By Rajan Philips –

The 2026 US midterm elections may have been the most globally watched American elections. The results have exceeded all expectations in America and in the world. The vote is a resounding slap to the American President, louder than the defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary or that of Aleksander Vucic in Serbia. While Orban and Vucic were able to manipulate their political systems and stay in power for well over a decade, the US system has seen to it that Trump will be kept within his term limits. Yet the same system allows Trump to continue in office for two more hectic years. In a parliamentary system, Trump would have had to leave the White House the day after the vote. In any event, he will be gone in two years. What will happen till then is predictably unpredictable like the man himself.

How it matters for the rest of the world is reflected in the comment made by Austria’s Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger: “independent of the elections outcome, our security and prosperity in Austria and Europe must not depend on how people in Kansas or Iowa vote.” More than American voters, it may be Trump and Elon Musk who determine the security limits of America’s allies in Europe, through the satellite-based Starshield weapon system that Musk’s Space X company creates and supplies to the US government.

Around mid-October, allegedly at Trump’s behest, Musk is said to have remotely restricted Ukraine’s battlefield use of Starshield that Ukraine receives from the US government. According to Ukraine, the restriction that was done without notice weakened its capacity to ward off Russian drones. The news alarmed NATO allies and created a storm in Washington. Both Republican and Democrat lawmakers have been calling for investigation and accountability. The midterm results are a big impetus to kickstarting such an investigation.

There will be other investigations into the carnival of corruption that the Trump’s presidency has become in its second term. Musk himself will likely be subjected to intense scrutiny. His brutal approach to downsizing government and slashing USAID overseas will be one area that will be investigated. Another would be to find out how Musk’s businesses have benefited from laxed regulations and easy permits at the federal and state levels of government in the last two years.

Hoping to forestall Congress investigations, Musk bankrolled nearly half a billion dollars to protect his Republican guardians in Congress and in State governments. His gamble to control the course of politics has spectacularly backfired. Now it is up to Congress with its new electees to show that they can hold to account America’s powerful and the wealthiest, without burning itself in the process.           

The midterm’s implications for the Iran war and its continuing economic havocs are not clear. There have been mixed reports on Trump’s intentions. One report is that a deal with Iran was 80% ready for signing before the midterm. According to another, Trump had advised Gulf States that he will resume a new round of attacks on Iran after the midterm. The midterm results have strengthened the opposition to the war among Republicans in Washington, with Vice President JD Vance, the consummate chameleon of contemporary American politics, squarely blaming the war for the Republican defeat. Not without the quiet concurrence of his boss.

Congress Republicans are also riling up to impeach Pete Hegseth, Trump’s handpicked and self-named Secretary of War, likely for incompetence and potential war crimes. Unless Hegseth resigns soon, the present House Republicans want him impeached before the end of the year and steal a political march on the new Congress led by Democrats that will take over in January. All of this puts President Trump in a bind and will force him to take a diplomatic route to end the war. For the rest of the world and for all Americans, the end of the war and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz cannot come any sooner. To their credit, American voters have made it clear that they do not want a resumption of attacks in the Middle East.

The Contours of Victory and Defeat

The midterm results are revelatory at multiple levels. They show American electoral democracy at work, in a country of 350 million people, synthesizing myriads of local variations and conflicts of age, gender, race, religion, education, employment and income into representational outcomes at the State and national levels. The spread and depth of electoral losses came as a shock to Republicans who were resigned to getting the usual midterm knuckle-rap against an incumbent president. Equally shocked are Democrats, not only by their majority margins in the House and in the Senate but also by their victories in States and Districts that they have not won in 30 to 100 years. Even where they lost, Democrats were only inches away, in American Football parlance, from scoring more touchdowns.

At the aggregate level, Democrats have outperformed to historic proportions, reaching the largest popular vote, and the largest House and Senate majorities, since the first post-Watergate election in 1974. Pundits are calling Trump’s midterm punishment as another watershed moment like the Watergate. The vote total for the House elections in all the States corresponds to 400 (out of 538) Electoral College votes in a hypothetical presidential election. The scale of defeat has stopped Trump from making baseless allegations about stolen elections and fraudulent voting. The magnitude of victory presents a new challenge to Democrats as they have to demonstrate to a restive electorate how different and better they will be in comparison to Trump’s Republicans.

Democrats have 215 seats and Republicans 220 seats in the current Congress and had to capture three Republican seats for a bare minimum majority of 218 (out of 435) seats in the next Congress. The tally now is Democrats 254 and Republicans 162, with 19 seats yet to be decided. So far, Democrats have flipped 42 Republican held seats. In the current Senate, there are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats. With Senate  elections held every two years for a third of the Senators every two years, Senate elections were held in 35 States, and Democrats had to win four new Senate seats for a majority of 51. They have captured seven so far, while prevailing in all the 13 States they now hold. The Senate tally is 54 Democrats and 44 Republicans with Alaska and Mississippi yet to be called. Democrats are leading in both and will likely have a comfortable majority of 56 Senators.

In both the House and Senate victories, Democrats made extensive inroads into hitherto Republican territories. Trump had won six of the seven flipped States in his three presidential runs in 2016, 2020 and 2024: Iowa and Ohio in the Midwest; and Kansas, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina in the South. Democrats have not won statewide election since 1988 in Texas, and not since 1932 in Kansas. In addition to the House and the Senate, Democrats have also won a majority of the Governors’ elections in individual States along with elections to the State legislative bodies and local agencies.          

Trump won the 2024 presidential election by attracting young male voters in very large numbers and significantly increasing the traditionally low Republican shares of white working class as well as Black and Latino voters. He won them over by vehemently promising to lower prices and make life affordable again; to take control of immigration and the borders; and to end the wars in Gaza and in Ukraine. Nothing has gone according Trump’s promises or plan, and the midterm results are comeuppance.

His Liberation Day tariffs have taken a toll on American consumers and caused trade precarities for the rest of the world. The war in Iran which he started on a whim has led to price increases in fuel and fertilizers everywhere, and they have hit rural Republican Americans harder than others in America. No one liked the violent crackdown on immigrants, especially Latin Americans who voted for him heavily in 2024. The indiscriminate apprehension of immigrants has created labour shortages in businesses, particularly in the construction industry. Americans across the board finally got disgusted with the level of corruption in the Trump Administration.            

While rebuking and restraining the President, the midterm wave is also sending a new cross-section of representatives to Washington and to the State Capitals. The results show quite a number of historic firsts reflecting the diverse American society and rejecting the MAGA aversion to diversity. The most remarkable first is the election of a Muslim American as the US Senator from Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed, the American-born son of Egyptian American parents, Rhodes Scholar, and a highly accomplished Doctor of Medicine, convincingly won the Senate race in Michigan after withstanding a barrage of Islamophobic attacks from the US President at the top to every Republican hack below. According to Alvin Tillery of Northwestern University, “the simplest explanation is that the electorate finally caught up with the country.” In that sense, Trump and MAGA have been trying to fly in the face of the American reality. The midterm has stopped them in midflight.