What Stood Out In Media Coverage Of Democrats’ Rout Of Trump & Republicans In Midterm Elections

Tuesday’s election results were a shocker, by both the number of seats that Democrats flipped in the House and the Senate and the scale of their victory. James Talarico won his race for U.S. Senate in Texas by double digits, after weeks in which prognosticators warned that his campaign against Ken Paxton would come down to the wire.

In fact, the Democratic strength appeared to have been underestimated, and Vice President JD Vance affirmed that in an X post on Wednesday, when he wrote that “the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.”

For the networks, it shouldn’t have been difficult to keep viewers glued, especially when results came in fast and furious from 9-11 p.m. ET. Here’s what stood out on one of the most surprising midterms in recent memory.

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The Early Signs: After a day in which social media figures tried to draw conclusions from turnout data — a lot of it off the mark — it was a relief to finally get results when they started rolling in around 6 p.m. ET, when the polls in the eastern part of Indiana closed. That was when Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) looked to be in trouble in a challenge from J.D. Ford. On NewsNation, Chris Stirewalt expressed surprise, saying: “Sweet, fancy Moses. How much of the vote is in?” CNN and other networks cautioned that it was still early, noting that the early vote tended to favor Democrats. In the end, Ford won, as did another candidate, Democrat Zach Dembo, who flipped a seat in another early poll-closing state, Kentucky. About an hour later, CNN’s Jake Tapper said, “I’d rather be on Team Blue than Team Red.” The initial results were a reminder that in hindsight, the signs of a wave were right there from the start.

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More Than a Wave: Analysts and pundits started talking of Democrats’ overperformance from the start, but it wasn’t until networks started to call the South Carolina U.S. Senate seat for Annie Andrews that it became crystal clear this was more than just a wave. “Brutal,” said Sean Hannity on Fox News, which called the race in the 10 p.m. ET hour, not too long after NBC News.

Trump’s Media Rounds: For a president facing a rebuke, Donald Trump was making the media rounds, including an interview with The New York Times and an extended appearance on Fox News, after earlier raging at the network for platforming Democrats. The president gave no indication of challenging the results and congratulated the Democrats, which was some relief to democracy watchers worried of a protracted midterm challenge. While Trump weighed in on topics like Greenland to Fox News, perhaps the most interesting interview was during Politico‘s coverage, as Dasha Burns called him directly from her cell phone, giving a glimpse of what happens when a reporter calls him directly.

Trump told her, “I wasn’t on the ballot, and we didn’t get the people out, but I wasn’t on the ballot.” The president previously had told supporters to act as if he was on the ballot, but so be it.

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MS NOW’s First Election Night: This was the network’s first major Election Night since the split from Comcast — and it was perhaps fitting for the leftward primetime hosts that the solo outing would be for a blue tsunami. “For capital D and small D Democrats, and to everyone who voted for them tonight, that celebration can absolutely begin,” Rachel Maddow declared when the call was made that Democrats had regained control. One of the key moments came later in the evening, when Jen Psaki, citing a source, said that Sen. Susan Collins had conceded her Maine re-election race to Troy Jackson, even though major networks had yet to declare a winner. More and more, Election Nights have been turned into events for networks, all with the intent of keeping viewers within their own universe of coverage. MS NOW featured watch parties tied to its Membership service and featured coverage in Times Square, with its coverage on a big screen.

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Political Junkies: NBC News’ Kornacki Cam — a nonstop stream of its data guru Steve Kornacki — went for 10½ half hours. He made it to about 3:26 a.m. ET before announcing he was taking a break, but did not return. “I was sure 13 hours would be fine but things caught up to me in a hurry at hour 10,” he later wrote on X, apologizing for the abrupt ending.

It didn’t matter: Kornacki’s livestream ended up drawing 6.1 million views on YouTube, per NBC News, and the network led on watch time across four platforms monitored by Stream Charts.

Networks overall offered even deeper dives for viewers, what with CBS’s The Nerd Show and CNN’s Sightline. Their offerings were even more so than even 2024, in part to capture more political junkies and to compete with the many podcasters, influencers and creators offering their own midterm coverage.

NewsNation’s Calls: The network called the House for Democrats at 9:11 p.m. ET and the Senate at 11:21 p.m. ET. NewsNation is teamed up with DecisionDesk HQ, a different data provider than other networks. There was some boasting about the network’s calls ahead of other news outlets, as they also had been the first to call the presidential race for Donald Trump in 2024. Leland Vittert said at one point on Tuesday, “I actually just texted the head of communications for the Talarico race and said, ‘Hey, you guys might want to turn on NewsNation because we’ve already declared the winner. And the other networks are 45 minutes behind.'”