The moment Donald Trump lost the midterms

Democrats just pulled off the largest midterm victory since the post-Watergate wave of 1974.

Democratic Senate candidates conquered longtime Republican strongholds like Kansas and Texas.

They are expected to win Mississippi and Alaska when all ballots are tallied.

When the dust settles, Democrats are projected to boast a 13-point popular vote victory.

They are expected to hold more than 250 House seats.

These results exceeded many Democrats' wildest dreams.

They also exceeded Republicans' greatest fears.

Countless Americans are asking: How did this happen?

To answer that question, Vox spoke with Democratic data scientist David Shor.

Shor is the founder of Blue Rose Research.

He has access to large-sample polling, precinct-level data, and fine-grained demographic estimates.

Historically, Shor has been one of the Democrats' most prominent Cassandras.

For years, he warned that falling support among working-class voters threatened to make Democratic Senate majorities a thing of the past.

Now his numbers tell a different story.

"It's early," Shor said.

"A lot of precincts haven't come in and we only have individual-level data in a couple of places."

"But Democrats appear to be running about 7 points ahead of where Kamala Harris was."

"And it seems like a very large portion of that was due to turnout."

You can see this in both the precinct data and the early vote returns.

Democratic turnout surged.

The surge was particularly strong among young voters.

It was also strong among politically disengaged voters.

It was especially strong among Latino voters.

Shor identified one key factor that drove the collapse: the Iran war.

"The Iran war was Trump's downfall," Shor said.

The conflict became a defining issue for voters who had not been paying close attention before.

Those voters turned out in force — and they voted against the party in power.

Another factor was the performance of Republican-aligned spending.

Elon Musk's money bought Republicans very little, according to Shor's analysis.

Campaign donors often have weird priorities and issue positions, Shor noted.

Those priorities can undermine politicians who take their money.

The polling environment itself is also getting harder to read.

Shor discussed shifts in youth turnout in detail.

He discussed why the money spent by outside groups failed to move the needle.

He also discussed Americans' growing contempt for artificial intelligence.

Many Americans now believe AI might take their jobs and kill their families.

That anxiety played into the broader mood of the electorate.

The election results have real-world consequences beyond the numbers.

Donald Trump Jr. was booed during a visit to Emory University School of Law the day after the election.

Video obtained by TMZ shows people shouting at Trump Jr. as he walked through campus.

One person yelled: "The country has rebuked you guys! The country has rebuked you!"

Others chanted: "Shame on you!"

Another shouted: "We have the House and the Senate!"

Trump Jr. had campaigned for several Republican candidates ahead of the midterms.

Those candidates included candidates in Ohio and New York.

They all lost their races.

Vice President JD Vance attributed the losses to other factors in his public statements.

But the data tells a clear story.

The Iran war was the central event that turned the election.

It mobilized voters who had been on the sidelines.

It shifted the electoral map in ways that surprised even the most optimistic Democrats.

Hispanic counties that Donald Trump won in the 2024 election swung hard toward Democrats in the midterms.

That swing contributed to Democratic routs in states like Texas.

Texas elected its first Democratic Senator since the 1980s.

It also elected a Democratic governor.

States that experienced violent ICE activity also leaned left.

A recent report from The Boston Globe argued that perceived indifference toward ICE from Maine's longtime Republican leadership hurt the party there.

Melania Trump reportedly pushed Donald Trump to rein in Stephen Miller over the immigration crackdown.

According to a Wall Street Journal post-mortem on the midterms, Melania was upset that ICE arrested a former model who was a friend of hers.

She confronted Donald about the raids.

Donald then told aides he felt the immigration crackdown had gone "too far."

The president also demonstrated displeasure with the violence of immigration enforcement earlier this year.