MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Today is a day for all of the superlatives. Unbelievable, unprecedented, stunning - just a few of the words being used to describe Democratic victories across the country in midterm elections.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
And just to recap, Democrats won majorities in both houses of Congress, picking up at least seven seats in the Senate. Two races in Mississippi and Alaska are still too close to call. Democrats also took control of the House, flipping more than two dozen seats, with races yet to be called.
KELLY: They also picked up five governorships. They captured control of at least nine state legislative houses. So how did they do it? And what might Democratic control of Congress look like? Those are a couple of the questions I'm going to put now to NPR White House correspondent Emily Feng, congressional reporter Eric McDaniel and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. We got a whole team here. Domenico, I'm going to throw you the question that I had waking up this morning. Did the Democrats win or did the Republicans lose?
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Yeah, it's not really an either-or. Clearly, the overriding factor, though, was Donald Trump. I mean, his unpopularity, the war in Iran, rising prices, the growing gap between the uber-rich and the middle class. I mean, some $12 billion spent on this election while other people are struggling to buy gas. All of that together created a huge backlash, maybe call it a Trump-lash. Democrats, though, also did recruit very good candidates. You don't win in places like Iowa, Texas, Kansas as Democrats without candidates who can make the most of the moment and be good fits for their states. They showed real level of authenticity. That will give them a big opportunity to show what Democrats did wasn't just a big midterm asterisk.
KELLY: And one more to you, Domenico, because we've been talking a lot, you and I, about polling these last few weeks. Were the polls going to work? Could we trust them? In the end, they did all right.
MONTANARO: In the end, they did do OK. You know, they pointed in the right direction. If anything, they underestimated Democratic support. But we don't know how many people decided late, you know, after when the polls had been conducted before the election. And things usually do break in one direction in midterms. It happened in 2006. It happened again in this election. Polls predicted Democrats plus 8 on the generic congressional ballot. It wound up being bigger, closer to plus 13, which is massive and no one would have believed it beforehand. Even with the underestimation, all the signs were there for a pretty big wave with what the polls were showing, but people were rightfully cautious given the polling errors we've seen over the past decade that had underestimated Republican support.
KELLY: Yeah.
MONTANARO: It's just very difficult in this age, when there's been such a major political realignment, to poll.
KELLY: Eric McDaniel, you cover Congress.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Indeed, I do.
KELLY: Lucky you. Here's my question to you. What happens immediately? Because Republicans still control the House and the Senate for the next couple months. Does anything change between now and January?
MCDANIEL: Well, I mean, it only gets harder for Republicans, right? They've got a narrow majority right now in the House, a small majority in the Senate. But good luck to them getting every one of those folks who lost back into Washington to pass legislation on a party-line basis. There's not a lot of incentive...
KELLY: Yeah.
MCDANIEL: ...To come back to town. And that's important stuff. That's government funding. That's more money for the Iran war. They also have to figure out what their leadership looks like next. Our friend Barbara Sprunt is reporting that current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, he won't seek reelection as the top House Republican. That sets up a battle between at least two folks, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Jim Jordan's pugnacious. He's a brawler. He could be dispositionally well suited to counter Democrats' investigation-heavy agenda. Scalise is sort of a party man. He's a committed Trump ally, but generally seen as less pugnacious than Jordan.
But - and this is speculation on my part - I think there's probably an appetite for someone willing to take a more Trump-skeptical stance as a party leader - right? - given the mollywhopping voters just delivered the party because of the president.
KELLY: Yeah. And then agenda? I mean, how do we expect Democrats are going to use their newfound majorities come January?
MCDANIEL: They'll act on the things they campaigned on. That's cost of living. That's perceived political corruption. They talk about cost of living from healthcare to housing. But with Trump still in the White House, I don't expect that those bills will absolutely become law. In perceived public corruption, expect bills on lawmaker stock trading and then investigations into investigations into investigations - every part of Trump's life from his administration's agenda and the extent of his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The likely incoming House oversight chair, Robert Garcia, Democrat of California, posted on Twitter last night, simply, lawyer up.
KELLY: Lawyer up. Sounds ominous. Emily Feng, hop in here. What's the mood at the White House like today?
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Yeah, so I am at the White House today. It's quiet, but it's also surreal, and that's because the president has had one public event so far today, and it was not about the election. It was to talk about his East Wing ballroom construction project. He had hundreds of construction workers who were building it come in. And at this event, he spent most of his time talking about the quality of the marble that he was using and his new helipad and really not about the election. However, last night, a White House official told NPR that the mood watching these results come in was, quote, "defiant at the White House." And then today, Trump's Truth Social media account shared a picture of a red hat with the word veto written on it because Trump has said he is going to veto most bills brought to him by a Democratic Congress.
More broadly, the sense I get is the mood in the Republican Party is one of confusion and of soul searching. As my colleagues have just pointed out, these midterms were a big rebuke of Trump himself. He has been quick to point out he was not literally on the ballot, but voters rejected his policies, you know, his economic policies and tariffs, the war in Iran. And even his own vice president today, JD Vance, broke with Trump and wrote on X that he thinks one of the primary reasons behind Republican losses was the war in Iran. So today, when Trump was celebrating, you know, the last steel ceiling beam that was being put in place in the ballroom project, reporters asked him if he regretted, perhaps, the Iran war costing the GOP the House and the Senate, and he said this.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Probably it's true, but at the same time, if I had it to do again, I'd have to do it again because long-term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
KELLY: Interesting. So, I mean, Emily, is there any sign, any indication that President Trump might be willing to change course with the war in Iran?
FENG: He seemed to soften his stance a little today. He said today he could end the war, quote, "anytime" he wanted. He said last night on Fox & Friends that he would still strike Iran, though, if Iran, quote, "does not behave." But also that the two countries could have a diplomatic ending to this, that they could sign something to end the war. He has warned that any new major strikes would happen after the midterms, but he's already said he will not use nuclear weapons. He told Politico last night he does not need to use nuclear weapons against Iran.
KELLY: Eric, back to you. One of the outgrowths of the war in Iran has, of course, been high diesel prices, high gas prices. Affordability, affordability, affordability, which was a huge factor in the election, we're told.
MCDANIEL: Such a huge factor.
KELLY: Yeah. I mean, can congressional Democrats do much about that? Can they bring prices down when they aren't going to control the White House for at least two years?
MCDANIEL: I mean, let's see, right? Democrats can send bills to the president's desk, but they can't make him sign. That said, they can make a real stink about the fact that they've made changes they say would be positive for the American people and that the president is, say, standing in their way. That kind of public pressure could matter. The president wants to be liked. He's signaled some openness to dealmaking. And there's leverage, like government funding, getting rid of the filibuster, confirming the president's picks to various posts, that could help grease the wheels of dealmaking. But it's not going to be easy for Democrats, but I don't want to pretend like movement is impossible either.
KELLY: Do Democrats feel like they have a mandate? Did voters give them a mandate?
MCDANIEL: I mean, I don't know that there is such a thing as a mandate in today's political environment, right? This was about the president - 38% approval rating, 70% of the public peeved about the war in Iran. Gas prices up 40% year over year. Democrats had the right message about how to address it, but their favorability rating as a party is still minus 14. Chuck Schumer's among the most disliked men in America. Domenico can talk about this more, but last night saw huge swings across demographics, groups that had swung to President Trump in 2024. And so now Democrats have to do the hard work convincing those folks to stay in their corner. This isn't a captured electorate, by any means.
KELLY: Yeah, this is the problem, Domenico - right? - with you win an election, and you inherit the problems and they become yours. What risks come with these wins for Democrats?
MONTANARO: Yeah, I mean, right now, Democrats are the dog that caught the car. So can they drive, right? I mean, they can do a lot of things here. They can block judges and cabinet members. They can stop Trump's legislative agenda, whatever that winds up being, if he would have wanted to do anything. But they really have to be careful on how they message this and not to overpromise and underdeliver. I mean, that's something voters have become all too familiar with from politicians in Washington.
The reality is it's unlikely Democrats are going to have a real good-faith negotiating partner in Republicans in trying to get big things done. And it's looking like Donald Trump is not wanting to be a Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich-style triangulator. So, you know, look to the states. Democrats flipped a bunch of state legislatures and will have trifectas in state governance in some key places. So while Washington maybe will be mired in inertia, it's the states that will be the incubators for policy, and we'll see how those policies are received by voters, particularly in purple and red states.
KELLY: All right. That's one thing to keep an eye on. Let me do a quick lightning round and just run through what else we should be watching for as we try to make sense of what just happened. Eric?
MCDANIEL: I'll let my colleagues take the serious stuff. I've got a fun one. Nonvoting members. There are more than a million Americans, like many of us who live in this city, who lack voting representation in Congress. But there's a fresh-faced class of new nonvoting members from the Virgin Islands, Guam and, yes, Washington, D.C., going to the Hill to advocate for civil rights for those they represent.
KELLY: Excellent. Domenico?
MONTANARO: I mean, 2028 starts now. January and February, we're going to see announcements probably for the presidency - presidential candidacies. And Trump and this Trump-lash, how is that going to reshape the Republican field? I guarantee you there's going to be more people running now than they - than who would have before.
KELLY: Trump-lash. We shall watch for it. Emily, you get the last word.
FENG: Two things from me. Given that the economy and gas prices are concerns for voters, the easiest way to address that would be to end the war with Iran. So will there be serious diplomatic negotiations again with Iran? And a second thing - in about two weeks, Trump heads to China. He's going to meet with the Chinese leader again, maybe even Russia's Vladimir Putin. So I'm curious, now that he's more constrained at home, will he try to make some kind of grand foreign policy bargain abroad with these heads of state?
KELLY: That's NPR's Emily Feng, Eric McDaniel and Domenico Montanaro. Thanks to all three of you. Please go get some sleep now (laughter).
MONTANARO: Great to be here.
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