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By Alex J. Rouhandeh
National Political Correspondent
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Two months after the 2024 election, while Democrats were still tossing around a number of theories to explain their comprehensive defeat, a Georgia State University student named Irshad Rembert offered Newsweek an anecdote that encapsulated the diagnosis that many who work for state Democratic parties were gravitating toward. The then 20-year-old political science major had recently rechartered his school’s Young Democrats chapter and grown its membership to over 100 students. And ahead of the 2024 vote, he was eager to find a way to help his party win the critical swing state.
Initially, the Democratic Party of Georgia showed mutual interest in holding an event on campus but gave Rembert little notice before the gathering happened. Somehow, instead of a rally aimed to activate college students, the event had morphed into a free lunch at a known hub for unhoused individuals. Promises of signs and T-shirts to hand out on campus never materialized. As the election drew nearer, interactions with party higher-ups were similar.
“Whatever the request was, however small it was, it was like pulling teeth," Rembert said of his attempts to work with the Democratic Party representatives he interacted with.
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Back then, even many of the party’s most faithful wouldn’t have thought that Democrats could notch a victory like they did in the midterms two years later. The party flipped seven Senate seats and could win two more. It’s on pace to secure over 250 House seats and, for the first time since 2010 in Barack Obama’s first term, has won a majority of governorships. This election is the party’s greatest victory since 1974, an election that followed Watergate.
It happened despite an overall GOP money advantage. While Democratic candidates outspent Republican candidates on advertising $437 million to $183 million, Republican-aligned outside groups spent $1 billion compared to Democratic-aligned groups’ $552 million, per a Bloomberg analysis. The world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, emerged as the face of that spending barrage.
So, how did 2026’s Blue Tsunami happen? One immediate answer is that the party fielded quality candidates who fundraised well. Yet the party has done those years before only to reap modest gains. President Donald Trump’s historically low approval rating offers a second answer, but America has seen similarly unpopular presidents before whose party performed far better. This leaves one more major answer that gets to the heart of the issue Rembert raised in 2025—Democrats decided to meet voters where they are.
“Democrats spent the last year and a half laser-focused on talking to our neighbors, registering voters, and organizing on the ground in every part of the country,” Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin told me. “From voter outreach to recruiting and supporting strong candidates, training organizers and investing in state and local party infrastructure, every part of our party played a role. When we are united, investing in the ground game and working together at every level, we can build the kind of operations that deliver results up and down the ballot”
(Photo by RONDA CHURCHILL/AFP via Getty Images)
Martin’s name was first mentioned to me when I was interviewing DNC Youth Council Chair André Treiber. At the time, Martin was head of the Association of State Democratic Chairs, an influential position but not one most people know. Treiber, a DNC member, mentioned Martin after I raised questions about the disconnect between grassroots organizers and party leadership. He was optimistic that Martin could become the next DNC chair by running to address that very problem.
A month later, Martin was elected despite his opponent, Wisconsin Democratic Chair Ben Wikler, receiving endorsements from Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, House Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Martin’s win came in large part due to his commitment to rebuild long-neglected State Democratic Parties, pledging to invest $1 million a month into the DNC’s State Partnership Program.
State Parties are the middleman of the Democratic Party; at best, they bridge the gap between county parties and the national organization, local leaders and federal officials. County parties can be lifeline for candidates running for office. They give statewide politicians a point of contact to organize effective community events, and they give local candidates—many of whom struggle to fundraise—a network to get their campaigns off the ground.
While reporting on the Texas Primary, I saw firsthand the importance of grassroots enthusiasm. In January, Republicans told me that Trump won by appearing on nontraditional media platforms and holding rallies to generate energy on the ground. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton utilized that technique, leveraging his support with MAGA-aligned state party members to build a coalition that toppled four-term Senator John Cornyn, a product of the Bush area.
Texas Democratic Party officials were aware that their counterpart on the right was a force, but they also identified its limitations. Many Texans didn’t vote in the primary. If Democrats could persuade non-MAGA Republicans that the right no longer advocated for their interest, they could win, the thinking went. However, State Party Chair Kendall Scudder didn’t believe those minds could be persuaded by savvy advertising and candidate charisma alone.
The party expanded from a single office in Austin to include bases in Dallas, Houston, Amarillo and Eagle Pass. “I think that the power structure of the party had felt really comfortable with only having an office in Austin because they had learned how to build influence through proximity,” Scudder told me in August. “But other people around the state weren’t feeling that.”
Other people in the state weren’t feeling that for good reason. This cycle marked the first time since 1972 that Democrats recruited a candidate to run for every state and federal office. When former Congressman Beto O’Rourke came close to beating Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, he told me that the state party resources were “almost nothing,” saying, “We just had to do that all from scratch.” Senator-elect James Talarico and Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa did not face the same challenge, allowing them to become the first Democrats elected statewide since 1994.
Winning in a state that has long represented the conservative identity like no other makes the Texas win particularly sweet for the left. However, the same story holds true in Kansas. Democratic Governor Laura Kelly was elected to her post in 2018 by knocking off the most unpopular incumbent Republican in the country. However, Kansas was still considered ruby red.
In her second term, Kelly made a concerted effort to help rebuild a state party that’d long been neglected. “We didn’t have infrastructure,” Kansas Democratic Party Chair Jeanna Repass told me in October. “Democrats were flailing all over the state, didn’t feel like they had a party that they could rely on, and she understood that that was not the way to move forward if we were ever going to elect her replacement.” Not only are Democrats poised to elect her replacement, but they also sent Methodist Reverend Adam Hamilton to the Senate, making the first time in 94 years that Kansas has sent a Democrat to the Senate.
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The story doesn’t stop there. In Rembert’s home state of Georgia, Democrats saw similar turnaround. At the urging of Senator Jon Ossoff, Georgia Democrats selected Charlie Bailey to become their new full-time chair. The state party organized a coordinated campaign that helped Ossoff win by over 10 points and elected America’s first African American female governor, Keisha Lance Bottoms. “In a big battleground state like this, you need a chair that can lead a state party that is focused on building up the infrastructure, not just in the election year but year-round and in the off years,” Bailey told me in September.
The 50-state investment strategy of this cycle harkens back to a practice employed by former DNC Chair Howard Dean in 2006 and 2008, the last elections that saw Democratic gains of this magnitude. The revitalization of the strategy under Martin proved to be a difference maker but so too did the methods by which Democrats connected with voters.
The DNC released a new Organizing and Political Playbook aimed to maneuver the party away from its prior strategy of collecting voter data at the expense of engaging in constructive conversations. As part of that overhaul, the DNCpartnered with Swing Left, one of the Democratic ecosystem’s largest grassroots mobilizing organizations, by forging an agreement to pool data. This allowed for more seamless coordination between outside organizations like Swing Left, party committees and individual campaigns.
“What we did this cycle that was really different from what Democrats typically do, knowing that the makeup of our coalition could potentially dramatically expand, is we talked to everybody,” Yasmin Radjy, executive director of Swing Left, told me. “And we were really surprised at how long people wanted to talk to a volunteer stranger on their doorstep.”
Instead of focusing on checking boxes and reaching numerical goals, Radjy said volunteers were encouraged to effectively communicate as if each stranger were a friend. Through those conversations, Radjy said volunteers gathered an array of poignant testimonies that informed their approach to Democratic campaigning.
One woman said she wouldn’t let her son sign up for football because she couldn’t afford gas to take him to practice. One person in Austin didn’t plan to vote because the community was blue and didn’t realize his vote could shape the statewide results. Another man cared deeply about national parks, naming his child after a park. Swing Left’s volunteer informed him about reductions made to the park system under the Trump Administration, just as volunteers also explained the significance of Texas statewide elections and the increase in gas prices on account of the Iran War.
Politics can be stressful. The media ecosystem is more diffuse than ever. And many people just tune out ads. Democrats broke through those obstacles and beat Republicans by engaging with people directly and speaking specifically to their needs. Yet this phenomenon also held true in Democratic primaries where Senate candidates like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan beat better-funded opponents by building a motivated, grassroots volunteer base.
When Martin was chosen as DNC Chair, he pledged to “get the DNC out of D.C.” This cycle, Democrats defied expectations by bucking beltway orthodoxy on what wins elections. With control of Congress now attained, the question for 2028 is whether the party can maintain its humble approach to campaigning when presented with real federal power.
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