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RECENT DEMOCRATIC VICTORIES HAVE REPUBLICANS RUNNING SCARED  
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John Nichols
December 22, 2025
The Nation
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_ Elise Stefanik is just the latest top Republican deciding against
running in the 2026 midterms. While some retirements were to be
expected, analysts are now anticipating a GOP exodus that could be
unprecedented in modern American political history. _

Elise Stefanik is joined by state GOP lawmakers during a news
conference where she spoke in opposition to Governor Kathy Hochul on
June 9, 2025, in Albany., Photo: Will Waldron / Albany Times Union //
The Nation

 

When Republican US Representative Elise Stefanik signaled
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late June of this year that she would challenge Democratic incumbent
Kathy Hochul for governor of New York, Republican operatives
anticipated that the Stefanik-Hochul contest would be one of the
premier contests of the 2026 election. A few months later, Stefanik
formally launched her bid, with a combative video that tagged her as
the “courageous leader ready for the fight” to raise New York from
the “ashes of Kathy Hochul’s failed policies.”

Echoing the language of President Trump, with whom the formerly
“moderate” Republican representative had closely aligned herself,
as well as her MAGA Republican allies in Congress, Stefanik’s video
hailed her as a candidate who was ready to “stand up to the woke
mob” of liberals and Democrats.

But now Stefanik is standing down. She announced
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Friday that she will not run for governor. And, as part of a double
blow to the GOP, she announced that she would not seek a new term
representing a northern New York district that Democratic strategists
think they might just be able to flip in 2026.

What gives? Stefanik offered the standard politician’s excuse
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wanted to spend more time with her family. She indicated that she
didn’t want to have to compete in a Republican primary for the
governorship—even as she claimed that she “would have
overwhelmingly won it.”

But savvy observers of New York and national politics had what sounded
like a more plausible explanation.

She was, as Hochul spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said
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“going to lose.” And she’s not the only Republican
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faced with that daunting prospect. Stefanik’s announcement came just
days after US Representative Dan Newhouse revealed that he would join
the two dozen
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House Republican Caucus members—more than 10 percent of the current
GOP majority—who have already signaled that they won’t run in
2026.

While some retirements were to be expected, analysts are now
anticipating a GOP exodus that could be unprecedented in modern
American political history.

More and more Republicans, it appears, see a perilous new year on the
horizon. How perilous? “Republican lawmakers grow alarmed over signs
of 2026 election wipeout,” read
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a November headline in _The Hill_, a widely read DC-insider journal.

It’s not just that Trump’s approval ratings have collapsed,
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that general approval ratings for Republicans have tanked—after a
year in which the GOP has, with full control of the federal
government, provided a stark illustration of how dangerously and
destructively it wields power. It is the practical reality of how
voters have been casting their ballots in 2025—and are increasingly
likely
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to cast their ballots in 2026.

“In 2025 alone, Democrats won or overperformed in 227 out of 255 key
elections—nearly 90 percent of races,” noted DNC deputy executive
director Libby Schneider, in a memorandum shared with _The Nation_.
“In nearly every major contest, Democrats swept, from the Wisconsin
Supreme Court race to the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races,
to the Georgia Public Service Commissioner race, to the Miami mayoral
election, where a Democrat won for the first time in nearly 30 years.
In state legislative elections, Democrats flipped a whopping 25 seats
to Republicans’ zero.”

The Democrats faced enormous challenges going into the 2025 election
cycle, after losing the presidency and both houses of Congress
following a 2024 campaign that saw the party struggling to deliver an
effective message on economic issues and disappointing much of its own
base by failing at its highest levels to take necessary steps to
thwart the genocide in Gaza. Trump began his second presidency with a
show of force, as billionaires surrounded him on Inauguration Day,
media networks bent to his demands, and billionaire Elon Musk launched
his slash-and-burn DOGE project as the new president’s “special
government employee.” In short order, Trump got the cabinet he
wanted, as well as massive tax cuts for the rich, dismissals of
government employees, assaults on popular safety-net programs, and a
hateful crackdown on immigrants.

From the start, however, there was evidence that Americans did not
like what they were witnessing. US Senator Bernie Sanders drew huge
crowds for “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies in deep-red states, and
millions showed up for “No Kings” events nationwide.

But the steadiest measure of disgust with Trump and the Republicans
came in election results from regular odd-year elections and special
elections. And as the year advanced, the evidence of popular objection
to the MAGA agenda became overwhelming
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“Across red, purple, and blue states, Democrats have gotten off the
mat and proven that when you organize everywhere, you can win
anywhere—in every part of the country,” says Schneider, who
argues, as the critical 2026 midterm election season kicks off, that
Democrats should “feel buoyed by the strong results we’ve seen up
and down the ballot all year long.”

Political operatives are prone to hyperbole. But the Democratic record
in 2025 is compelling, as is illustrated by a month-by-month analysis
of movement toward the Democrat column, which Schneider shared with
_The Nation._ 

JANUARY

IOWA: Democrat Mike Zimmer flipped Iowa State Senate District 35, a
district Trump won by 21 points in 2024.

VIRGINIA: Kannan Srinivasan won Virginia State Senate District 32, and
J.J. Singh won Virginia House District 26. 

FEBRUARY

MAINE: Democrat Sean Faircloth won Maine House District 24 with an 18
percent outperformance of the top of the 2024 ticket. 

MARCH

PENNSYLVANIA: Democrat James Malone flipped Pennsylvania Senate
District 36, becoming the first Democrat to win this seat since the
1880s. And Democrat Dan Gougner won the open House District 35 seat,
ensuring that Democrats retain the Pennsylvania House majority.

IOWA: Democrat Nanette Griffin over-performed by 24 percent in a
deep-red district. 

APRIL

WISCONSIN: Susan Crawford won the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by
double digits after Elon Musk spent over $20 million trying to buy the
seat.

FLORIDA: Democrats Josh Weiland’s and Gay Valimont’s congressional
special election wins outperformed by 15+ points the baseline margin
at the top of the 2024 ticket. 

MAY

NEW YORK: Sam Sutton won NY State Senate District 22 by 35 points—a
district that Trump won by 55 points in 2024.

NEBRASKA: John Ewing Jr. flipped the Omaha mayoral, formerly the
sixth-largest city led by a Republican, by defeating one of the
longest-serving Republican mayors in the country. 

JUNE

TEXAS: Gina Ortiz Jones won the San Antonio mayoral race.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Democrat Keishan Scott won a South Carolina House seat
in a landslide, outperforming the top of the 2024 ticket by 36
percent. 

AUGUST

IOWA: Democrat Catelin Drey flipped Iowa Senate District 1, breaking
the GOP supermajority in the Iowa Senate.

RHODE ISLAND: Democrat Stefano Famiglietti over-performed by a
whopping 56 percent in Rhode Island’s Senate District 4
election—one of the biggest over-performances this year.

SEPTEMBER

ARIZONA AND VIRGINIA: Democrats Adelita Grijalva and James Walkinshaw
won in AZ-07 and VA-11, ensuring that US House Republicans have the
slimmest majority since the Great Depression. 

NOVEMBER

VIRGINIA: Abigail Spanberger flipped the VA gubernatorial race,
winning by the largest margin for a Democrat in 60 years. Democrats
won down the ballot as well, securing every statewide race on the
ticket and flipping 13 legislative seats.

NEW JERSEY: Mikie Sherrill won the NJ gubernatorial, shifting every
county in New Jersey more Democratic from 2024.

GEORGIA: Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard won Georgia Public Service
Commission seats, the first Democrats to win a nonfederal statewide
election in Georgia in nearly 20 years.

PENNSYLVANIA: Supreme Court Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin
Dougherty, and David Wecht overwhelmingly won retention despite
millions in right-wing dark money opposing them.

MISSISSIPPI: Democrats broke the GOP supermajority in the Mississippi
State Senate. 

DECEMBER

TENNESSEE: Despite millions of dollars spent against her in a Trump
+22 district, Democrat Aftyn Behn over-performed in the Tennessee-07
special election by 13 points.

FLORIDA: For the first time in nearly 30 years, a Democrat, Eilleen
Higgins, prevailed in the Miami mayoral race. Higgins won this race by
more than double-digits.

GEORGIA: Democrat Eric Gisler flipped a Trump+13 seat gerrymandered to
try to rig the race in favor of Republicans.

That was 2025. What about 2026?

There are never guarantees for how upcoming elections will turn out.
But there can be reasonable speculation based on patterns from recent
elections. And as members of Congress and candidates from both parties
are considering their prospects for 2026, more and more of them are
taking note of what Schneider credibly describes as a “dominating
trend of Democratic victories and over-performances.”

_[JOHN NICHOLS is the executive editor of The Nation. He previously
served as the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and
Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, cowritten, or edited
over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American
socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media
systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New
York Times bestseller __It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism_
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_Copyright c 2025 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without__ permission_
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Distributed by__ PARS International Corp_
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_Please support progressive journalism.__ Get a digital
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* MAGA
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* 2026 Midterms
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* GOP
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* Republican Party
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* Elsie Stefanik
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* Elections 2026
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* Donald Trump
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* Democratic Party
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* progressive Democrats
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* Bernie Sanders
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* AOC
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* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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* Senate Dems
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* Senate Democrats
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* House Democrats
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* Congressional Democrats
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* Progressive Caucus
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