Since election night, there has been a lot of talk about Democrats winning races no one thought they could win.
Texas, the state everyone called solidly red, elected a Democratic governor and sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Mississippi, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1982, just did. And it chose someone who was not a Washington insider.
So is Texas a blue state now? Has Mississippi turned blue? Did most people in two states change what they believe in just two years?
I don’t believe they did. I don’t think the people of Mississippi or Texas woke up one morning and gave up on freedom.
The question we should be asking is a simple one: Did the people leave the Republican Party, or did the Party leave the people?
The voters didn’t switch. They stayed home.
The numbers tell the story. Republican voters mostly stayed home, while Democrats turned out unusually well for a midterm. Only a small share of voters actually switched sides.
In Texas, about 11.4 million people voted in 2024. This year, about 9.8 million did, even though the state added more than 400,000 registered voters. Greg Abbott got 30% fewer votes than Trump did two years ago. Gina Hinojosa got 8% more votes than Kamala Harris.
The drop was sharpest where Republicans count on winning big. Roughly 90% of the Texas counties where turnout fell were rural. One analyst estimates about 625,000 Republicans simply sat this one out.
Mississippi followed the same pattern. Across six Southern states including ours, turnout fell 19% in counties Harris won and 26% in counties Trump won. Meanwhile, Black voters went from an estimated 30% of Mississippi’s electorate in 2024 to 33% this year.
And the voters who did show up mostly stayed loyal. Exit polls found only 6% of Republicans nationally voted for a Democrat for the House. Republicans didn’t abandon their party. They just didn’t see a reason to show up for it.
Who is standing up for Bob?
Congressman Chip Roy of Texas gave a speech on the House floor earlier this week that explains a lot of this. Most of it was about Congress and his home state, but much of what he said is just as true in Mississippi.
Roy read from a post on X about a man named Bob: a 49-year-old blue-collar worker, a three-time Trump voter, whose son did everything right and still can’t find work. The post ends with a question that every Republican in Mississippi should have to answer:
“You’ve spent a decade demanding Bob’s loyalty. You’ve given him stagnant wages, unaffordable groceries, another foreign war, and a son who did everything right but can’t find work. And when they complain, you call them lazy. What possible reason have you given Bob and his son to vote Republican? Do you honestly think you deserve their vote?”
Roy’s own verdict was blunt: “I listen to politicians on both sides of the aisle just blithely ignore the plight of the hardworking average American right now wondering what is happening.” He said Republicans lost because “they were focused on themselves and the ruling class and not the people.”
“So many proteins to choose from”
If you want one example of the problem in Mississippi, look at Scott Colom’s most effective ad. It has gotten national attention, it didn’t make me want to vote for him. But honestly, it made me want to vote against Cindy Hyde-Smith.
The ad used a clip from a February interview on WLOX. A reporter asked what Republicans were doing about the rising price of beef. Hyde-Smith answered, “And you know, you have so many proteins to choose from.”
She is a cattle rancher and sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee. Meanwhile, families here are watching the price of ground beef climb every time they go to the store. To a lot of Mississippians, that answer sounded like beef is for people who can afford it, and everyone else can eat something cheaper.
That is what out of touch looks like. And notice I didn’t say Republicans. There are plenty of Democrats in that camp too. These folks truly do not care about you or me. They care about power, influence and money, their money.
Betrayed a little at a time
Two years ago, ordinary people voted overwhelmingly for Trump and Republicans. These were folks who aren’t very political and don’t worship either party. Little by little, they were let down.
Congress didn’t do its job. The Republican-led Congress never passed the cuts to waste and fraud that DOGE found. As Roy pointed out, it has not passed a single bill to make Trump’s border security policies permanent. And it kept spending money that is sinking our country deeper into debt.
The economy didn’t get better for regular people. Establishment folks will tell us the economy is doing great. But most people don’t measure the economy by the stock market. They measure it by gas so expensive they can’t afford a vacation, and by the price of beef going up every time they go to the store. The MAHA reforms people were promised haven’t happened either, and the grifters are still getting paid.
Then came the war. For years, conservative commentators warned over and over that a war with Iran could lead to World War III, and that preventing one was reason enough to vote for Trump. Then Trump went to war with Iran, and many of those same voices changed their tune. Now war is good. Even Roy, who said the case for striking Iran might be strong, said the President never came to Congress and never earned the people’s support for it.
Can the Republican Party win them back?
The people of Mississippi sent a loud message to the political class, both in Jackson and in Washington: we are tired of being ignored. Pay attention to the people who elect you, or we won’t vote for you again.
I’d like to believe the Republican Party will hear that message. Honestly, I’m not sure it will. The arrogance, and the sheer dislike some of these leaders have for the common person, has been exposed. It is going to take more than one loss to force real change.
Roy ended his speech with a simple instruction for anyone who wants to lead: “Start with the people.” The voters didn’t leave. They’re still here, still believing what they believed two years ago. The question is whether the Republican Party will come back to them.
Republican candidates make promises voters to fixing everything in D.C. that their voters say needs fixing, get elected and sit on their collective asses and do little to nothing. Democrats are more apt to be "hard chargers" about whatever their party wants and waste no time in implementation whether it's right or wrong.
I have good reason to believe that the machines changed our republican votes by valuing them at 0.85 and democrat votes at 1.15.