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By Oliver Trapnell
Associate News Editor
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Democrats swept to control of Congress and scored a number of high-profile victories in Senate and governor races on Tuesday, but beneath the headline results, voters in a handful of states shifted dramatically from where they stood just four years ago, a Newsweek analysis found.
An analysis of statewide election margins shows some of the largest movements came in traditionally Republican territory, where races that once seemed safely red became competitive or even flipped.
Several states recorded double-digit swings compared with their most recent comparable election in 2022.
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The shifts were measured by comparing the Democratic-Republican vote margin in 2026 with the margin in the equivalent statewide race four years earlier.
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The largest movements were concentrated in a handful of Senate and governor's races, many of them in states that have trended Republican in recent election cycles.
In Senate contests, some of the most notable swings came in the South and Midwest.
South Carolina recorded one of the largest changes, moving roughly 30 percentage points toward Democrats since 2022. The state backed Republican Senator Tim Scott by more than 25 points in 2022, but the 2026 contest resulted in an upset when Democrat Annie Andrews defeated Senator Darline Graham by about 4 1/2 points.
Kansas also underwent a striking transformation. Republicans carried the Senate race by about 23 points in 2022, only for Democrats to emerge victorious in 2026, when Adam Hamilton defeated incumbent Roger Marshall by almost 5 points, amounting to a shift of around 28 percentage points.
Perhaps the most politically significant movement came in North Carolina, where former Governor Roy Cooper converted a Republican-held Senate seat into a commanding Democratic victory. The state swung nearly 23 points toward Democrats compared with its last Senate contest, turning what had been a narrow Republican win in 2022 into one of the party's strongest performances of the cycle.
Other major Senate shifts were recorded in Arkansas, Louisiana, Iowa, Georgia, Florida and Ohio. Several of those states have become increasingly reliable Republican territory in recent federal elections, making the scale of the Democratic improvement particularly noteworthy.
The governor's map revealed similarly dramatic movement.
No state shifted more sharply than Iowa. Republican Governor Kim Reynolds won reelection by nearly 19 points in 2022. Four years later, Democrat Rob Sand secured an 11-point victory, a change approaching 30 percentage points.
That result was part of a broader pattern. In Ohio, voters moved from supporting a Republican governor by a wide margin to electing a Democrat. Georgia experienced a similar reversal after Governor Brian Kemp's comfortable 2022 victory was followed by a Democratic gubernatorial win in 2026, with former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms becoming the first Black woman governor in U.S. history. Texas also elected a Democratic governor, when Gina Hinojosa posted a 7-point victory over Greg Abbott, who was seeking a fourth term.
Not every large shift involved a partisan flip. Democrats also expanded their advantages in a number of states that were already blue. Rhode Island and Hawaii saw some of the largest increases in Democratic margins, while governors in New York, Illinois, California and Pennsylvania all outperformed their party's 2022 benchmarks.
Taken together, the results suggest that the biggest electoral movements were not confined to a single region. States across the South, Midwest and Northeast registered substantial shifts, offering an early indication of where the political landscape may be changing ahead of the 2028 presidential race.
Methodology: Newsweek compared each state's 2026 Senate and gubernatorial result with the most recent comparable statewide election for the same office in 2022, measuring the change in the Democratic-Republican vote margin between the two contests. Positive figures indicate movement toward Democrats, while negative figures indicate movement toward Republicans.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Sam Stevenson and Dave Siminoff.
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