The country is still processing the political earthquake that was the 2026 midterm elections, which have been characterized by observers as a “blue tsunami,” allowing Democrats to make inroads into some of the reddest bastions in the country.
Even the most bullish forecasters for Democrats capped their predictions at around 255 seats in the House. Currently, if leads hold, Democrats could take as many as 261 seats in the House, reducing the Republican conference to just 174 seats.
To secure these historic gains, Democrats needed to win massive flips in districts that national strategists had entirely dismissed. On Nov. 3, they did.
Here are five midterm House races that had surprising outcomes.
Easily the biggest surprise of the night came in Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District, where the race remains uncalled and stands on the cusp of flipping. But this race was never supposed to be so close.
Following a gerrymander by Tennessee Republicans, the entire state’s House delegation—with the possible exception of the state’s 9th Congressional District—was expected to go for Republicans.
Even dedicated political observers had never heard the name Victoria Broderick, a Democratic candidate in the 4th district.
In 2024, incumbent Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) received 70 percent of the vote there, while Broderick—who also ran that year—received just 26.8 percent of the vote.
Currently, with 99 percent of the vote counted, Broderick leads with 48.9 percent of the vote to DesJarlais’s 48.7 percent, with a difference of just 280 votes.
Roughly 700 ballots remain uncounted, with 600 of those from the Democratic stronghold of Nashville and the surrounding Davidson County.
Incumbent Rep. Shomari Figures (D-Ala.) was expected to lose his job come January.
Republicans in the state, following a green light from the Supreme Court, had redrawn Figures’s district to return it to previous boundaries that favored Republicans by more than 40 percent.
Common wisdom said that Figures had little chance in the district, and it had largely been written off by most despite some positive signals in pre-election polling for Figures.
Figures ultimately won the race by 7.6 percent, boosted by higher-than-normal black voter turnout and the Democratic wave.
Since 2020, Democrats in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District have kept their fingers crossed that a Democrat would one day win back the Charleston-based seat, despite the district’s Republican leanings.
In 2018, during a blue wave year, former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) flipped the seat before being unseated by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) in 2020.
Following a failed bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in South Carolina, Mace couldn’t run for reelection, leaving the race open.
Rep.-elect Nancy Lacore (D-S.C.)—a former naval officer fired by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—ultimately defeated Republican Jenny Honeycutt by around 1 percent or 3,352 votes, receiving 49.7 percent of the vote.
Sen.-elect Annie Andrews (D-S.C.) received some of her highest vote totals in the South Carolina Lowcountry, winning a 4.5 percent statewide victory that may have also helped push Lacore over the finish line.
North Carolina had the most pronounced shift of any congressional delegation in the country, with its membership moving from 10 Republicans and four Democrats to a dominant 11-seat majority for Democrats, if current leads hold.
Democrats were boosted by Sen.-elect Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) at the top of the ticket, a popular former governor who trounced former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley by a nearly 20-point margin.
Of the many flips in the state, few were more surprising than North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, the seat currently occupied by National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.).
Hudson was responsible for the broader House Republican campaign strategy, making his defeat a particularly difficult loss for the GOP.
Rep.-elect Richard Ojeda (D-N.C.) defeated Hudson by around 2.4 percentage points.
Another race remains too close to call in North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, held by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). Democrat Chuck Hubbard leads by 335 votes, a 0.1 percent margin.
Incumbent Rep. Victoria Spartz’s (R-Ind.) Indianapolis-based seat in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District wasn’t seen by observers as facing much of a threat, despite a strong campaign from Rep.-elect JD Ford (D-Ind.).
In 2024, Spartz defeated her Democratic opponent by 18.6 percent, making it appear unlikely to most observers that Democrats would have a shot in the district.
Nevertheless, Ford ultimately defeated Spartz by 3.1 percent, representing a nearly 22-point swing this year.
—Joseph Lord
BOOKMARKS
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Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) has won reelection, with The Associated Press finally calling the race on Nov. 11. Wilson beat Democrat Zyon Khalifa by less than 3,000 votes.
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Hundreds of schools across Europe received emailed bomb threats on Wednesday, which authorities in Italy, the UK, and the Republic of Ireland said were not credible. “It is difficult to say at this moment who might be behind it; intelligence services are, of course, working to identify them,” Italian Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said.
—Stacy Robinson
