All the money said the Republicans and Trump would win. They blew it

November 4, 2026 — 3:56pm

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Polls have just closed in the US midterm elections. The final results are coming in for states such as Florida and will land in a few days for others such as California and Alaska. One conclusion can be drawn immediately: the Republican Party’s huge advantage in money couldn’t protect it from a disenchanted electorate. This marks a dramatic change after more than four decades in which the top fundraiser has won 92 per cent of the time. In this sense, the midterms revealed the limits of the power of money in a democracy.

The Republican Party faced a completely hostile political environment: high prices at the petrol station and the supermarket, a stalemated war with Iran, for which President Donald Trump proudly took responsibility, public hostility toward data centres that feed into fears about job losses due to artificial intelligence, and the lowest presidential approval rating before a midterm election in 80 years, when President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats were demolished in 1946. The accumulated force of these factors should have swept Republican candidates out of politics the way a meteorite cleared out Earth’s dinosaurs.

For historical reasons, however, there was still a chance three months ago that the Republican Party could........

© The Sydney Morning Herald