In Tom Zawistowski's state, Republicans lost the Senate and governor's races and four House seats. The We the People Convention president says it was part of the election debacle the GOP suffered nationwide.
Michiganders elected Abdul El-Sayed, making him the nation's first Muslim senator, but the biggest shock for conservatives was probably the results in Texas, where Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, ending more than three decades of Republican control of the state's governor's office, and far-left-wing James Talarico beat Ken Paxton in the closely watched U.S. Senate race.
"What the election told us … is not that Americans favor the Democrats. It's that they want change because they're so disappointed in how both parties have served them," Zawistowski tells AFN. "That's what it was all about."
According to PolitiFact's MAGA-Meter tracker, President Donald Trump has kept 15 of 75 (20%) campaign promises, and voters noticed.
Respondents to an October 2026 national poll conducted by Data for Progress said the president and his party failed to deliver on several prominent promises made during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Voters were asked about 14 specific promises Trump made during his campaign, including getting gasoline below $2 per gallon, ensuring "no more wars," ending inflation immediately, ending the Russia-Ukraine war, cutting energy and electricity prices in half within 12 months, and cutting the cost of a new home in half.
A majority of respondents said Trump had not delivered on those promises or others, such as eradicating veterans' homelessness, capping credit card interest rates, dismantling the "deep state," and eliminating waste and fraud in federal spending.
Drawback to follow 'Democratic tsunami'
For Washington Times columnist Robert Knight, the real "shocker" was that "the pollsters were right for the first time in a long time."
"They predicted a Democratic tsunami, and that's what happened," he summarizes. "The Republicans are going to have to lick their wounds and do their best to stymie a left-wing agenda that the Democrats will bring into Congress."
Zawistowski predicts the Democrats will take their victory Tuesday night as "a sweep" in their direction, claiming that everyone supports their radical policies.
"That's not what the exit polling showed," he says.
In the end, he does not think they will get anything done.
"They're going to make it a clown show, and then we're going to go through this process again," Zawistowski forecasts.
Knight agrees that the Democrats, thinking they have a mandate, will overreact when they take power in January. He expects them "to investigate everybody under the sun, starting with President Trump, [and] … waste enormous amounts of time on revenge and going after people in the administration."
That will likely "alienate many Americans and may well set the stage for a Republican comeback in 2028," the columnist adds.
"There are no permanent victories or permanent losses," Knight asserts. "While this is a hard one to swallow, it's not permanent. People have to realize that the pendulum does swing back and forth."
Zawistowski believes Republicans had the opportunity to deliver on their promises in 2024.
"We came back against unbelievable odds," he says. "We elected Trump and gave him the House and the Senate, and they did nothing. If you did that again in 2028, they'd do nothing again."
Trump was able to fulfill some of his promises through executive action, but others required congressional approval.
Zawistowski argues that the problem goes beyond Republican inaction, lamenting that "the whole system is broken."
Some believe election rules are inconsistent, oversight is not transparent enough, vulnerabilities exist, political influence is excessive, and voters no longer trust that their votes will be handled fairly or feel that election outcomes accurately reflect what they want.
