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By Sam Stevenson
Associate News Editor
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A Republican defeat in the midterms may have reshaped Congress and elevated a new group of potential presidential contenders. However, it doesn't mean the party is destined to lose the White House in 2028.
"It would be premature to conclude that a Republican wipeout in 2026 would spell disaster for Republicans in 2028," Costas Panagopoulos, a distinguished professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Newsweek in a phone call before the election.
"The evidence for that is inconclusive, and sometimes when a party loses big in the midterm election cycle, they could still come around and remain in power or win the presidency in the following presidential year."
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Barack Obama won reelection after Democrats lost a net 63 House seats in 2010, while Ronald Reagan secured a landslide second term after Republicans lost 26 House seats in 1982.
The 2026 result has nevertheless changed the arguments available to the politicians most likely to contest the next election.
Democrats regained control of both chambers of Congress. By early Wednesday, they had secured the 218 House seats needed for a majority and held 54 Senate seats, a net gain of seven, with several races still unresolved.
Senate victories included contests in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio and South Carolina, all states that normally favor Republicans.
Senator Jon Ossoff was reelected in Georgia, a state President Donald Trump carried in 2024.
Governors Josh Shapiro and JB Pritzker won new terms in Pennsylvania and Illinois, while Democrats who were not on the ballot used the campaign to test their influence across competitive states.
For Republicans, the result raised a different question: whether anyone can inherit Trump’s coalition without also inheriting responsibility for his administration’s defeats.
Newsweek reached out to every potential 2028 contender mentioned in this article for comment on Wednesday morning via email and website contact form.
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What the Midterms Revealed
Panagopoulos said a national wave would require "a significant number of competitive races moving in a similar direction across a diversity of states and districts."
That definition also includes movement in seats that do not change hands.
"Just because Republicans manage to hold on to a seat, for example, does not mean that the vote shares in those districts will not still move in a Democratic direction vis-à-vis 2024 or some previous midterm cycle," Panagopoulos said.
The early results met significant parts of that test. Seven Senate seats moved from Republicans to Democrats, with no Democratic seats changing in the other direction at that stage.
Ballotpedia’s historical measure also identifies a seven-seat loss by the president’s party as the threshold for a Senate wave.
The initial AP Voter Poll, based on approximately 80,000 voters, found that the economy and democracy dominated voters’ concerns, with the cost of living and government corruption weighing heavily.
About seven in 10 voters under 30 backed the Democratic candidate in their local House race, although that group represented only around one in 10 voters.
The survey was conducted by SSRS among registered voters in all 50 states, combining online, telephone and in-person interviews. The national margin of sampling error was plus or minus 0.6 percentage points.
"Larger national issues, perhaps because of their visibility or their impact on voters, appear to have greater influence on their voting decisions than local considerations," Panagopoulos said.
The result therefore gives prospective candidates a test: did they merely benefit from an adverse national environment for Republicans, or did they outperform it in a way that could be reproduced in 2028?
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The Democratic Shadow Primary
The midterms strengthened several possible contenders, but not all victories carried the same weight.
Jon Ossoff
No Democrat gained a more immediate electability argument than Ossoff in Georgia.
He won 59 percent of the vote against 41 percent for GOP Representative Mike Collins, an 18-point margin in a state Trump won by 2.2 points in 2024, according to the latest Associated Press (AP) results.
Ossoff ran on affordability, health care and government accountability.
After winning, he said voters had delivered "sweeping and decisive victories" and rebuked the administration’s "depravity, corruption and incompetence."
The result gives Ossoff evidence of appeal in a Southern presidential battleground.
The Democrat also moved to the top of the early 2028 prediction markets, at 17 percent on Kalshi and 18 percent on Polymarket, at the time of writing. However, market prices are volatile and do not measure voter support.
For now, Ossoff has dismissed talk of a presidential run, saying he has "zero interest."
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Josh Shapiro
Shapiro won a second term in Pennsylvania with 60.3 percent against 38.4 percent for Republican Stacy Garrity, with 98 percent of the expected vote counted, according to AP.
The result represented a 23.57-point shift toward Democrats compared with the 2024 presidential contest, according to an NBC News calculation reviewed at the time of writing.
"This is a good night for our commonwealth," Shapiro said. "And it’s looking like it could be a pretty good night for our country, too."
Shapiro can point to executive experience and broad appeal in a presidential battleground.
The reopening of a collapsed section of Interstate 95 in 12 days has become a symbol of his competence-focused message.
His new federal political action committee also represents a concrete step into national politics.
Shapiro entered Election Day with double-digit polling leads and a sizable fundraising advantage, so the margin reflected both his strength and the limits of Garrity’s campaign.
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JB Pritzker
Pritzker won a third Illinois term with 59.8 percent, compared with 36.8 percent for Republican Darren Bailey, according to AP, with 91 percent of the votes counted.
His 23-point margin was substantially larger than his roughly 13-point victory over Bailey in 2022.
The result strengthens Pritzker’s argument that he can build and finance a durable political organization.
But a dominant victory in Democratic Illinois does not carry the same electoral meaning as winning Georgia or Pennsylvania.
His national case will depend on his performance among downstate and working-class voters, and on whether his money and campaigning helped candidates elsewhere.
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The Off-Ballot Democrats
Former Vice President Kamala Harris remains the early polling leader.
The RealClearPolling average through November 1 placed her at 24.2 percent. She was followed by Gavin Newsom at 14.2 percent, Pete Buttigieg at 13.1 percent and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 11.8 percent.
Ossoff stood at 9.6 percent, Shapiro at 5.5 percent, Andy Beshear at 4 percent and Pritzker at 3 percent.
Those figures measure name recognition and present preferences, not the likely outcome of a primary that is still years away.
Harris campaigned in Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and has not ruled out running again. "I go back and forth. I honestly go back and forth," she said when asked about 2028.
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Newsom campaigned in New Hampshire and toured Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina.
Buttigieg undertook a seven-state closing tour, including appearances in Georgia and Michigan.
Ocasio-Cortez campaigned for Democratic candidates in Maine, Michigan, Nevada and California. The strong Democratic performance among younger voters supports part of her generational-change argument.
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Beshear campaigned in states including Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin.
His prospective candidacy rests on a different proposition: that a Democrat repeatedly elected in strongly Republican Kentucky could reach voters the national party has struggled to retain.
All five now have to show that their midterm activity generated money, turnout or organization rather than attention alone.
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The Republican Succession Contest
"Republicans will need to do some soul-searching after the 2026 midterms about what the party looks like post-Trump and who is best positioned to reflect those shifts, if any," Panagopoulos said.
That question became more urgent after Democratic Senate victories in Texas, Kansas and Iowa. These are results Panagopoulos had said would "spell big trouble for Trump and congressional Republicans."
The implications are greatest for Vice President JD Vance.
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The RealClearPolling average placed Vance at 38.6 percent, ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio at 26.4 percent, Donald Trump Jr. at 9.8 percent, and Ron DeSantis at 7.5 percent.
At September’s Republican convention in Dallas, supporters chanted "JD 48." Vance responded: "We gotta take care of business this November, and then we’ll worry about what comes next."
Taking care of business proved difficult.
Vance has also acknowledged that he may not run, citing his four children and his wife’s dislike of politics. "Of course, there’s a chance," he said when asked whether he might sit out the race.
"If Republicans suffer big losses in 2026, my guess is that the president will be blamed, and by extension, so will anyone so closely linked to his administration and its policies, including the vice president and other high-profile members of his cabinet," Panagopoulos said.
Rubio may be somewhat insulated by a foreign-policy role but must show that international prominence can translate into primary support.
Trump Jr. possesses the family name but no government record, while DeSantis must persuade Republican voters to reconsider a candidate they rejected in 2024.
The result does not remove Vance from the leading position. It changes the question facing the entire party: whether Republicans want continuity with Trump, a modified version of his politics or a more significant break.
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What Happens Next
Midterm and presidential electorates are different, and many occasional voters will return in 2028.
But the first post-2024 evidence is now available.
Ossoff, Shapiro and Pritzker gained stronger records to sell, while Republicans must find a successor who can preserve Trump’s supporters and recover voters who rejected his administration in 2026.
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 James Debens
Register for our November 10 discussion, 'Newsweek Webinar: How the Politics of AI Could Shape Midterms,' which will examine how AI policy played in key races, data centers, lobbying and the political lines that emerged.
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