending political maneuvering of the 2028 presidential campaign, at least one midterm contest could be a hint at the sort of candidate who could break out from the expectedly jam-packed Democratic primary field.
Michigan’s race for the U.S. Senate seat left open by retiring Democrat Gary Peters has become an unexpectedly fraught battle — including within the Democratic Party itself. Traditional wisdom has held that nominating a further-left candidate spells doom for the general election, meaning that when progressive Abdul El-Sayed defeated moderate Haley Stevens in the state’s Democratic primary, many Democratic observers were left wringing their hands.
But now, El-Sayed is within striking distance of fending off Republican Mike Rogers’ hard-fought effort to flip the seat for the GOP. If El-Sayed pulls off a victory, his success may lay groundwork for others on the left who may have been reluctant to consider their candidacy viable.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently put the observation more bluntly: “I believe if El-Sayed wins, the Democrat nominee for president in 2028 will be AOC.”
“Look, if AOC is the nominee, she could win,” Cruz added.
“I think that anybody who wants to win in the future has to recognize that we are far past left-right politics.”
- Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is rumored to be weighing whether to launch a bid for the White House or for the Senate in New York. Her potential ascendance to the top of the Democratic ticket, edging out the expected stable of centrists mulling a run, would be political whiplash from where her party was a mere presidential cycle ago. Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed and campaigned alongside El-Sayed.
At a campaign stop at Eastern Michigan University on Monday morning, El-Sayed shrugged off the notion that his win could say much about the future of the party. But he suggested there were a few lessons from his campaigning that could buoy candidates down the line.
“I’m not running for the future of the Democratic Party. I’m running for the future of 10 million Michiganders,” El-Sayed told HuffPost at that same EMU event, flanked by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass).
He added: “We ran on a very different viewpoint on how politics is organized. Too often, we think that politics is about left versus right. It’s not. It is about the people who are locked out, which is the majority of us, and then the people doing the locking out. And I think that anybody who wants to win in the future has to recognize that we are far past left-right politics.”
Warren, who launched a failed progressive presidential run of her own in a crowded candidate field in 2019, added: “Campaigns are so often run as a bunch of soft, gauzy words, with the idea that everybody will see themselves somewhere in there — but not this one, and not now, not this year, not across the country.”
Big Money, Bad Money
Much of the midterm cycle was defined by big-spending super PACs backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the cryptocurrency industry and the artificial intelligence industry. As the cycle nears its end, donors might be wondering if the tens of millions spent were worth it.
The cryptocurrency industry’s super PAC, Fairshake, has spent more than $50 million on the Ohio Senate race, trying to prevent Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown’s return from office. Polls do not indicate it’s had much of an impact — Brown has a consistent lead over appointed GOP Sen. John Husted — and major crypto industry figures are publicly dissenting from the spending.
The AI industry super PACs have been relatively quiet during the general election, with their spending having done little to quiet growing public skepticism of the technology. And AIPAC is likely to experience a win in Michigan by Abdul El-Sayed, a harsh critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, as a stinging blow.
Big money isn’t disappearing from politics anytime soon: This was the most expensive election in American history, even surpassing the 2024 presidential election. But it’s possible the type of free-spending, boutique super PAC focused on advancing a specific cause or industry’s interests may fall out of fashion.
State Control And The Redistricting Wars
All attention is on the race to control Congress during Trump’s final two years in office, but there are equally big consequences coming in state-level elections. Democrats have the opportunity to secure trifectas — control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the state legislature — in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Tuesday night.
They could also break Republican trifectas in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas. And if Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins wins in Alaska, he would likely govern with a majority coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents in the legislature.
If everything goes Democrats’ way, they could enter 2027 with trifectas in 22 states compared to 17 or 18 for Republicans, depending on the outcome of Kansas’ governor’s race. Meanwhile, states that have been solidly Republican for decades, like Georgia, Florida and Texas, would suddenly have a divided government.
This change would have huge implications for policy — particularly in states that have not expanded Medicaid since the adoption of the Affordable Care Act, like Florida, Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin. But the most important change could come after the 2030 Census during the next round of redistricting.
In most states, legislators and governors draw new legislative district maps to account for new population distributions following a decennial census. That is the case in most states where Democrats could achieve new trifectas or break GOP trifectas. Democratic wins could throw a wrench into the gerrymandering project that Republicans launched in 2025.
Democrats have not held more state trifectas than Republicans in a single redistricting round this millennium. Of course, Democrats will have to hold these trifectas through two more cycles if they want to ensure a say or full control in redistricting in 2031, but winning in 2026 sets them up in a better position than they’ve had in a long time.