The biggest upsets in a historic election
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Welcome to a Wednesday morning edition of Progress Report.
That was a pretty good night and the news this morning hasn’t been half bad, either.
Thank you to everyone who watched the election results roll in at ElectionHub.org; tens of thousands of people accessed it throughout the night, keeping me up til around 3:00 am. It was worth it.
I’ll have some analysis of what these victories mean, what comes next, and the ballot measures in an upcoming newsletter. I’ll also have interviews with winners and organizers. This morning, I want to examine some of the wildest results and how exactly this happened.
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Most importantly
The best part about last night is that all the biggest assholes lost. The abhorrent sociopaths like Vivek Ramaswamy and Ken Paxton were obliterated. The Trump era of wanton cruelty and shamelessness is over. For now. Let’s fight to keep it that way.
Built from the ground up
As I said on Sirius XM last night, this wouldn’t have happened without the diligent work of people who rebuilt the Democratic Party from the ground up starting after 2016. Many of the candidates who ran in local elections starting in 2018, like Texas’s James Talarico, are now headed to Congress. More than a dozen legislative chambers flipped because Democrats ran candidates in nearly every single district, which was a pipe dream just a few cycles ago.
In the states
Think back to 2016, when Republican gerrymanders meant that the GOP had control of every single swing state. Thanks to slow, painstaking work in redistricting referenda, close legislative elections, and last night’s blue tsunami, Democrats are have now seized full power in most of those places.
Democrats now have new trifectas in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
Another possible new trifecta in North Carolina, which had been gerrymandered for Republican dominance.
Control of the governor’s mansion and state House in Georgia.
They won every statewide election in Texas. They went from down 9-0 on the state Supreme Court to a 5-4 deficit, taking them one seat away from total control. They also control half the state House.
Supermajorities were broken in Missouri (both chambers), Kansas (House), Ohio (House), Florida (House), Iowa (House), and North Carolina (Senate).
There were gigantic shifts in often really red states — Democrats flipped:
21 seats in North Carolina House
20 seats in the Kansas House
16 in the Missouri House
10 in the South Carolina
There will be more remarkable statistics as states confirm data, and I’ll be back with those.
Our candidates
I’m still digging into the numbers, but the state legislative candidates that we featured on our live stream all flipped huge seats to give Democrats majorities: Ben Gruber in Wisconsin and Katrina Manetta and Anna Aho Rink in Michigan. Would have been way more had it not been for heart surgery!
The Big Upsets
I began this year by monitoring flippable districts in swing states, and by last month, had expanded that out to +15 Trump seats in those states. Last night, I had to add entire new sections to the Election Hub because Democrats were flipping seats that just did not ever seem possible in our wildest dreams.
Behold the numbers in the biggest upsets at the Congressional and gubernatorial level; I’ll have more from the down ballot soon.
The new election sites are free to use, but were not free to make.
I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles and the huge Election Hub site — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.
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© 2026 Jordan Zakarin
New York, NY