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The results of the 2026 midterm election yielded numerous historic feats and firsts nationally, including a Democratic wave that Kansas was no exception to, reflecting public sentiment and Americans’ approval of the Trump Administration two years in. 

In what many call a “blue tsunami,” Democrats took control of both the Senate and House, flipping typical red states including Kansas, Texas, Ohio, and Iowa. As of the article being published, Democrats gained at least eight seats in the Senate for 55, compared to 44 Republican seats, and an estimated 83-seat majority in the House.  

Letitia Harmon, adjunct professor of Political Science at JCCC and Senior Director of Policy and Research for Florida Rising, Florida’s largest political advocacy non-profit, notes that while it isn’t unusual for voters to “deplace” the party of the current administration during midterms, the extent to which states have flipped or favored Democrats, from congressional elections to state elections, more this year is.   

“We’re seeing governor[ships] flipped to Democrat where they haven’t had Democratic governors. We’re seeing state legislatures that are now either swinging blue or having Republican super majorities broken,” Harmon said. “It is honestly just as historic as everybody is saying. We haven’t seen backlash like this against the party in power since President Nixon and the Watergate scandal, a pivotal moment in American politics where Americans became very distrustful of the office of president, very distrustful of the Republican Party. What we’re seeing this year in 2026 is comparable to those numbers.” 

Harmon also said the blue tsunami swept significantly across typically deep red states, including Florida, where she is based, defying norms, although not being as visible because of the number of registered Republicans and a strong GOP in the state.   

 “In the past five, five to six years, since COVID lockdown, basically, Florida went from being somewhat of a red-leaning purple state to being a firmly red state. It is GOP-dominated both in voter registration and what you see in our elected representatives. [Florida] went to Trump by 13 percentage] points in the 2024 election.  But in this election, you were seeing between a one- and three-point difference between the Republican running for governor and the Democrat running for governor,” Harmon said. “So that means that there’s like 10 points that the population has shifted to the left. It did not stay the same at all.”  

Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of History and Political Science, Dr. Andrea Vieux, continues, saying the results may mainly reflect disapproval of the presidential administration amongst a combination of other elements that do not include solely shifting values or shrugging off party loyalty entirely.  

“Because Trump is a Republican, there’s gonna be some blowback on that. That’s pretty normal with midterms in general, so we would normally see that happen, like Republicans losing a few seats, not [this] many. So the Trump unpopularity probably plays into the decisions that he’s been making, specifically with tariffs and the war and how that’s driving up costs. That’s gonna be one of the kinds of factors that plays into that, particularly with states like Kansas and Iowa that are very farm-heavy, and a lot of the fertilizers have gone up, and the diesel’s gone up; farmers are really hurting right now,” Vieux said.   

Harmon also mentions that “culture wars” did not play so much of a role in this election as they did in past ones. 

“Culture wars are those sort of issues that get a strong emotional reaction from people: things like abortion, trans rights, or LGBTQ rights, things that people have a strong emotional reaction to…” Harmon said. “In this election, it did not sway voters; they were much more interested in talking about affordability, cost of living, and policy solutions for how the cost of living has increased. There was much more issue-focused voting, rather than culture war-focused voting in these midterm elections. 

According to Vieux, another deciding factor in votes and ultimately the spur of blue in races was the difference in candidate quality. 

“Thinking about the South Carolina [U.S. Senate Race]: Darline Graham [R] had no experience whatsoever, and it kind of showed in her debates…versus Annie Andrews, who is a literal medical doctor who had run for office before and had some kind of experience campaigning,” Vieux said. “Or if you take Texas, like Ken Paxton [R] definitely had a corruption problem that was dragging his campaign down, like people know him really well, but they don’t really like him and the corruption’s a problem, whereas then you have [James] Talarico [D] who studied in the seminary and kind of appeals across a broad base of different people.” 

That familiarity may have aided in the results of Kansas’s U.S. Senate Race, where megachurch pastor Democrat Adam Hamilton was up 51.01% against Republican Incumbent Senator Roger Marshall’s 45.97%, according to the AP, as they faced off in a Senate toss-up, with the former making history as the first democratic elected as senator from Kansas since the Great Depression in 1932. Vieux notes that Hamilton, as well as being popular as the face of his  Resurrection Church, has members of all parties coming together, which ties into his views.  

“Adam Hamilton was very much running a centrist campaign, which is kind of a good strategy in this particular area of the country,” Vieux said.  

In other Kansas elections, the AP has estimated that 99% of the votes have been counted in the race for Kansas governor to succeed Democrat Laura Kelly, with Democrat Cindy Holscher up by 50.3% against Republican Ty Masterson. If Holscher wins, it would be the first time since 1974 that a political party wins three consecutive gubernatorial elections in Kansas. In terms of districts for the House, Republican Incumbents Tracey Mann, Derek Schmidt, and Ron Estes will continue to represent districts 1, 2, and 4, and incumbent Democrat Sharice Davids will continue to represent district 3.  

Along with Kansas, a lot of firsts made headlines in this midterm election, including the country’s first Muslim senator, first black female governor, first openly gay male U.S. senator, and a historic high number of women holding statewide offices nationally, to name a few.  

Whether those feats happened to be due to affinity for demographics, party loyalty, or candidate quality, the professors share their thoughts.  

“I don’t think people were necessarily voting for these candidates based on their demographic characteristics as much as the policies that they were putting forth or like the campaigns that they’re running. It just so happens that they also are first in terms of diversity and seeing that thing,” Vieux said. “Like [Democrat governor-elect of Georgia] Keisha Lance Bottoms, a high-quality candidate again, has been a mayor, understands how to campaign, and understands how to run government.” 

For Harmon, those certain affinities may motivate votes in some way and may vary by generation.  

“There are certainly people who will feel an affinity for, like, ‘oh, well, that person does look like me and so I feel that they will probably share priorities that I have,’” Harmon said. “And for a lot of people who don’t have the time to really do a deep dive on the policy questions or the policy priorities of that particular candidate, they may just default to some of those more superficial things, because that’s what you can immediately see.   

“But I do think what we’re seeing is that with younger generations, they are more interested in diversity. So they are probably more likely to vote for someone who doesn’t look like them, to vote for voices that we haven’t seen in Congress as much. I think that younger people are really at the forefront of diversifying our body of lawmakers because they’re willing to work differently from what we’ve seen before, and also just different from themselves.” 

Early voting trends have also been a topic of discussion. Kansas experienced 33% more early voters than in past midterm elections, garnering 470,313 votes cast compared to 353,165 in 2022. These early voters were composed of 43.3% Republicans, 40.8% Democrats, and 15.3% Independents. Vieux mentions that this can be attributed to convenience as well as the work of voter education groups.  

“Kansas has had early voting for a while, so now people are used to it and it’s like extremely convenient… and then the other thing is there were just a lot of voter education groups trying to get people to vote early because for two reasons, one, everyone was concerned that there might be some kind of Election Day shenanigans going on, and you want to make sure you’ve already voted if that’s gonna happen, and then two, just because if you can get people out early, you’re gonna reduce the lines on Election Day,” Vieux said.  

Local nonprofit voter education groups, including Loud Light and New Frontiers, have made it their mission to appeal to young and new voters across Kansas to maximize voter turnout. Although a popular early voting location, election commissioner Connie Schmidt eliminated JCCC as an early voting site over the summer along with several other locations in Overland Park, Olathe, Leawood, and Westwood. According to the Kansas Reflector, about 19% of early votes in the 2024 general election came from the now-eliminated sites.  

“There was a lot of blowback about that over the summer, and even the ACLU attempted to lobby to have it restored here on campus, specifically because of how many young people are here and we should be encouraging our students to be informed and engaged. Connie Schmidt refused to do that,” Vieux said.  

With a number of races waiting to be confirmed as winners, the Election Day buzz isn’t over yet. With Kansas making the blue waves it did, only time will tell what the elected officials’ next steps will be for Kansas and the nation as they are officially sworn in in January.