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By Jesus Mesa
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Two years after carrying President Donald Trump and Republicans to power, the GOP coalition appeared to come apart.
Men backed Democratic House candidates 50 percent to 48 percent in the poll, conducted by SSRS for major news organizations. It was the first time Democrats carried men in the national House vote since 2008, according to a Newsweek review of exit polls.
Democrats won men under 30 by 35 points. White women, a group Republicans won by 11 points in the 2024 House vote, backed Democrats by 6. The GOP also lost Latino men, who swung 27 points toward Democrats, and its 13-point lead with voters without college degrees shrank to 2.
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Meanwhile, white voters without degrees stayed with Republicans, though by smaller margins, and rural voters backed the party 57 percent to 41 percent. White evangelicals barely moved.
The result was a Democratic majority in the House as well as in the Senate where Democrats will hold at least 54 seats after flipping seven held by Republicans in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas. They could still win two more, in Alaska and in Mississippi.
In the House, Democrats will have at least 253 House seats, including 43 pickups, with 21 races still to be called as of Friday afternoon, according to Associated Press projections. In The AP Voter Poll, 44 percent of voters said their House ballot was to express opposition to Trump. About two-thirds of voters said Trump's policies had "worsened economic conditions in the U.S." . And roughly a third called the Iran war a "crucial" factor in their vote for Congress.
"What we saw was a massive rebuke of Donald Trump and a rejection of the Republican Party that's been enabling him," Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who studies the Latino vote, told Newsweek.
The charts compare House votes in the 2024 exit poll and the 2026 AP Voter Poll, not Trump’s 2024 race against former Vice President Kamala Harris. Turnout is usually lower in midterms, so the electorates differ**.** Different methods and different electorates mean the shifts are estimates. The latter survey of about 79,500 respondents was conducted by SSRS between October 19 and November 3. The margin of error was plus or minus 0.6 percentage points.
Margins, or shifts toward Democrats, below are calculated by subtracting the Republican share from the Democratic share.
How Latino Voting Shifted
Latino voters backed Democratic House candidates by 9 points in 2024. This year, the margin was 30.
Latino men favored Republicans by 8 points in the 2024 House vote and Democrats by 19 on Tuesday, a 27-point swing. Latinos under 30 moved 50 points toward Democrats, though that subgroup is small.
“You saw in 2024, all the Latino communities moved to the right,” Mike Madrid said, and “in 2026, all of the Latino communities moved to the left.”
Older Latinos went the other way however. Those 65 and older backed Democrats by 10 points, down from 16 in 2024.
Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist, told Newsweek that Republicans “made a massive miscalculation” by treating their 2024 numbers as a permanent realignment.
“The Latino vote swung back to the Democrats but it will be temporary if the Democrats can’t make a policy impact for them,” Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, told Newsweek.
How Young Male Voting Shifted
Young men were a key part of Trump's 2024 coalition and many experts still considered them a key swing vote for the current race. On Tuesday, men under 30 backed Democrats 66 percent to 31 percent, a 35-point margin. That margin was +3 points in the 2024 House vote.
Women under 30 favored Democrats by 24 points in the 2024 House vote. This year, they did so by 57 points, a 33-point shift.
Men as a whole went from a 14-point Republican advantage to a 2-point Democratic edge, 50 percent to 48 percent, the first time Democrats won men in the national House vote since 2008, according to a Newsweek review of exit polls.
White men moved 17 points toward Democrats, and Black men moved 23. About one in 10 Black men backed the Republican in their House race, according to the poll.
Republican hopefuls will have to pursue 2024 Trump voters who defected this year, “especially young white men, Latino voters, and working-class voters,” Asher Hildebrand, a professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, told Newsweek.
“They will also need to address these voters’ economic anxieties and improve their quality of life,” he said.
How Non-College Educated Americans Voted
Voters without college degrees have anchored Trump's party for a decade. They still preferred Republicans on Tuesday, 50 percent to 48 percent, but the 13-point margin of 2024 shrank to 2—an 11-point shift.
But the education divide still widened in 2026 as college graduates moved even further toward Democrats by a 28-point margin, 17 points more than in 2024.
White voters without degrees remained the party's strongest demographic base. White men in that group backed Republicans by 28 points, and white women by 16.
White Women Crossed Over
White women made up 38 percent of the 2026 electorate in the Voter Poll, the largest group in the gender-by-race breakdown. They voted 52 percent to 46 percent for Democrats after backing Republicans by 11 points in the 2024 House vote, a 17-point shift.
The move toward Democrats occurred on both sides of the education divide. White women with degrees backed Democrats by 29 points, up from 13 in 2024, a 16-point shift.
Those without degrees still backed Republicans, by 16 points, down from 30, a 14-point shift.
Catholics Shifted Toward Democrats
Catholics backed Republicans by 21 points in the 2024 House vote. This year, they split almost evenly, 50 percent to 49 percent for Democrats, a 22-point swing.
White Catholics still favored Republicans—56 percent to 43 percent— a 13-point margin that is 16 points fewer than in 2024. Voters with no religion moved 16 points toward Democrats.
Jewish voters moved the other way. They still backed Democrats 68 percent to 31 percent, a 37-point margin, though less than in 2024 when that margin was 50 points.
White evangelicals backed Republicans 82 percent to 16 percent, a 4-point change, though they fell to 17 percent of the electorate from 23 percent in the 2024 exit poll.
How Far Rural Voters Moved
Rural and small-town voters stayed with Republicans on Tuesday, 57 percent to 41 percent. The Voter Poll changed how it asks voters where they live in 2026, so those figures can’t be directly compared with 2024.
Democrats still won in rural states. Adam Hamilton’s win in Kansas made him the first Democrat to win a Senate seat there since 1932.
“This year has been one of the worst farming years of my 43 year career,” John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told Newsweek on Thursday.
“Many white farmers were so upset with Trump they stayed home, which is why you saw such a huge difference in rural America,” he said. Black farmers, he added, were voting early.
Derrell Peel, an agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University who stressed he is not a political analyst, called the vote “a reaction to what we’ve been through.”
“It’s certainly temporary for now, but could it have permanent impacts? I think it’s possible that it could,” he told Newsweek.
'Register Their Displeasure With Trump'
Among voters who said they backed Trump two years ago, 91 percent chose Republican House candidates on Tuesday. Seven percent went to Democrats.
Trump won the popular vote in 2024, yet House voters who said they backed Harris outnumbered those who said they backed Trump in this year’s electorate, 49 percent to 44 percent. People who said they sat out the 2024 presidential race (4 percent of voters) broke for Democrats, 70 percent to 25 percent.
Trump was on many voters’ minds. Forty-four percent said they cast a House ballot to oppose him and 16 percent to support him, with his approval at 37 percent.
Voters who called the cost of living crucial, 49 percent of voters, favored Democrats 66 percent to 32 percent.
Democrats did not come out of it popular. Fifty-two percent of voters viewed the party unfavorably, against 47 percent who viewed it favorably.
“Nothing here could be inferred as an affirmation of the Democratic Party,” Madrid said.
“Put simply, voters dislike President Trump but still do not trust Democrats,” Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist with Upshift Strategies, told Newsweek. “The midterm wins are borrowed time from voters who wanted to register their displeasure with Trump.”
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