This is somewhat of an exploration of “why” I was wrong, but I think more importantly it is an exploration of what I believe we should be focused on. A few reasons that stood out to me from looking at the exit data included information that has pushed me down a rabbit trail of exploration and explanation that will get separate essays.
WHY I WAS WRONG
They did not stay home. This is not all cheating. This would be much more puzzling and frustrating to me if I had not spent time with 2018. Listen if you hear that “but for the War in Iran we would have won” I think that is wrong. “Immigrants have flooded our nation and that is why we lost” is wrong. “Young people are permanently pro Democrat” is also wrong.
This is the second highest midterm participation rate since 1914. First time midterm voters backed Democrats 64 to 34. Republican House votes were about flat compared with 2022, and Democrats added roughly 15 million or more. They were swamped by a surge in Democratic turnout and by voters who switched.
What does this mean? We are supposed to believe that Democrats added more votes than the entire populations of, Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, Montana, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia and Nebraska combined. Frankly I do not have the time or even the energy to do a deep audit. Here is what I will say. I would have a very hard time believing it, if I did not have the 2018 election data.
2018 also makes something else very clear (as will conversations with many Americans who still believe the lie of Russia collusion), the rage that people felt when Trump won in 2024 was extreme for some voters.
The shift I did not model
My miss was not about one state or one race. I had no scenario where the country moved left almost everywhere at once, in red states and blue states, in suburbs and rural counties, all in the same direction and by this much.
I do not fully understand it yet. I am not alleging fraud, and I have seen no evidence of it. But I want to understand how a House vote that was close in 2022 became a Democratic lead of about 12 points, and I want certified totals, county level results and voter registration data before I decide I have the explanation right.
Here is what I can say. The anger was not quiet. Millions of people marched in the No Kings protests in June 2025, October 2025 and March 2026, and the war in Iran was one of the themes in March. Democrats overperformed in special elections all of 2025 (before the war in Iran or gas prices), won Virginia and New Jersey by double digits in November, and out-turned Republicans in the Texas primary for the first time. I saw those signs and told myself they would not carry into a midterm. That was my mistake. I thought that it was all ginned up opposition and that people who kept saying, “this is the last election in our lives if Trump wins” would realize that they were wrong. Instead, intelligent people I know viewed deportation as proof that America was now fascist and fancied that voting for the Democrats while loudly and proudly urging everyone they know to do the same was vital.
Some of this has precedent, and some of it does not. In 2018 Democrats’ House vote rose by about 25 million over 2014, which is still the largest gain I can find, and that year the anger at Trump was fresh. 2018 was also the only higher midterm in terms of participation rate since World War 1.
Ponder this, the only time in history that Democrats added more votes? The only one who angered them and motivated them even more to come out? Donald Trump, in 2018. 2026 set records of its own. More ballots were cast in a midterm than ever before, about 124 million. Democrats won more votes in a midterm than any party has. They won the House vote by about 12 points, only the second double digit House margin since 1982. And the polls missed the margin by about four points, in the same direction, race after race.
I am putting a video below from a call Trump took with a reporter from Politico. They discuss this election and Trump says, “if I was on the ballot we would have won”. The reporter corrects him, by saying he kept saying to act like he was on the ballot. But here is the truth: Trump told Republicans to act like his name was on the ballot. Democrats did. About four in ten voters said they voted to oppose him, versus fewer than two in ten who said they voted to support him.
There are switches for sure, and midterms do not compare precisely with Presidential elections, but I would not have missed this badly if I had a smarter methodology. I should have compared this election 2 years into a Trump term, with the last election that was 2 years into a Trump term. Republicans lost between 20 and 25 million votes in this race compared to Trump’s 2024 romp.
Generally, for voting, anger is a much more powerful motivator than love. My expectation is that much more than in 2018, Democrats now do not have COVID rule changes coming up in 2 years, and they control the House and the Senate, and they are likely to cut deals with Trump, which for most Democrats is akin to working with the devil. Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed will have people who stayed home this election cycle ready to run through a wall to vote red in 2028.
Cooper and Osoff and Beshear are candidates who I think are capable of winning nationally in 2028. Newsom and Kamala Harris and the DSA candidates, the people who won this cycle who have been open in their disdain for America, these are the people conservative media needs to focus on playing on repeat for the next two years.
THANK GOD FOR THE FOUNDERS
Many people embrace the delusion that humanity is good. Our Founders knew that was a lie. They set up our country with checks and balances because they knew that people are sinful. Remember Madison in Federalist 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Sometimes when your algorithm is sermon clips and dry stone walling and beautiful sunrises, you can forget that fact and choose to disbelieve the prediction markets and the polling. No way that in state after state, people are going to refuse to vote for the GOP 2 years later over gas prices and vote for the party that makes gas prices higher. You make predictions based on that belief. You wake up and realize you were very very wrong, and worship the God who is still on His throne and seek to figure out how to walk in obedience in this new reality. The veto power means some of the most insane ideas cannot happen for at least the next two years. Lawfare will continue and I am gutted to think of how awful the Senate will be for a long time for candidates who take the Constitution seriously and know how unjust it is to legislate from the bench.
Republicans Messaged the Economy Terribly
I will be writing another separate essay just on the economy. There are lots of facts that people seem unaware of. The stock market is already explaining what will happen when we let China take the lead on AI and data centers. In important ways the economy is better than it was under Biden. Some people are still left behind in it.
Here is the deal though, if I had a magic wand believing what I do now about WHY I missed so massively in this race, there are things I could imagine doing that win some Senate seats, but this wipeout was coming Iran war or no and gas prices or no. Studying 2018 closely made me shake off the delusion that this was simply a miss on messaging.
For instance, farmers and rural voters turned on Trump. Not all of them by any means, but in consequential numbers, especially for Senate races.
Trump and the GOP have failed to explain what he is doing with tariffs, who it helps and who it hurts, what interventions are temporary etc. I plan to make an entire post about this called, “The tractor driver is a welfare queen also.”
The truth about tariffs and the trade war? The benefits of that will be seen when we defeat China. That deserves its own essay to demonstrate what I mean, and I will write it and share it. Initial headline? Why No One In America Should Be Able To Buy The Chinese EV Range Rover.
Trump has a media who hates him and has opposed him more than any President in history. That is a fact. He also cannot blame the media for talking about the arch and reflecting pool (and pretending a bad install was vandalism) and the ballroom while many Americans felt ignored and left behind and like they were screwed economically.
WE SHOULD HAVE BOMBED IRAN
The truth is simple about that; Trump has a long term goal of ending a problem with Iran that has been around for longer than I have been alive. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Before I was born, this time of 1979 Iran was a problem for the United States and seized our embassy. Some who voted against the war in Iran are too young to even remember 9/11. It is easy to be disconnected from the reality of the danger posed by Islamic terror. We should teach everyone to not miss it. Do I agree with bombing Iran? Yes. Last summer and in March. Did Trump screw up this war first by bowing to Erdogan and abandoning the plan and the Kurds, and then by holding off on many of the hard calls to save the midterms? Yes.
Lots of Republicans will run from this war and pretend they always knew it was a bad idea. I will mark them as cowards and liars unless they spoke out against it back in February and March. Iran has to be counted among the biggest reasons we lost, because voters told pollsters so. Three in four said the war was a crucial or major factor in their vote, and those voters broke heavily for Democrats. I still stand by the view that it needed to happen. But it would be over by now, and it would be a big win like Venezuela, which no one was mad about, if Trump had trusted the plan instead of being turned by Erdogan. That world doesn’t exist, but again look at 2018 and realize Trump did not lose the midterms with the war.
Voters said as their biggest reason for voting, “the economy” and “corruption” and “democracy”. There was not an “I hate Trump” reason, but it would have won.
WHAT THE EVANGELICAL VOTE TELLS US
A large group of Evangelicals decided not to get out and vote for the GOP who voted for Trump in 2024. Reuters, citing the exit poll, reports white born again and evangelical voters fell from nearly a quarter of the electorate in 2024 to 17%. They still favored Republicans by more than four to one. Mainline voters were big statistically in Kansas where they made a Methodist who preached universalism (everyone gets to heaven, Muslims and Buddhists included) their new Senator. I will have a separate essay about the syncretism between wokeism and Christianity that is the new celebrated religion of the left. It makes it clear that they are lying when they try to push Christians out of the public square, they do not hate religion, just biblical Christianity.
In many cases you can also blame failure on flawed candidates. Ken Paxton was reported to be traveling with his mistress and his wife, Senator Angela Paxton filed for divorce with adultery as the grounds. It is noteworthy that she wanted to be clear that she had “biblical grounds” which makes it even more tragic that he appears to have cheated on a woman who cares about upholding the covenant and whose husband betrayed her. It turns out that allegedly starting an affair with a rich married woman you met at the Kentucky Derby who pretends to be a Christian philanthropist while flying around the world on luxury vacations with you while you are both still married is met with as much disgust by many voters as I feel.
Ted Cruz voters who never thought adultery was acceptable were in some not insignificant numbers not going to jump up and get to the polls to help Paxton. The truth though is that a deeper dive of the Texas numbers make me think it was bigger than this. The reason I cannot isolate this as a Paxton problem is that while Rove and Bush went knives out against their party (while arguably being 2 of the 3 most famous Texas Republicans alive) they did not bash Abbott who was swamped despite getting almost as many votes as he got when he had the most votes of any GOP governor in history in Texas.
Texas, 2018 versus 2026
Senate, Democrat
O’Rourke 4,045,632 (48.3%)
Talarico 5,445,121 (55.1%)
Senate, Republican
Cruz 4,260,553 (50.9%)
Paxton about 4.25M (43.0%)
Senate margin
R+2.6
D+12.1
Total Senate votes
8.37M
about 9.9M
Governor margin
Abbott +13.3
Hinojosa +7.1
Republicans held their ground. Paxton’s vote is essentially equal to Cruz’s in 2018, and Abbott’s 4.52 million is close to his 2018 total. So the shift was Democrats adding about 1.4 million Senate votes and about 1.7 million for governor, in a state that added about 3 million registered voters (15.8 million in 2018 to 19.04 million). Turnout stayed near 52%.
The swing is bigger than the nation’s. Nationally the House margin moved about 3.4 points from 2018 to 2026 (D+8.6 to roughly D+12). Texas’s Senate margin moved 14.7 points, and the governor’s margin about 20.
Why Texas moved so much
A reversal of 2024. Trump won about 55% of Texas Latinos in 2024 and flipped most border counties. In 2026, NBC’s exit poll had Latinos (24% of the electorate) at 68% for Talarico. Talarico won the 16 border counties by about 45 points, about 4 points better than O’Rourke in 2018 (Texas Tribune). Hidalgo went Talarico +46, Webb +47, both counties Trump narrowly carried. I absolutely explicitly wrote that would not happen, and I was wrong. Hispanics in South Texas did not think that the pro abortion, God is non binary, trans kids make me happy Talarico was a bigger threat to their way of life than Republican leadership.
Democratic primary ballots outnumbered Republican ones in Texas for the first time (2.20 million to 2.16 million). I just thought day of would be overwhelmingly GOP in a way that made up the gains. I was very wrong.
If Texas is permanently blue, the electoral math is brutal for Republicans in 2028. They can still win, but they have to win every other state they won in 2024. My expectation is that the electorate will shift much more right when the anti energy, anti business Democrats get a spotlight and get in the culture wars again. 2024 Texas GOP numbers beat 2026 Democrat numbers in Texas, but they need some of the Latino voters to switch back in 2028. Rubio and Cruz and what both parties do regarding immigration in the next two years will have a big impact on that.
I do not live in Texas but I have friends who do and ministers I admire. Josh Howerton famously said “choose between the lesser of the two evils” and Wesley Hunt was the only person in the Texas Senate contest I was excited about, and he came in third in the primary. He was not close to a win (Cornyn at 42.5, Paxton at 40 and Hunt at 13%).
Praying for God to raise up leaders with character and competence and communication skills as a brilliant Texan said to me analyzing the wreckage of the Texas GOP.
Some Good Folks Should Try Again
This was a wave election. Clearly. But who would I want to see try again? Look at the margin for the losers. Still good data to see who a good candidate is. Plenty of great districts that are winnable in 2028 who need better candidates. I like Ciscomani still. Are there any candidates who lost that you guys hope come back in 2 years? Brandon Gill sees his star rise winning even as his district voted for Talarico. Weird ticket split.
I am pro life. I do not consider any other issue particularly close. Pro choice GOP like Mike Rogers at the last moment (tragically) and Michele Tafoya, and Susan Collins, I am not going to miss. You will never see me working hard for a pro choice Republican even if I agree with them on every other issue.
The Trump Problem
The GOP still has a Trump problem. Trump himself, if anyone is shocked, was unwilling to say “maybe endorsing Graham was a big mistake.” It was. Trump said election night he had no regrets about endorsing Darline Graham. It is VERY encouraging to me (most encouraging part of the discouraging election) that maybe America doesn’t go along with the absurdity that 100 or so families should always rule us. We are a nation of over 300 million people, and nepotism should not be a part of how we pick Congressmen, or Senators or Presidents. I would not say “no one with a political family should ever be considered”, but unqualified children and siblings should not get put up because the state party is too fractured and weak to say “NO.”
If you run as someone who was honest about the failings of Trump, you anger everyone who worships him. That is not an insignificant number of people. If you have a clear eyed view of his significant wins, and you talk about those openly, you are going to draw the forever hatred of those whose TDS means they cannot discuss him rationally and mark everyone as an enemy who doesn’t agree with them that he is the very worst.
In a sad way, between Trump worship and TDS, we are all being asked to deny reality. I am looking for candidates with the courage to say that Trump is a flawed man and share how they agree and disagree with his policies. There is zero reason to pile on about the mean tweets, as I know of no serious politicians who really view that as a strength worth emulating.
It is rather remarkable to see how easy it seems to follow the actual Christian teachings about our President and how many prominent people in politics violate it. No one should worship Donald Trump. He is not your Savior or your Lord. Also, no Christian should hate Donald Trump. His almost death at Butler should have been a sobering time for America, but he is still being compared to Hitler as he cuts the size of government and talks to media he does not muzzle who openly hate his guts and cheer for his opponents. Broken people make worshiping a politician instead of Christ the center of their lives. Broken people make hating a politician in violation of the commands of Christ, the center of their lives.
I am thankful and proud that burning and looting is not happening for my “team” because we are the Tea Party cleaning up after its rallies. We protect and preserve and conserve (it’s in the name) and we know how evil political violence is.
WHERE I STAND
Where I stand this morning. This result is good for the media, it is good for antisemitism, it is good for the polling industry, it is good for ammunition sales, it is terrible for America.
It is bad for unborn babies. That is probably the part for me that made it hardest to sleep all night. I am not afraid of a near term economy where my kids can’t get jobs. I am sure that a culture of death is being embraced in America in a way that I was praying we were moving away from. This is a Romans 1 election.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
America as a nation worships money, worships comfort and is willing to trade its birthright for a bowl of soup. Christians should not despair, but we should also be prepared. We are living in Babylon. Remain a faithful witness. Charlie Kirk said, God, Family and Country in that order. I live in a world created by a loving and gracious God who I can freely worship. I have 5 incredible kids and a wonderful beautiful and brilliant wife. My nation chose the broad path that leads to destruction at a level that surprised me. In many cases the choice of evil happened back in the primaries, but in several clear ways this week people chose destruction. I can mourn, I can warn, I can educate. I will not withdraw or back down. I will not root for my nation to fail.
I mourn for my friends who found out that the place they live is choosing years of governance that will be painful. In some cases, again particularly to me as someone who cannot stomach the celebration of killing babies, it would lead me to consider moving to a place that shares my values. I hope the salt gets saltier because of this election. Policy not people should be the focus. A generation is growing up who don’t know the truth about Marxism, or Islam or the welfare state, or drug use and abuse, or abortion killing a baby or the deep brokenness, anxiety and depression long term that comes from a worldview that many of them celebrate.
The youth need rescue, not toward a particular political party, but against particular policies that are harmful. I will write more about the economic challenges many face, but again, look at 2018 and realize this is not about the economy, or the war in Iran, or gas prices, or a failure in messaging. It is that Presidential only voters did not show up when Trump was not on the ballot out of love for Trump in anywhere close to the number of people who came out to express how much they hate him.
The young men who switched in overwhelming numbers (more than any other group demographically from 2024 to 2026) also may have been influenced by the lying and blaming others that Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens as well who have been rooting against the GOP this year and filling heads with doom and conspiracy.
My side hasn’t won nationally in I don’t know how long. By my side I mean the constitutional conservatives, who want what I want domestically and overseas. We defend our allies like Ukraine. We know Israel is the best ally we have in the Middle East. The losers who hate Israel seem to have won. Trump said Nov 3 that the US will end about $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel at the end of this year. That will at least end that particular line of constant attack.
My side stands against terrorism without equivocation. We are pro Constitution. We are pro 2A. We are deeply pro life, from birth onward and we help the fatherless and orphaned. We are tired of pretending that adulterers, liars and people who worship demonic idols are all just as trustworthy and worthy of our vote as committed Christians who we would trust our kids in care of.
WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO NEXT
First, disciple people instead of only mobilizing voters. The purpose of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, not to produce Republicans. Second, stop treating political influence as a substitute for spiritual influence. Judge Christian organizations by more than attendance, enrollment, fundraising and access. Third, get involved in local culture and politics. School boards, local government, state legislatures and universities shape our children, and we spend most of our time on presidential elections. We need to spend a great deal of time especially with our young people explaining much more so the “why” on how we vote instead of the what.
Our lesson isn’t to work harder and hoard more money and wait until next time when the economy is better for “our side” to win. Our lesson is to care for and love those around us, and patiently explain why the narrow way that leads to life is preferable. I will take my own advice I have given often and focus on loving and helping those in my path and doing the things I can with the people I can impact instead of focusing on the things I cannot with the people I can’t reach.
Clayton Wood is a Knoxville Lawyer and Pastor and is a contributing writer for TriStar Daily.
