Picking through rubble after the Republican Party suffered massive losses in the midterm election, insiders and campaign consultants are expressing alarm at what awaits them in 2028.
More than a dozen strategists from both parties told Politico that Democrats’ midterm blowout has "scrambled the math" for the next presidential race. For Republicans, the biggest worry is that a large bloc of “once-reliably Republican Electoral College votes” is now “in jeopardy,” starting with Texas’ 40.
“Last night undoubtedly made the mechanics of winning in 2028 harder for Republicans,” Bill Stepien, who managed Trump’s 2020 campaign, told Politico.
As Stepien sees it, the GOP took hits in two different regions. In the Midwest, it lost ground in states like Ohio that Trump had turned red. In the Sunbelt, it slipped further in Georgia and Arizona, which have been "trending blue" throughout the Trump years. Texas is a problem all its own.
“Waging a campaign for president in Texas is big, expensive, and not something Republicans have had to do for a long time,” he said. “The impacts of last night are real.”
For Democrats, Texas was the night’s biggest prize. Like Arizona and Georgia before it, the state has been inching left for years thanks to demographic change and suburban voters. This year, a swing back toward Democrats among its booming Hispanic population gave it an extra push.
“If we weren’t already considering Texas a swing state in 2028, we are now,” Melissa Morales, executive director of the Latino voter engagement group SOMOS PAC, told the outlet.
The Politico report notes, "Republican collapses in Ohio and Iowa, two longtime swing states that President Obama carried twice that had moved hard right under Trump, have panicked some GOP strategists in those states. Democrats won Senate and governor’s races in both states Tuesday, as well as flipping a half-dozen House seats between them as they romped across the region. Republicans in both states warn that the era of GOP dominance might have been more closely tied to Trump’s unique populist appeal and could be competitive in two years — an appeal that has taken a major hit since he returned to the White House."
“You lived off Trump’s brand, and Trump’s brand did a lot of good for the state of Iowa. We won a lot of things here. But you can also die by the brand as well,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Iowa evangelical leader.
Ohio GOP strategist Curt Steiner was direct: “Ohio should be considered a battleground.”
The losses also strip Republicans of something that matters in presidential campaigns: governors who can lend a hand. According to Politico, Democrats now hold the governor’s office in all 10 battleground states. Stepien said that while running Trump’s 2020 campaign, he relied heavily on GOP governors in swing states, which he called a “massive advantage.”
“You’re going to save time, you’re going to save money, you’re going to have to put less staff into the state. You’re going to have more local know-how,” Stepien said. “It is an automatic advantage to be able to tap into something that’s existing and that’s been tested.”
Democrats aren’t assuming the gains will last. “It’s not fait accompli that any of those voters that came over will stay with us, in the same way that they didn’t stay with Donald Trump after this last cycle, or they didn’t stay with Joe Biden after 2020,” said Dan Kanninen, who directed battleground states for Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign.
Still, the map looks very different than it did a week ago.
“In this environment, every state eventually becomes a swing state,” said Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic strategist who advised Hakeem Jeffries this cycle.