Background - 06.11.2026 - 11:47
This week, the Republicans lost their majority in both houses of Congress, by a wider margin than most forecasts had suggested. In the Senate, the Democrats now hold at least 54 of the 100 seats. The Economist’s forecasting model – a prediction based on polls and other data – had, for example, predicted 51 seats. Even in Texas, the Democrats have won not only the Senate seat but also the governorship. State Representative Gina Hinojosa has defeated the incumbent governor and Trump confidant, Greg Abbott. This result continues a series of stinging defeats for politicians aligned with the MAGA movement: in Hungary, the era of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has come to an end; in Serbia, President Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat to a student-led list; and in Brazil, Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, was defeated. Are we witnessing the twilight of the right-wing populists following their meteoric rise?
We know from research that populists can significantly distort voters’ perceptions, but this influence does not extend indefinitely. Most citizens follow politics only peripherally, which is entirely rational, as a single vote rarely makes a difference, and simplistic narratives fill this gap. This distortion generally extends furthest in foreign policy, as most voters lack their own points of reference there to understand whether a narrative corresponds to the truth. Misleading narratives reach their limit when they deviate too greatly from the reality experienced first-hand by voters. The war against Iran was one such case. In early November, petrol cost around 40 to 70 per cent more than at the start of the war, and even a moderately informed voter could recognise this obvious connection. On the issue of tariffs, the narrative that “other countries are paying for them” held water only until agricultural exports to China plummeted and farmers’ costs for imported products rose dramatically.
The situation is similar when it comes to migration. The crackdown on criminal migrants enjoyed support far beyond Trump’s camp; many Democratic voters also backed this aspect of the policy, and the government promised to target only “the worst of the worst”. The reality was more complicated. Enforcement caused significant collateral damage and affected many law-abiding people; according to internal data from the Department of Homeland Security, just under 40 per cent of those detained by the immigration agency ICE had no criminal record. At first, this was hardly noticeable. Over time, however, voters experienced it first-hand, heard about it from relatives and friends, or saw on social media how even law-abiding people with no criminal record were being met in supermarket car parks. Polls show, however, that the scepticism of the absolute majority of voters is directed against crime and uncontrolled immigration, not against immigrants per se.
Another piece of good news for democracy is that not only are distorted narratives reaching their limits, but so too is the power of money. In Texas, the Democratic state representative James Talarico won the Senate seat against Ken Paxton, even though the entrepreneur Elon Musk had spent more than 200 million dollars in support of Paxton in the most expensive Senate race in American history. Money buys attention, but apparently hardly any conviction. This does not apply only to Republicans: Michael Bloomberg, media entrepreneur and former mayor of New York, spent around one billion dollars of his own money on his presidential campaign in 2020 and went on to win just a single primary – in American Samoa.
This result therefore clearly strengthens American democracy, if only because Congress will once again exercise greater control over the executive and the President, thereby curbing Trump’s power and arbitrariness. Voters are not fully informed, but their experiences are sufficient to recognise gross misconduct on the part of their elites and to punish it at the ballot box. This is a more modest picture of democracy than that of the fully informed citizen, but measured against the fears of recent years, the result is remarkable. Together with a judiciary that has proved surprisingly steadfast under pressure, American voters have ensured that the worst fears and eulogies for their democracy have not come to pass.
So are we witnessing the twilight of the populists? It seems premature to give the all-clear. Even as Trump’s time in power draws to a close, this need not apply to populism and the polarisation that goes hand in hand with it. The existing polarisation will not simply disappear, and social norms regarding acceptable behaviour and communication will not be restored of their own accord. Of course, every successful politician is a populist to some extent. But it becomes problematic when democratic discourse is dominated by simplistic and misleading narratives that are primarily directed “against” something or someone. For right-wing populists, the villains are migrants who allegedly “eat dogs”, or the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections”; but left-wing populism also mobilises against selected villains such as billionaires, corporations, landlords or, more recently, artificial intelligence and data centres.
Senator Bernie Sanders has shaped this pattern for years, and a new generation of Democrats is carrying it forward. Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, does not believe “that we should have billionaires”. Abdul El-Sayed, newly elected to the Senate in Michigan, described his own party as “bought by the same corporations” as the Republicans and referred to Israel as a “rogue state”. It is reassuring that most Americans hold more moderate views than the noise from the political fringes would suggest. Where votes are cast directly, populist proposals therefore usually fail to secure a majority. In California, for instance, Proposition 40 – a one-off tax on billion-dollar fortunes – was rejected. Overall, moderate candidates performed above average.
Political structures and processes could, however, still lead to the vocal fringes continuing to dominate. In Europe, too, it often gives the impression that, for example, within left-wing parties, a vocal minority dominates the agenda with niche issues, even if this goes against the will of the majority of voters and at the expense of electoral success. In America, presidential candidates must first win over their respective supporters in the primaries, and it is not always a centrist candidate who is chosen. It is therefore crucial how the centre of both parties positions itself and whom they field for the 2028 presidential election. If a moderate Democrat stands against the current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, we will look back on these mid-term elections as the beginning of the end of this populist era. If, instead, a left-wing populist Democrat stands against Vice-President J. D. Vance, it will become clear that this election was merely an interlude.
Kai Gehring is an Associate Professor of Economics at the School of Economics and Political Science (SEPS-HSG).
Photo: Keystone
