The past and possibly future blue wave

The 2006 midterm election was a huge “blue wave.” As the night passed, those of us watching the results saw race after closely contested race go to the Democratic candidate. It was a brutal night for Republican candidates in both federal and state elections. And it poses a dire warning for the 2026 midterms.

At the federal level, Democrats regained control of both the Senate (51-49) and the House of Representatives (233-202) — a net gain of 31 House seats.

Democrats entered the election with 22 governorships while Republicans held 28. The election exactly flipped those numbers. And Democrats took total control of four more state chambers, for a total of 23, while Republicans lost state chambers and ended up with total control in only 15 states. 

So, what was going on in 2006 that led to such a Republican rout, and could it be repeated in 2026?

Perhaps most important was the Iraq War. President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He argued that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a bad guy who had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.

Bush worked to create an international coalition and made his case to Congress and the American people. But while Hussein was clearly a bad guy who had committed horrible crimes and needed the boot, coalition forces found no weapons of mass destruction. Although the public initially supported the war, by 2006 it was becoming increasingly unpopular, which weighed on the midterm election.

While the Iranian leaders are also bad guys who have committed horrible crimes and need to be ousted, President Trump made no effort to garner support from our allies, Congress or the American people before attacking. Nor has he clearly explained his purpose and goals. Polls show the Iran war was unpopular from the beginning. No one knows how the war will play out come November, but it could be as much of a drag on Republicans’ 2026 electoral fortunes as the Iraq War was in 2006.

The next challenge is the presidential job approval rating. By December 2006, only 38 percent of Americans said they approved of the job Bush was doing, according to Gallup. The poll put Trump’s approval rating at 37 percent last December, and then stopped taking those ratings. RealClearPolling puts his current approval-rating average at 40.9 percent.

As for Congress, RealClearPolling’s generic congressional polling on election day 2006 favored Democrats by 9.6 points. Today, seven months out, the RCP average favors Democrats by 6.0 points.

A third problem is government spending. The Iran war is reportedly costing more than $1 billion a day, and the president will either ask Congress to pass a supplemental spending bill for $200 billion or more to fund the war and replace munitions or include the increase in the next budget Republicans will try to pass through the reconciliation process.

The request comes at a time when Trump is trying to deflect voters’ concerns about government spending. He has claimed that his tariffs would eliminate the deficit, and the White House says his economic agenda “will slash our debt down to just 94 percent of Gross Domestic Product.” Writing in the Wall Street Journal last January, Trump said, “But with the help of tariffs, we have cut that federal budget deficit by a staggering 27 percent in a single year.” None of that is true. According to the Treasury Department, the federal budget deficit for fiscal 2025, Trump’s first year, was $1.78 trillion. For President Biden’s last year, it was $1.83 trillion, only slightly larger than Trump’s.

Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office predicts Trump’s 2026 federal deficit will be $1.9 trillion, which would push total federal debt over $40 trillion — and that’s before including the costs of the war. The political problem for the GOP is that Democrats never campaign on cutting federal spending, Republicans do.

One more point. The Great Recession did not officially begin until late 2007. But the financial problems began months before, and the public was beginning to feel it in the 2006 election.

Today, we are seeing frequent headlines of financial strains in the private credit industry, where billions of dollars in losses are being written off by major financial institutions, which have been limiting concerned investors’ efforts to withdraw their money. That trend coupled with large companies laying off thousands of workers, sporadic hiring, and the possibility of war-induced higher inflation rates could give voters yet another reason to want a change.

Of course, historic parallels aren’t destiny, but neither should they be dismissed. There is time for a turnaround, but winning midterm elections is an uphill challenge for the party in power in the best of times. And we are far from the best of times, despite what the president says.

Merrill Matthews is the Texas state chair of Our Republican Legacy.

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