Election 2026

America Did Not Vote for Woke 2.0

Voters don't want far-left policies. They just really, really hate Republican ones.

Eric Boehm | 11.6.2026 12:10 PM

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Voters in North Carolina threw out at least five incumbent Republican members of Congress in this week's election—while also approving ballot measures to limit property tax increases and cut the state's highest income tax rate from 7 percent to 3.5 percent.

In Arizona (like in Colorado and Washington), voters passed new restrictions on transgender athletes' ability to participate in girls' and women's sports—even as Democrats appear to be on track to fully control the state government there for the first time since the 1960s.

And in California, the bluest of blue states during the bluest of blue waves, voters appear to be rejecting a proposed "wealth tax" and supporting an initiative to ban new taxes on personal property or retirement savings. (Neither has been officially called yet, but the leads are substantial in both cases.)

Making sense of these results requires stepping outside the partisan binary that dominates so much of American politics. Voters delivered a staggering, overwhelming victory for Democrats this week (even in places where Democrats simply aren't supposed to win), while simultaneously rejecting some of the most prominent left-wing policies and even elevating conservative ones, like tax cuts.

This election was not a victory for progressives. Instead, it was a thunderous rejection of the Republican Party and........

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