In his farewell address, President-elect Donald Trump enumerated what he asserted were triumphs in Senate contests that elevated Republicans to a majority in the chamber.
“Montana, Nevada, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin,” Trump stated early Wednesday, boasting about how “we’ll maintain control of the House.”
Ultimately, Republicans lost the Senate races in Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In the House, Democrats still hold a slim chance to take the majority — and at the very least, they avoided the significant losses that typically accompany a presidential defeat.
Despite seemingly securing the popular vote — likely only the second time a Republican candidate has achieved this in the last nine presidential elections — Trump’s influence on down-ballot races was inconsistent.
Indeed, he outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris significantly in Montana and Ohio, by approximately 12 and 20 percentage points, respectively, which helped two inexperienced candidates secure victories, albeit by narrow margins.
In the five states that were both presidential and Senate battlegrounds, Trump won all five. However, Senate Republicans lost four of those races and are expected to win Pennsylvania by such a slim margin that Democrats have yet to concede.
In both 2016 and 2020, only Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a centrist with a long-established reputation, won a Senate race in a state where the opposing party's candidate prevailed in the presidential election.
In the House, Democrats could potentially achieve a net gain of a few seats. This would leave the GOP with its smallest majority in nearly 110 years, even smaller than its current slim margin, which has proven challenging for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to manage.
Typically, a party that experiences a multimillion-ballot loss in the popular presidential vote would struggle in lower-profile down-ballot contests; however, enough voters in key battlegrounds split their tickets to prevent a complete Democratic rout.
Disheartened by Trump’s victory, Democrats have started to realize that their down-ballot performance wasn’t as dire as it seemed, but they are left questioning what caused so many of their voters to drift away from Harris. Republicans are certainly pleased with Trump’s decisive win for the presidency but are beginning to ponder why more voters did not extend their support down-ballot.
The main takeaway for Democratic lawmakers and strategists is that the party's overall brand is not in good condition. Some Democratic policies enjoy popularity, but candidates in swing states must actively campaign even in rural areas that lean Republican to engage enough voters there.
“If you don’t honor their culture and their way of life, they won’t even listen when you discuss your policy positions,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia) remarked to reporters on Thursday.
Warner’s colleague from Virginia, Sen. Tim Kaine (D), successfully secured reelection and nearly doubled Harris’s margin of victory due to his efforts in regions like Lee County.
In the southwestern corner county bordering Kentucky and Tennessee, Trump defeated Harris by 86 percent to 14 percent, a margin exceeding 7,000 votes. The GOP Senate candidate, Hung Cao, underperformed — winning the county by 76 percent, a margin of about 5,000 votes.
“He didn’t win, but he significantly outperformed the vice president,” Warner noted regarding Kaine’s results in areas like Lee County. He pointed out that “national Democrats” — who lack time to campaign in these rural communities — are seen as dismissive of the local culture, while astute Virginia Democrats invest time there.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), regarded as more liberal than Kaine, attributed her narrow victory in a state that Trump won by 1 percent to this same strategy.
“The way we won this race is how I have always approached my role: We did everything — everywhere — all at once. I traveled to red, purple, blue; rural, urban, and suburban parts of our state,” Baldwin stated in her victory speech.
These culturally traditional voters likely nodded in agreement at the Trump campaign advertisements accusing Harris of endorsing gender-affirming care for inmates, stemming from a 2019 interview she conducted. Yet a significant number of them showed support for Baldwin, Kaine, and Democratic candidates who engaged with their communities.
As of late Friday afternoon, Democratic Senate candidates secured higher percentages of votes than Harris did in 78 percent of counties across Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to data analysis from The Washington Post.
Conversely, GOP candidates struggled to come close to matching Trump, who outperformed them in 97 percent of counties.
“Republicans regain Senate control but left opportunities on the table,” Jessica Taylor, the Senate analyst for the Cook Political Report With Amy Walter, noted on Thursday.
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In House races, Democrats began with 31 incumbents on their “front line” list, those deemed at potential risk; at least 28 have successfully won reelection.
Additionally, Democrats have ousted three GOP incumbents, with several more in races that remain too close to call.
Some traditionally liberal strongholds offered Harris only modest victories, yet Democrats down the ballot performed well, particularly in New York.
Harris garnered less than 56 percent of the vote, the lowest for a Democrat in the Empire State since 1988. Nevertheless, House Democrats flipped three GOP seats that, combined with an early special election victory this year, resulted in a net gain of four seats from New York this year.
The most prominent challenge for Democrats is assessing how much of Harris’s underperformance stems from discomfort with a woman of color as commander-in-chief.
Trump’s margin of victory among men increased by five points from 2020, and the most striking voter shift occurred among Latino men. They supported Biden by 23 percentage points in 2020 but backed Trump by 12 percentage points this year, according to exit polls.
Republicans believe part of that shift originated from this predominantly Catholic group of voters opposing transgender rights and other liberal policies.
“They think that their activists on transgender issues, climate change, and immigration — all of these advocates for what they term social justice — are somehow representative of the broader nation. They are not,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) stated in an interview on a Catholic news program.
Some Democratic strategists contend that Latino men have faced such severe economic challenges that they were more inclined to listen to assertive male figures like Trump’s, even if they did not align with his policies.
“It relates to how they perceive voices in society and interpret them,” Dan Sena, a New Mexico expert who managed the House Democratic effort in 2018, told The Post in a pre-election article. “And Latino men, generally speaking, well, there are some Latino men … who will choose strong and wrong over weak and right.”
Harris won the heavily Latino state, but only by about half the margin that Biden achieved in 2020.
She fell significantly short of the 10-point victory amassed by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico), whose vote share remained relatively unchanged from 2018. In the fiercely contested congressional race in that state, Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D), who won by less than 1 percent in 2022, secured victory by four points this time.
In Arizona, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) was leading by 1.1 points as of early Saturday, with remaining votes expected to favor the Democrat.
Trump's diminishing coattails
Of five Senate races in battleground states that Trump won, Republicans lost all but Pennsylvania.
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However, in Senate contests, several Democratic women achieved success: Baldwin triumphed again in Wisconsin, Rep. Elissa Slotkin prevailed in Michigan, an
Sen. Jacky Rosen has won in Nevada.
The Republican losses are particularly pronounced in Nevada and Arizona, where Trump’s final margin is anticipated to be several percentage points higher than Harris’s.
Just enough Trump supporters opted for him and shifted to Democrats or a different alternative entirely down the ballot. In some instances, Senate Democrats benefitted because Trump voters selected him but then cast their votes for a third-party option or left their ballot blank in the Senate race. In Nevada, 80,000 voters in the Senate contest chose a third-party candidate or the state’s unique “none of these candidates” option for president. Another 20,000 who participated in the presidential election skipped the Senate race, aiding Rosen's victory while Harris faced defeat. In Churchill County, Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown received 69 percent of the vote. That appears to be a significant margin, but Trump garnered 74 percent of the vote in that Nevada county east of Reno. Brown conceded defeat Saturday morning. Republicans in congressional races do not receive the same level of goodwill from these rural voters that Trump enjoys, while astute Democrats have an opportunity to secure just enough votes there to remain competitive. National Democrats need to follow Rosen’s and Baldwin’s example and campaign in areas like that, Warner stated. Otherwise, these voters won’t be inclined to consider their policy proposals. “They’re never going to hear your stance on education or infrastructure or national security,” Warner remarked. “And I think we’ve got some work to do there.”
