The biggest blue wave in 50 years, explained in 7 charts
Last Tuesday brought a blue wave of historic proportions, with Democrats winning large majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as winning several new governorships.
Key points
- How did the blue wave become a blue tsunami?
- It was striking how some of Democrats’ largest gains came in states President Donald Trump had won overwhelmingly just two years ago, many of which were in the South.
- The only comparison in recent decades has been the 2008 wave amidst the financial crisis that swept Barack Obama into the presidency with huge majorities.
This wave was the biggest in a half-century We’ve lived through wave elections before, but the size of this one is historic.
But some states were even redder two years ago — Trump won Kansas by 16, South Carolina by 18, and Mississippi by 23 — and Democrats, incredibly, pulled off victories in some of those too.
Additional details
- But estimates currently suggest Democrats are headed for over a 13-percentage-point popular vote victory — the largest in 50 years.
- The biggest swing in the country came in Texas, which Trump had won by 13 points, and Sen.-elect James Talarico (D) won by 12.
- But now that the dust is settling from the results, it’s worth drilling down into just how historically unusual this win was — and untangling what, exactly, was the coalition that brought Democrats back to power.
- One way to assess that is by examining the national House popular vote — that is, totaling how many votes for candidates of each party were cast in the 435 House of Representatives elections around the country.
- Susan Collins (R-ME) finally lost her seat after decades of bucking partisan trends, she put up a uniquely strong fight: Maine was the only Senate battleground to vote to the right of its 2024 presidential vote, though in the end Collins still lost by about 6 points.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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