Winners and losers of the 2026 elections

The 2026 midterm elections were a historic thumping of the Republican Party, though they yielded winners and losers from both the Left and the Right.The reverberations from Democrats easily winning the House and Senate will be felt in the 2028 presidential race and beyond. While it remains to be seen if Democrats can carry over their massive win on Tuesday night into the next election, Republicans clearly have a lot of soul-searching to do as they try to pick up the pieces.Here is a rundown of winners and losers of the 2026 elections. Winners Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) Jeffries will become the first black speaker early next year after falling just short of grabbing the majority in 2024. He will have a comfortable majority, though there are many landmines and questions ahead. Can he unite a caucus that includes socialists as well as Democrats who represent ruby-red districts? Can he go toe to toe with President Donald Trump? Will he finally get out of the shadow of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)?Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Schumer took a lot of arrows in the back over the last couple of years, but he deserves credit for retaking the majority with his recruitment efforts. Some Democrats want to move on from Schumer, and there are incoming freshmen who won’t back him for majority leader. Yet, he will become majority leader again, but for how long? Schumer, 75, is up for reelection in 2028, and he hasn’t said he is running. If he does run, he could draw a primary challenge from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — if she doesn’t run for president. Regardless, he is a big winner of the midterm elections.Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) As Democrats were sweeping Senate seats and the gubernatorial races in Ohio and Texas, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) narrowly won in what has become a reliably red state. Donalds and DeSantis aren’t close, and there are several House GOP incumbents who are awaiting their final results, but DeSantis —who is eyeing another presidential bid — comes out a winner. Now, there are growing doubts about whether Vice President JD Vance will become the nominee, opening the door for the Florida governor.Red-state Democrats Democrats have struggled in recent years in Ohio, Iowa and Texas, but they won big in those states on Tuesday. Are these seats in play for the 2028 presidential contest? Probably not, though Republicans can’t take anything for granted after getting pummeled.Marco Rubio The secretary of state didn’t campaign for Republican candidates like Vance and some other Cabinet officials. While Vance was heavily involved in the 2026 election, Rubio doesn’t take a hit from the GOP’s poor performance Tuesday night.Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) At the beginning of 2025, Republicans were bullish about taking out Ossoff. He won by 18 points. Ossoff has a lot of buzz around him now, and Democrats winning the governor’s mansion allows him to ponder a 2028 presidential run since he could be replaced in the Senate by a Democrat if he won the White House. Ossoff has repeatedly said he isn’t interested in running in 2028, though the temptation could be too great.Losers President Donald Trump The president urged voters to pretend he was on the ballot as he made himself the center of attention on the campaign trail and at the GOP midterm convention last summer. He repeatedly said the economy was strong (an “A plus plus plus plus plus”) while voters were clearly exasperated with the cost of groceries and gas. Trump took a huge political gamble by joining forces with Israel to go to war with Iran. He promised the war would be short, but there is no end in sight to the conflict. Trump is now a badly wounded lame duck president.Vice President JD Vance Vance was the GOP’s finance chairman and campaigned across the country to elect Republican candidates. It didn’t work. After getting shellacked, there will be questions about Vance’s viability in 2028, and he will have plenty of company in the GOP primary if, as expected, he mounts a bid.Elon Musk Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars to boost GOP candidates, and now Democrats will target him for oversight investigations on his decision-making on satellite communications in Ukraine and his frenetic leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, which was seen as a significant failure that fell way short of its promised $2 trillion in savings.Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) If Democrats had won the Senate with a 51-49 edge, Fetterman would have been the center of attention. He is up for reelection in 2028 and has no chance to win a Democratic primary. Will he leave the Democratic Party to become an independent and caucus with Republicans? If he does, it won’t affect the majority of the Senate, so his leverage is limited. If Democrats had a small majority in the House, the incoming DSA members would have enormous leverage with Jeffries. Now, they don’t, and Jeffries will likely pay more attention to his majority-makers, the swing-district Democrats, than the DSA.HOUSE DEMOCRATS DECLARE VICTORY AND INTRODUCE ‘SPEAKER JEFFRIES’ Democrats will conduct extensive oversight of industries that have had close ties to the Trump White House and press corporate America to make their products more affordable. And industry groups can’t rely on support from their traditional GOP allies now that Trump has made the party more populist over the last decade.Big Beautiful Bill Republicans touted the passage of their vast signature legislation and predicted it would improve the economy. But the legislation got overshadowed by other issues such as the Epstein files, the Iran war, and inflation. Some Republicans privately complained that Trump didn’t talk enough about the bill, which Democrats want to dismantle in 2027.