The Blue Wave Sweeps the House: What Midterm Gains Mean for 2028
Welcome to From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill, and the campaign trail. In today's edition, Scott Bland looks at how big Democrats' gains really were in Tuesday's election. Alexandra Marquez also explores what these sweeping victories mean for the upcoming 2028 presidential race.
Democrats' performance was obviously huge — you simply cannot win an estimated 259 House seats without sizable national margins. A look at the history shows just how massive those results truly were. Democrats are on track for the second-biggest House popular vote edge in the last fifty years. This will also be the largest midterm margin for one party since 1974, when the country punished the Republican Party after Richard Nixon resigned following the Watergate scandal.
With more votes still left to count, especially in Democratic-leaning California, Democratic House candidates have captured 55.3% of the national vote, compared to 43.3% for Republicans. That is an 12-point margin — more than Democrats in 2008 (10.5 points) or 2018 (8.6 points), and more than Republicans in their wave years of 1994 (6.8 points), 2010 (6.6 points), and 2014 (5.8 points).
Ben Kamisar, Sarah Sternhagen and Stephen Pettigrew looked at the shifts in House races that were rated as "battleground districts" by NBC News' Decision Desk before the election. The average "battleground" district moved almost 17 percentage points toward Democrats when compared to the 2024 presidential margin there, according to a review of results across 21 of the 28 battlegrounds where at least 95% of the expected vote was cast.
The two biggest swings came in South Texas, where a dramatic Democratic improvement among Latino voters helped power massive congressional victories. Newly elected Democrats could become key players in the 2028 presidential contest. Voters in states with early Democratic presidential primaries also chose a new class of kingmakers. New Democratic governors or senators will soon take over leadership in five of the six states that will lead the party's presidential primary calendar in two years. Those leaders' endorsements could be major prizes for candidates and important signals for voters, especially in states that elected Democrats statewide for the first time in decades.
The prime example is South Carolina, where Annie Andrews became the first Democrat elected to the Senate there since 1998. In August, the Democratic National Committee voted to make South Carolina the first state on its presidential primary calendar for 2028. Historically, when the state was in the third spot on the calendar, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn's backing was known to sway primaries. He is credited with helping President Joe Biden's campaign win in 2020. Now, Andrews could join Clyburn as a statewide voice for Democratic voters looking to nominate a future president.
"I mentioned it to Annie last night. I said, 'You know, you're going to be extremely popular with all the 2028 folks,'" Jamie Harrison, former chair of the Democratic National Committee and the South Carolina Democratic Party, told NBC News on Wednesday. "She just started laughing. But she will be."
That's all From the Politics Desk for now. Today's newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.