Why is populism, broadly defined, on the brink of historic victories around the world, while populism in the form of President Donald Trump's Republican Party is poised to lose one or both houses of Congress in the United States?

The troubles Trump's Republicans face are not a mystery. It was always unlikely that Republicans would maintain their hair's-breadth House majority.

But the 2026 lineup of Senate seats looked favorable, with only one Republican defending a seat in a state Kamala Harris carried and all but one defending seats in states Trump carried by double digits in 2024. At least two Democrats were defending seats in states Trump carried in 2024, and retirements opened up two other seats in marginal states.

That picture has now changed. Persistent inflation, some of it plausibly triggered by Trump's tariffs, has hurt Republicans. Democrats have sprinted to big polling leads in Georgia and North Carolina, and various combinations of weak Republicans and strong Democrats have left Republicans trailing in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas — states Trump carried by double digits two years ago.

Democrats are already planning investigations of Trump's financial shenanigans and drafting articles of impeachment. They have high hopes of a 2028 trifecta: the House, Senate and presidency. Republicans' trifecta hopes are clouded by the prospect of primaries pitting Trump supporters against his opponents.

What a different picture in the rest of the world. Populist veteran Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner for president of France next year, while next month's snap election in Spain is likely to put the populist Vox party into a governing coalition.

Germany's populist AfD just won the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, and it's getting hard to imagine how the traditional parties can keep excluding it from federal coalitions. Italy's Giorgia Meloni, with roots in a populist party that had been excluded from power for years, heads the longest-serving government in post-World War II........

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