Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) described the Republican Party’s election wipeout on Tuesday night as Democrats regained the majority in the House and Senate as being “close to an extinction level event.”
During a press conference in Tallahassee on Wednesday, DeSantis spoke about how Florida’s rival, Texas, “lost everything,” from Texas Democrat James Talarico winning the U.S. Senate race, to Gov. Greg Abbott (R) being defeated by Texas State Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D). DeSantis warned that if the Republican Party “doesn’t have Texas as an anchor” it won’t “be viable nationally going forward.”
“Let’s just be clear about what happened last night: This is close to an extinction level event for Republicans in many parts of the country, as we have seen probably in the last hundred years,” DeSantis said. “In January, when everyone in office leaves, who are either term-limited or got voted out, of the 10 largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control of their state — the state of Florida.”
DeSantis continued to state that over the course of his lifetime, “Texas has been the crown jewel of Republican politics.”
“I think we’ve been the leader for Republicans and conservatives since I’ve been governor, but if you go over the whole generation, no one holds a candle on the Republican side to the Lone Star state,” DeSantis continued. “And yet, not only did they lose a very highly publicized U.S. Senate race, they lost everything. The governor, attorney general, all the other statewide, they lost four Republican Supreme Court justices on the Texas Supreme Court, they may even lose the Texas legislature — or one House or even both. Let’s just be clear, that is going to hurt, not just for the next two years, that’s something that can reverberate for the next decade or more. And, if the Republican Party doesn’t have Texas as an anchor, we are not going to be viable nationally going forward.”
DeSantis: “This is close to an extinction level event for Republicans…out of the ten largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control of their state, the state of Florida." pic.twitter.com/sJQOeBtbb5
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) November 4, 2026
On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance issued a message on social media in which he shared that “the smartest data guy” he knows informed him that Republicans “might do better than the polls suggest,” but that data showed that “a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys.”
In his post, Vance also shared that “another pollster” told him that “a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats” and that when he asked “those voters” what would make them “come back on our team” the pollster cited ending the Iran war, and putting America first, among other issues:
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel
While calling into “Fox News Channel’s midterm election coverage,” President Donald Trump expressed that he was “surprised” that Republican candidates didn’t do better.
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