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Guy Benson: Our final guest today is Tom Bevan, co-founder and executive editor at RealClearPolitics. Tom, good to have you back.
Tom Bevan: Great to be with you, Guy.
Guy Benson: All right. Well, this feels like a worst-case scenario for Republicans, or at least very close to it. It is hard to imagine almost anything in the realm of possibility that would have been worse coming out of last night. Do you agree with that? It’s hard to overstate the wave.
Tom Bevan: Yeah. I mean, they could have lost Florida and Nebraska–I guess that would have been worse. But outside of those two states, they lost everything else. In addition to that, Mississippi looks like it’s probably going to go to the Democrats too.
When you look at the internals of these numbers, every single demographic group moved away from Republicans, some in big numbers. Look, the national House vote is going to be around D+13. That’s as big as we’ve seen since 1982. It’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen an election wave this big.
Guy Benson: Yeah, and we’ll get into some of the exit polling in the next hour. But if you look at the exit polls, it wasn’t an overwhelmingly self-identifying Democratic group. It was a modest D-plus electorate, but you had a notable number of Republican defections and an overwhelming leftward swing among independents. When you add that into the turnout dynamic, that’s how you get what we got.
Tom Bevan: Yeah, exactly. 25%–one in four voters–identified as MAGA, and they voted 96% for Republicans. But the other 75%–three out of four voters–were non-MAGA, which includes Democrats, independents, and even Republicans who don’t consider themselves MAGA. And they voted 71% for Democrats.
Guy Benson: That’s the math.
Tom Bevan: That’s the math that leads you to this. Republicans were hoping to hold on to Latino voters, for example; we saw that in the polling data, and that certainly materialized. But what’s even worse is they lost men–they lost the male vote by three points, which is a 17-point swing from 2024. They only won white voters by four points, which is a 13-point swing among 70% of the electorate. Wherever you look, Republicans were leaking water. You add it all up, and the boat sank last night.
Guy Benson: Yeah, some of it was a leak, but a lot of it was just a gush, right? By the end of the night, it was just gushing all over the place–a big blue tide. We can now look back and assess the buildup to this election.
You and I talked about it: if you looked at certain data points and told yourself a certain story–and I’m guilty of this to some extent–you could say, “Okay, here’s a path for it being an okay night. The fundamentals are bad, but what about this?” Some of that seemed plausible. Then, especially given the turnout and the overall sentiment, it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. There was a spectrum of pain for Republicans, and reality ended up all the way at the worst end of it.
Much of the polling data–some of which was dismissed by Republicans–turned out to be either correct, like a big red flag flapping in the breeze, or in some cases actually understated how bad it was going to be, looking at races like Iowa Senate and Texas governor. What is your overall landscape view of polling in 2026, Tom?
Tom Bevan: I think it was directionally accurate, but to your point, it understated Democrats. The average miss over the last few cycles has been roughly two points, and it usually misses in one direction–though that direction changes. Sometimes it understates Democrats; sometimes it understates Republicans. We saw it understate Republicans in 2016 and 2024, but this year it understated Democrats.
Our generic congressional ballot average was about nine points. Some polls in that average were D+13, D+14, or D+15, which turned out to be reality. Meanwhile, NBC News released a poll the day before the election with the generic ballot at D+7, which turned out to be off significantly.
In some specific races, there were serious misses. North Carolina is a great example: our average had Roy Cooper winning by 10, and he won by 20. In Kansas, the polls had Hamilton winning by four, which is about what he won by. But in Texas, Talarico was up about 2.9 or three in our average, and he won by 12. So it clearly understated his support.
Overall, even though the polls were good for Democrats and showed them leading in every single one of these Senate races in our average, they still understated the ultimate level of Democratic turnout. It’s not that Republicans didn’t turn out–I think they did. They could have done better in some places, but by and large, they marshaled decent turnout. The problem is they had too many defections and were way too far underwater with independents. You add all that together, and it produces a wide, deep blue wave that washed pretty much everybody away. You can look at certain races like South Carolina and say candidate quality was an issue, but…
Guy Benson: I was actually thinking about that: how many of these races were truly lost on candidate quality? By the way, I’d say GOP turnout was a patchwork. In some places it wasn’t bad at all–Florida, for instance–while in other places it was much softer, contributing to the downward trajectory.
The House has 435 races, so you could probably find examples there. But in big, highly publicized statewide races, I’m struggling to think of examples where a better candidate would have actually won, as opposed to just losing by less. South Carolina Senate is maybe the only one that comes to mind, because the Republican gubernatorial candidate won by mid-single digits, whereas Darlene Graham wasn’t up for it, didn’t seem to want it, and was complaining about the campaign. I think her brother would have won that seat with his background and reputation, but she did not. Can you think of any other examples where a better Republican candidate would have actually won a winnable race?
Tom Bevan: No, not really. I agree with you on South Carolina. I think Ralph Norman would have won that race, partly because candidate quality was poor and the state party was divided. But you go down the list, and it’s tough. Would John Cornyn have won in Texas? Maybe?
Guy Benson: I don’t think so. It’s no secret that if I were a Texas voter, I would have backed Cornyn in the primary. We had him on the show, and while I don’t do formal endorsements, he was my preference. Ken Paxton’s candidate quality speaks for itself.
To me, the Cornyn corollary is Greg Abbott. Maybe you could make the case that if the top of the ticket had been Cornyn and Abbott the whole time, the entire contour of the Texas race would have felt different and held up more like traditional Texas. But you’re playing with hypotheticals. Greg Abbott outran Paxton by multiple points, yet he still lost, and it wasn’t really that close. That is the counterpoint on Cornyn.
Tom Bevan: Yeah, I agree with that. You look at Michigan–maybe Republicans could have come up with a better candidate than Mike Rogers, but that’s 20/20 hindsight. When Republicans recruited him, they thought he was their best option, and he still might have been.
You go down the list: Chris Sununu in New Hampshire was their top pick. In North Carolina, put someone else in place of Michael Whatley and they still lose, maybe just by a bit less. Susan Collins is the gold standard for Republicans in Maine…
Guy Benson: …and they couldn’t have had anybody better in Iowa than Ashley Hinson.
Tom Bevan: Exactly. All the Republican strategists knew the historical headwinds and the environment they were running in. They thought they could stave off some losses with money and redistricting, but it just didn’t happen. Donald Trump may have activated parts of the base, but he wasn’t able to move the needle enough to prevent these defeats.
Guy Benson: One quick note out of Texas: Brandon Gill, who has become a rising young star in the party–very sharp in committee hearings–won comfortably in areas that went strongly for James Talarico at the top of the ticket. As people analyze the future of the party, looking at over-performers like that will be an interesting study.
Coming back to the buildup before the election: I follow you on X, and you took a lot of grief from conservatives because you highlighted polls they didn’t like. You were consistently pointing out the immovable fundamentals: right-track/wrong-track numbers, presidential approval, historical trends, and the generic ballot. You pushed back on rosy scenarios and said the data is what it is. I’m sure you take no joy in the outcome, but your analysis was largely vindicated.
Tom Bevan: I appreciate that. Our job is to present the best analysis possible and give people a realistic picture. We’re not here to be cheerleaders; we’re trying to be accurate.
I take Republican arguments seriously. When I talk to strategists, I know they’re spinning a bit, but they’re smart people. You have to ask: is their theory of the case sound? Can you poke holes in it, or can you find data to support it? In the final weeks, I looked for any evidence that Republicans might have a better night–tightening in the generic ballot, a bump in presidential approval, dropping gas prices–and it just wasn’t there.
Aside from online cheerleaders saying, “Paxton has won three times statewide, he’ll win by five points in a walk,” there was no supporting data. My response was always: show me the poll or the data that backs that up, beyond your gut feeling about what the electorate will look like.
Guy Benson: That Paxton example is useful, but it happened in other states too–Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina. In these traditionally deep-red places that haven’t seen Democratic breakthroughs in decades, there was a sense of complacency: “This is just the way things are; Republicans win here.”
That attitude bred a false sense of security. A pattern holds until it doesn’t. That complacency may have played directly into Democrats’ hands because Republicans took victory for granted.
Tom Bevan: I totally agree. States appear monolithic until suddenly they aren’t, as we’ve now seen across the South.
This also shows that while we’ve been in an evenly divided partisan era–and to an extent still are–key segments of the electorate, like Hispanic voters and young men, are genuinely winnable for both sides. It’s less about rigid red-versus-blue loyalty and more about a populist appeal: “Are you proposing things that will improve my life and give me hope for the future?”
That is instructive for Republicans heading toward 2028. Many of these voters backed Trump two years ago. They could vote Republican again if the GOP gets the messaging right and campaigns effectively. But when Donald Trump is out there claiming affordability concerns are a hoax, bragging about his ballroom, and insisting this is the greatest economy in history, people feel gaslighted based on their day-to-day lives.
Republicans need to lick their wounds and take a hard look in the mirror. But despite Ron DeSantis calling this an “extinction-level event”…
Guy Benson: “Near-extinction,” he said. That’s how it feels in the moment, but that’s not how politics works. Swing voters swing.
Often, whichever party wins ends up drawing all the wrong lessons from its victory. We’ll see if Democrats do that now, which would simply hand Republicans an opening to win the following cycle and make the same mistake. That seems to be the cycle of our politics right now: bad lessons learned by the winning party.
With that, Tom, I have to let you go.
