Doug Schoen: Democrats Win the 2026 Midterms, but Republicans' Collapse Is the Bigger Story

Doug Schoen, writing for Fox News in an opinion column published the morning after Election Day, opens with a blunt verdict: the Democratic Party was the big winner of the 2026 midterms, and President Donald J. Trump was the big loser. He bases that on what he calls a blowout for Democrats in both the House and the Senate on Tuesday night.

Schoen notes that some races had not yet been called. Even so, he writes, it is clear that Democrats will hold solid majorities in both chambers of Congress. The most striking evidence he cites is in the Senate, where Democrats won seats in South Carolina, Kansas and Texas. Earlier in the year, he says, those states were considered virtually unachievable for the party.

But his central argument is about what the result means. In his reading, it is more a collapse of the Republican Party than an affirmative vote for Democrats. He lists three things voters were rejecting: the war in Iran as it is being conducted, high gas prices that voters see as a direct result of that war, and a widespread perception that government runs on two sets of rules, one for the rich and elites and another for ordinary working people.

The column then turns to what Schoen says is still unknown. Democrats elected a number of progressives, and he names James Talarico in Texas and Troy Jackson in Maine. He asks whether the party can govern coherently and consistently in the Senate, and to a lesser extent the House, with an agenda that is sympathetic to or aligned with democratic socialists. He also asks whether these Democrats can address the challenges that Republicans and Trump failed to resolve over the last two years.

He voices a specific fear. In his telling, Democrats may paper over the deep differences between their establishment wing and their far-left progressive wing not with policy but with investigations. If so, he warns, the paralysis already seen in Congress over the past two years would only become starker.

Schoen also sees an opening for Republicans and the president. They could try to govern constructively with Democrats, he writes, and voters have made clear that Trump's approach of demonizing the opposition is not an acceptable way to govern. That, he says, is why Trump is the night's biggest loser. He adds that Republicans need to respond responsibly to public concern about the Iran war, corruption and inflation, or they do so at their peril.

The warning cuts both ways. The same swing against Republicans, he argues, could hit Democrats in two short years if they do not heed the voters' judgment. Many Americans, he writes, see politics as a bloodsport, and what they said Tuesday is that they care less about partisan labels than about getting things done.

His closing hope is that the American people end up as the real winners going forward, though he says that is by no means certain. The things to watch are whether the new Democratic majorities can hold together across their internal divide, and whether either party shifts toward governing across the aisle.