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Campaign

Democrats start 2026 with fresh momentum — and lingering challenges

by Julia Mueller – 01/01/26 5:00 PM ET

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Democrats are heading into the midterm year energized by a string of recent electoral victories, but they also acknowledge the party faces tough challenges as it grapples with deeper troubles.

The party says it has found a winning strategy by emphasizing the high cost of living under President Trump, which helped propel their candidates to victory in a number of competitive races in 2025.

But even as they feel optimistic about flipping the House in the midterms, Democrats are still struggling with internal divisions they worry could haunt the party in years to come.

“Democrats are finding their way out of political wilderness and heading back into political power, with the help of Trump, his agenda. … But I don’t think we should mistake this for Democrats becoming, overnight, a lot more popular, or having fixed the tremendous failures that got us into this position,” Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett said.

“Democrats do have to reconcile with how we landed ourselves in a second Trump term. … We still have work to do to kind of refine what our message is to the public.”NextStay

Democrats started 2025 divided over how to bounce back from their 2024 losses and how to respond to Trump’s second term. Donors voiced anger about the election results, party leaders disagreed about messaging, and the national party clashed over midterm primary moves.

But as the off-year election calendar ramped up, a string of blue victories and overperformances put wind in the party’s sails and lifted hopes that Democrats could make a comeback in Congress next fall.

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Moderates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won by big margins in marquee governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani coasted to victory in New York City’s mayoral race. Democrats also won several smaller but significant contests across the country, flipping seats on a commission in Georgia and winning the Miami mayor’s office for the first time in decades.

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On Tuesday, Democrats closed out 2025 with a special election win for a state Senate seat in Iowa, preventing Republicans from regaining a supermajority in the chamber.

“With the last special election of the year now decided, one thing is clear: 2025 was the year of Democratic victories and overperformance, and Democrats are on track for big midterm elections,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin said in a statement following the Iowa victory.

2025’s record has already prompted Democrats to expand their target lists for both state legislatures and the House, where Republicans hold just a slim 220-213 advantage. Democrats need to net just three seats to flip the lower chamber, and party leaders such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are now predicting they can make it happen.

“The first half of 2025, electorally, was a lot of despair and I think, frankly, also a party deeply in confusion and disarray, trying to figure out what a new direction forward is and how we fumbled the ball so badly in the last presidential race. It was really divisive and really contentious,” said Cheyenne Hunt, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Gen-Z for Change, who ran for Congress in California last year.

The electoral wins in 2025 have shown “there is a path forward” as voters signal growing frustration with the Trump administration, she added.

“This referendum has proved that, even if we don’t totally have our story together as a party yet, people are looking for change and are not very pleased with the status quo,” Hunt said.

High prices, steep tariffs and strains stemming from 2025’s record-long government shutdown have dragged Trump to some of his lowest-ever approval ratings on the economy, which was the top issue for voters throughout the 2025 elections.

From Spanberger to Mamdani, Democratic candidates found success by putting significant focus on affordability and economic concerns, and many in the party want to lean into that even more in 2026.

But it remains to be seen whether that will be a sufficient strategy for the party to maintain its momentum through the midterms and beyond.

“All that obviously makes it easier for Democrats to constantly have something to throw against the wall,” said Democratic strategist Michael Ceraso, who’s worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “But I would argue I’m not quite sure if there’s a message that Democrats have proposed and driven that’s created the results we saw in November, or leading into the momentum that we’re seeing next year.”

Party leadership and operatives in and out of Washington “need to be very, very careful … to not have any sense of hubris,” Ceraso said. “I don’t think anybody should claim they really know how to win.”

While Hunt and other progressives point to Mamdani’s success in New York City as a sign that many Democrats are hungry to move further left, others are warning Democrats not to take it that way.

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“The big debate inside our party at the moment is whether to follow the kind of Mamdani script or the Sherrill-Spanberger model, and whether moving far to the left is what our base demands and will in the end turn out a lot more voters,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left think tank Third Way.

“If you run, in this moment of insanity … as a sensible moderate, you are rewarded. We saw that in 2025, and I think we’re going to see that in 2026,” Bennett said. “If swing states and purple districts looked like New York City, they wouldn’t be swing states or purple districts.”

Some strategists suggested that voters aren’t paying as much attention to progressive or moderate labels as some may think, preferring instead to see candidates lean into their individuality and personality along the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, Democrats have also been divided by the DNC’s recent decision not to release its long-awaited autopsy of 2024 losses. The DNC said it wants to keep the focus on the elections ahead, while some in the party want more transparency.

“The Democratic Party still has not learned its lessons from the past, and we’re finding a ton of success in the era of Trump because of how chaotic and corrupt and incompetent he is. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve found our way out of the many failures that our party had in the last election,” Hackett said.

Heading into the midterms, strategists across the Democratic spectrum say candidates should focus on crafting messages that hit on specific, tangible issues in their districts or states — as seen with Spanberger’s Virginia jobs plan and Mamdani’s promise to make buses free.

Looking beyond 2026, though, the party has more soul-searching to do, which will only ramp up with 2028 presidential chatter.

“I think we will need a unified message going into ’28,” Bennett said. “And inevitably, parties don’t cohere around such a message until they move towards having a nominee.”

Add as preferred source on GoogleTags Abigail Spanberger Donald Trump Ken Martin Mikie Sherrill Nancy Pelosi Sawyer Hackett Zohran Mamdani

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