It Wasn’t Socialism – Republicans Lost This One

Democrats beat the polls on November 3, and it wasn’t close. With dozens of House races still being counted on Wednesday, Democrats held 228 seats to 139 for Republicans. They flipped at least seven Senate seats, including Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. James Talarico won Texas by about 12 points after leading the final polling average by four.

Before the vote, many of us on the right, me included, argued that a disorderly world would send voters looking for stability and punish a Democratic Party drifting left. The early vote was supposed to show the socialist surge running out of steam. That didn’t happen. The election was not a referendum on socialism. It was a referendum on Republican governance, and Republicans lost it.

What the socialists actually won

Honesty starts with the scoreboard. The Democratic Socialists of America had their best night yet. Five DSA-backed House candidates won safe seats, and with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib re-elected, the DSA contingent in the House rises from two to seven, most of them running ahead of the 2024 Democratic margins in their districts. If Angela Gonzales-Torres holds her 58.7% to 41.3% lead over Rep. Jimmy Gomez in Los Angeles, the number will be eight.

Abdul El-Sayed, a Sanders- Ocasio-Cortez-backed progressive who never received a formal DSA endorsement, won Michigan’s Senate seat 52.4% to 45.6%. Democratic socialists won the mayor’s office in Washington, D.C. and Providence, and Nithya Raman narrowly leads Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles. The DSA’s Florida Senate candidate, Angie Nixon, lost by about three points, closer than her polls.

The label still has limits. Here in Sacramento, Rep. Doris Matsui leads Mai Vang 57.4% to 42.6% with about 41% of the vote counted, in a district where voters viewed the DSA 27% positive and 44% negative before the election. Outside the urban core, the brand still costs votes. Statewide, the night belonged to Democrats generally: Xavier Becerra beat Steve Hilton for governor 64% to 36% on the early count. Rep. Kevin Kiley, the Republican-turned-independent, lost to Democrat Richard Pan, and Rep. David Valadao trails badly in the Central Valley.

How it happened

I see seven reasons, and only one of them is the decisive one.

Democrats picked the battlefield. In politics, you either tell voters who you are or your opponent does it for you. Democrats made this election about the cost of living, and 89% of voters said affordability was a major or crucial factor. Republicans had good economic numbers to talk about and never turned them into a story. As Tom Del Beccaro warned in Fox News in September, the party was repeating 2006. Voters form their impressions in the summer, not in the last three weeks of October.

Nobody offered a road map. Democrats did not run on a plan to lower prices. They didn’t need one. They had a large anti-Trump vote and the long history of the president’s party losing seats in a midterm. Forty-three percent of voters said they voted partly to oppose the president, more than in 2018. Republicans could have answered with a short, concrete platform: elect us, and here are the three things we will do in 2027. They never did. People will follow a party that tells them where it’s going. They won’t follow one that only tells them where the other side is going.

The Iran war was never sold. Americans have little patience for open-ended conflict, and the administration never made the case to them. Then the war pushed up gas prices. Sixty-three percent of voters said military action against Iran was the wrong decision, and 87% were concerned about the price of gas and diesel. It comes back to the economy every time.

The coalition shrank. The voters who elected Donald Trump twice have never grown into a lasting midterm majority. This year, two groups walked away. Latino voters backed Democratic House candidates 62% to 35%, after giving Trump 46% two years ago. Voters under 30 went Democratic 72% to 25%.

Voters are impatient. They give a governing party a short window to show results, and then they move on. Republicans signed the tax cut on July 4, 2025. Had it passed in the winter, the economy would have had another half-year to work before voters judged it. As it was, 75% of voters still rated the economy not so good or poor, and 44% said their own finances were worse than two years earlier. Good statistics don’t win elections if voters don’t feel them in time.

Republican voters didn’t show up. This is the decisive reason. For months, Republican voters knew Democrats were energized, and they knew how far left the Democratic Party had moved. Many stayed home anyway. Party leaders saw an enthusiasm deficit coming, and in Florida, Republican early turnout lagged despite a big registration edge. To be fair to the numbers, turnout wasn’t the whole story: Republicans were also more likely than Democrats to cross party lines, and independents broke Democratic by double digits. Either way, the result is the same. Democrats vote for their candidates in good years and bad. Too many Republicans sat this one out, and the country will live with the consequences.

What we need to stop saying

If conservatives want to be believed in 2028, we have to be accurate now. Brazil’s election was not stolen. Lula won by nearly 4.4 million votes, and the Bolsonaro camp offered no evidence of fraud. Rep. Ilhan Omar is under federal investigation, not indicted. The Alaska Senate probe and the federal suit over noncitizen registrations in California are serious, but they are investigations, not proven outcomes, and we should describe them that way.

Get the polling right, too. A record 43% of Americans view socialism positively, including 45% of independents. Yet the DSA itself polls at 38% favorable and 54% unfavorable. That gap tells you the word “socialism” alone doesn’t scare voters the way it once did. The specifics still might.

Where the fight goes now

The DSA’s seven or eight House members will sit inside a Democratic majority of at least 228. That’s too few to block a speaker on their own, though none of the five newcomers has committed to backing Hakeem Jeffries. Watch the January speaker vote and the rules package.

The real test is legislative. The agenda these members ran on, including single-payer health care, a 32-hour work week, free college and abolishing ICE, will now meet cost estimates and floor votes. The Cato Institute puts the price of the democratic socialist program at $71 trillion to $212 trillion over a decade, and seizing every dollar held by the 400 richest Americans would cover only 3% to 9% of it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has already promised to fight the “far-left, socialist wing” of the Democratic Party. That line will work only if it comes with numbers.

Voters did not embrace socialism on Tuesday. They fired the people in charge. Republicans who want the job back in 2028 should define themselves early, put a plan on paper by summer, and stop waiting for the other side to lose. A self-governing country only works if its citizens do their part, and that starts with showing up to vote.