Voters handed Democrats both houses of Congress on Tuesday, a result The Associated Press called "a shockingly decisive rebuke of Republican governance in Washington." The AP tied it to "high prices, the Iran war and concerns over government corruption." Democrats flipped Senate seats in Texas, Ohio, Kansas and Iowa, the AP reported. In Kansas, the Rev. Adam Hamilton beat Sen. Roger Marshall, "becoming the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the ruby red state since 1932," NBC News reported.
The forgotten man built the Trump majority. In 2016, White men without a college degree backed Donald Trump 73% to 23%, and rural voters backed him 59% to 34%, Pew Research Center's study of validated voters found. In 2024, White men without a degree went 69% to 30% for Trump, and small-town and rural voters went 63% to 35%, AP VoteCast found.
On Tuesday he was still the Republican base, but a smaller one. White men without a degree backed Republicans for the House 63% to 35%, the AP Voter Poll found, in results published by NBC News. The Republican margin fell from 39 points to 28. Among all White men it fell from 22 points to 8, 53% to 45%. They made up about the same share of the electorate as in 2024: 35% for white men, against 34%, and 18% for those without a degree. The forgotten man did not stay home. He voted and moved.
He moved where he lives. Rural voters went Republican 57% to 41%, down from Trump's 28-point margin in 2024. Suburban voters went Democratic 59% to 40%, up from 5 points to 19. Each made up the same share of voters as two years ago. "The gains the GOP had made during the Trump era, particularly among Latinos and in rural areas, were wiped out in a single night," CNN reported.
That is the difference between a loss and a rout. Democrat Zach Dembo won Kentucky's 6th District, Decision Desk HQ projected, a seat Trump carried by 15 points in 2024, Kentucky Public Radio reported. Bobby Pulido unseated Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas' 15th, DDHQ projected, a Rio Grande Valley seat Trump carried by nearly 18 points, Newsweek reported. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said he expects his party to win at least 255 seats, CBS News reported, with dozens of races uncalled. Democrats won 215 in 2024, the House historian's records show. A gain of 40 would match the 41 seats Democrats took in 2018, Trump's first midterm.
Young men were also involved. Fifty-eight percent of men under 30 voted for a Democrat for the House, CIRCLE, the Tufts University youth-research center, reported from the NORC Civic Health & Elections Project. "That is a major shift for young men: in 2024, according to that year's AP VoteCast data, 56% of young men supported President Trump," CIRCLE wrote. Voters under 30 overall went Democratic 73% to 25%, after splitting 51% to 47% for Kamala Harris in 2024. They were a smaller slice of a midterm electorate, 11% against 16%, as the young usually are when no president is on the ballot.
Start with the war that moved them. Sixty-three percent of voters said the United States made the wrong decision in taking military action against Iran, the AP Voter Poll found, in results published by NBC News. Seventy-four percent called the war a crucial or major factor in their vote. Those who called it crucial backed Democrats 72% to 26%. Fifty-one percent of voters said U.S. support for Israel is too strong, against 12% who said it is not strong enough.
The map matched the poll. Elaine Luria took Virginia's 2nd District from Rep. Jen Kiggans, NBC News projected. In California's 48th, DDHQ projected Democrat Marni von Wilpert the winner of a Republican-held seat. Even retiring Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told CBS News that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "has a reckoning" and is "one of the reasons why we don't have the funding or guarantee for defense that we need," the network reported. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the Senate race, DDHQ projected. His "criticism of the Israeli government," NBC News reported, "was also a consistent flash point." It did not sink him in a state Trump carried.
St. Thomas Aquinas set the measure of a just war. The ruler may take up "the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies," he wrote, because "the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority" over "the city, kingdom or province subject to them." The sword belongs to the ruler's own people and their good. Voters who were told the war served them looked at their gas bills and their sons and judged otherwise.
Then the promises. Sixty-three percent of voters said higher prices come more from Trump's policies than from factors outside his control, and 66% said his wartime tariffs hurt the national economy, the Voter Poll found. Sixty-three percent said he does not fight for people like them. About one-fifth of midterm voters who backed Trump in 2024 now disapprove of his job performance, CNN reported from its version of the poll. The forgotten man was promised lower prices and no new wars. He got neither.
Immigration is the one promise he still believed. Voters trusted Republicans over Democrats on immigration, 43% to 41%, the Voter Poll found, the only issue the poll tested on which Republicans led. The 14% who named immigration the nation's top issue voted Republican 89% to 10%. Those who called enforcement policy crucial to their vote went Republican 57% to 42%. A majority, 58%, said enforcement had gone too far. Even so, the issue held the base. It did not lose the House, but perhaps failing to enact mass deportations did.
Texas' 15th shows the same thing from the other side. De La Cruz spent the race "distancing herself from the administration on immigration enforcement," The Texas Tribune reported, and co-sponsored the Dignity Act, which "would grant legal status, though not citizenship, to long-term residents." The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee still attacked her over "cost-rising tariffs" and "harsh immigration enforcement tactics." Softening on the border did not save her, and the Arizona border seat stretching from Tucson to Mexico went to JoAnna Mendoza anyway, DDHQ projected.
The duty here is plain. A nation owes its own people first. "If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever," St. Paul writes (1 Tim 5:8). The Catechism of the Catholic Church sets the order in paragraph 2241:
"Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens."
The United States held 52.4 million international migrants in mid-2024, 15.2% of its population, U.N. Population Division figures show. In 1990 it held 23.3 million, 9.2%. A nation that has more than doubled its foreign-born population in a generation has given far beyond the measure, and its rulers may set the "juridical conditions" the Catechism names for the common good.
Voters kept the franchise for the nation's own people, too. West Virginia approved an amendment barring noncitizens from voting with 78.8% support when the AP called it, West Virginia Watch reported, and Arkansas and Kansas passed citizenship-to-vote amendments, WORLD reported, citing the AP.
The wave hit the moral questions as well. Virginia voters wrote a right to "abortion care" into the state constitution and repealed the line that "only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth," VPM reported. Missouri's Amendment 3, which would have restored protection for most unborn children, failed 55.5% to 44.5% in unofficial returns, NBC News results show, while Idaho rejected an abortion-rights measure 56% to 44%, also unofficial. Those losses came where the party ran from the fight, SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said: "You cannot spend years telling your base to sit down and shut up, then act surprised when they don't stand up for you on Election Day."
So how does the president succeed from here? The numbers point to one road. The forgotten man did not leave the party over the border or over who may vote. He moved away from it over a foreign war and prices it promised to cut, and young men moved with him. A government that brings the sword home, keeps the border and puts its own people's bread ahead of another nation's war can win him back. A party that does not will meet him again in 2028.
"Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help," the psalmist warns (Ps 146:3). On Tuesday, he took the psalmist at his word.
