The GOP faces deep structural problems that only a new policy vision can fix.
The GOP faces deep structural problems that only a new policy vision can fix.
R epublicans should not underestimate either the causes of Tuesday night’s bloodbath or the scale of the challenges they face. There’s a risk that Republicans will turn to the war with Iran as a kind of explanatory security blanket for their electoral repudiation — a fuzzy illusion that simultaneously hides the deeper cracks in their political coalition and offers one simple trick to get back into the electorate’s good graces: Just end the war, and the good old days of November 2024 will return.
In reality, however, the sweeping Democratic victories of 2026 reveal a deeper structural danger facing the Republican coalition. For the past decade, Republicans have been able to rely on a combination of good economic vibes and negative partisanship to give them a relatively high political floor. Tuesday night shattered that floor. Senate seats that Republicans had held for decades in Texas, South Carolina, and Kansas flipped Democratic. Down-ballot races also liquidated Republicans across the country. Absent a major political pivot, Republicans could face even more political pain two years from now, and this pain could be felt across the board. Securing the gains of the populist realignment demands a renewed governing vision.
Of course, the Iran war has added to the GOP’s electoral headwinds; almost all political indicators have dipped since the war started. However, the party’s challenges can hardly be reduced to the war. President Trump’s approval rating was underwater within two months of his inauguration, and he was already at a double-digit net disapproval before he launched Operation Epic Fury at the end of February. His approval rating on the economy was also deep in negative territory before the war. A CBS poll conducted before he initiated military strikes had his net economic approval rating at -26. In exit polls, 55 percent of voters said that government corruption was a “crucial” issue for the election — well above the 34 percent who rated Iran as “crucial.”
Rather than the Iran war being some sui generis cause for Republicans’ demise, it might instead be seen as the distillation of the broader political program that has soured voters on the Republican trifecta. The GOP might have misread its electoral mandate in 2024: After the succession of crises during the Biden years, the electorate returned Donald Trump to the White House with a unified Republican Congress in a bid for normalcy and a return to the Trump I economy. In some of these areas, Republicans were successful. Trump ended the border crisis within days of his inauguration, and the new administration defenestrated much of the federal apparatus for “wokeness.”
Yet Republicans have struggled to fulfill other parts of this electoral bargain. Instead of normalcy, voters got a full-throttle engine of disruption. DOGE and other efforts applied shock therapy to the federal bureaucracy and to many private institutions (such as universities and research institutions) that rely on federal funds. Saber-rattling across the world unsettled international alliances. Landmarks of Washington, D.C., itself — including the Kennedy Center and the East Wing of the White House — were either shuttered or subject to the wrecking ball.
Rather than seeking congressional authorization for a stable tariff regime, the president used emergency powers to impose tariffs in unpredictable and inconsistent ways. The president entered office with public support for tariffs against the People’s Republic of China, but the trade war with Canada has bewildered the public. It has been a particular drag on the party in the Midwest, where many states have strong economic ties to Canada.
Voters are still frustrated with the pandemic-era inflationary spiral. Deficits remain high, and the cost of borrowing only adds to the burden of the mammoth federal debt. The rise of artificial intelligence has prompted new anxiety — especially among young people — about economic opportunity. Voters want those in power to address these challenges. Hanging Trump-adorned banners from the Department of Justice does not put food on the table in Sioux City, and that kind of spectacle only stokes the public’s fears about government corruption.
Exit polls showed that voters were deeply concerned about corruption, the economy, and affordability. They gave Democrats the edge on many kitchen-table issues, including the economy and health care. There are some — albeit few — bright spots for the GOP. Among them is the fact that the party retains an advantage on immigration. Yet Republicans need to do much more to show that they are focused on delivering for working families. According to a New York Times analysis, young Americans and voters without a college degree who did turn out to vote on Tuesday swung hard against Republicans. The multiethnic working-class voters who were critical for Republican victories in 2024 are now looking at other options.
Republicans can no longer coast on Trump-adjacent vibes, the warm memories of the 2019 economy, or “it’s me or the left” messaging. Instead, they need to build a comprehensive policy platform that meets voter concerns. Arguably, doing that means not abandoning many of the key issues that have motivated the populist realignment but instead weaving them into a serious legislative program. Policies to streamline medical education and otherwise expand the supply of medical care could help tame health-care costs. A serious reindustrialization agenda cannot be confined to haphazard tariffs but instead demands investing in local infrastructure, vocational education, and technological innovation.
And the party might also need to grow to tackle new populist concerns about AI. Counties and municipalities across the country voted fairly decisively against data centers. Data centers themselves could prove critical for both national-security and economic reasons, but those votes are a canary-in-the-coal-mine indicator of deep public anxiety about AI. Younger Americans in particular fear that AI will lead to mass economic displacement. While the United States cannot afford to sacrifice the technological frontier, policymakers will also need to establish that AI policy will prioritize human well-being. Americans do not want to be swaddled by “machines of loving grace.” Conservatives can make a case for a technological policy agenda that encourages dynamism while preserving human agency — but they will actually have to lay out a specific policy vision to do so.
To address these challenges, Republicans will need a revivified policy platform. But they will also need an ethos that leads with governance rather than resentment. A politics of constant insults, self-enrichment, prosecutions of political opponents, and congressional abdication will not produce a governing majority, as Tuesday night’s results make crystal clear. Instead, there could be political opportunities in articulating a broader policy agenda and building bipartisan coalitions to implement it.
Populism gained traction after the 2008 financial crisis in part because voters felt that the civic compact had been broken. They feared that national elites had grown unaccountable and alienated from the public at large. Post-2001 globalization and financialization delivered outsize rewards to a few urban hubs while leaving many small towns behind, and the elite-led culture wars sowed division. Attempting to leverage this brokenness for political advantage is a dead end. Reinforcing the Union while rebuilding the economic middle is the task for a realignment that endures.