We hope you will join us tonight starting at 8 p.m. eastern for our live videocast as we bring you live election results and commentary. It’ll be me and TPM Publisher Joe Ragazzo and pretty much the whole TPM cycling through to discuss different races over the course of the evening. We’ll also be answering your questions in real time over the course of the evening. You can either watch on our TPM YouTube page or right here at the website where the live feed will be embedded on the front page. Can’t wait to see you this evening.
We’re now down to nothing to do but wait (and, obviously, pore over day-of indicators that mostly won’t mean anything). So with that in mind, a couple quick observations.
Want to keep reading?
Create a free TPM account to finishing reading this article.
We hope you will join us tonight starting at 8 p.m. eastern for our live videocast as we bring you live election results and commentary. It’ll be me and TPM Publisher Joe Ragazzo and pretty much the whole TPM cycling through to discuss different races over the course of the evening. We’ll also be answering your questions in real time over the course of the evening. You can either watch on our TPM YouTube page or right here at the website where the live feed will be embedded on the front page. Can’t wait to see you this evening.
We’re now down to nothing to do but wait (and, obviously, pore over day-of indicators that mostly won’t mean anything). So with that in mind, a couple quick observations.
Two years on from Donald Trump’s 2024 second election to the presidency we can identify clear patterns separating Term One and Term Two. I’ve noted at other times that for all the norm-busting, outrages and crimes of Term One, if you were a regular person who didn’t pay much attention to politics, very little of it intruded into your life. And the economy remained buoyant. The fact that Trump inherited a strong economy doesn’t matter in terms of public tolerance.
Of course, Trump still got quite unpopular. But to the extent that the Trump opposition kept up that resigned refrain “Nothing matters” there was a reason: If you simply didn’t pay attention to politics, most people could say, ‘Yeah, he’s weird but how is it affecting me?’ And at least before COVID there was much less — in terms of things that are materially affecting your life today — that many Trump foes allowed.
A voter casts their ballot during the midterm elections early in the day at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on November 3, 2026. Americans voting in the midterm elections will decide who controls Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency, along with dozens of governorships and thousands of state offices. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP via Getty Images)