After years on their back foot, here's why Democrats are feeling good about 2026

For much of the last two years, the U.S. Democratic Party has been on its back foot, enduring painful electoral defeats to an omnipresent Republican opponent while grappling with a troubling decline in voter registration and a listless party base.

Polling data from summer 2025 painted a bleak picture as surveys showed dismal, multi-year low approval ratings for the party's performance in Congress.

The number of self-identified Democrats was also dropping sharply, especially in some crucial states needed to win the presidency, according to data from the 30 states and Washington, D.C., that collect and report voter party affiliations.

Progressive columnists spilled barrels of ink trying to identify why exactly the party has been so unpopular with voters — did the leftward shift on race and gender, climate and guns alienate moderate swing voters? Or was it because President Donald Trump, the political chameleon, had robbed the party of its lock on a multiracial working-class coalition?

Whatever the reason, the party was dealing with what some members said was a "seismic crisis" or an "existential threat" to its long-term viability. In July, roughly half of all voters surveyed said they would consider joining a third party.

But, in the closing days of 2025, the pendulum appears to be swinging in the Democrats' direction.

Many of the party's candidates stormed to power in November's off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, two states that have been largely Democratic blue in recent years but looked vulnerable only months earlier.

Trump did better than expected in New Jersey in the 2024 presidential campaign — losing to Kamala Harris by just six percentage points, much better than his own past performances and how other recent Republican candidates have fared there. That red wave had some analysts wondering: is New Jersey the next swing state?

But GOP optimism faded quickly as the ballots were counted in the Garden State's gubernatorial election on Nov. 4.

Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a moderate, trounced her Republican opponent, winning by more than 14 percentage points.

Another centrist Democrat, Abigail Spanberger, cleaned up in Virginia, winning by 15 points in a state Harris won by fewer than six a year earlier.

What followed those victories — and a strong showing for democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani, who won New York City's mayoral election — was a polling upswing elsewhere.

"These elections have all gone in favour of the Democrats — this is the so-called canary in the coal mine," Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia, said in an interview with CBC News. "You are beginning to see cracks in Trump's power." 

Even in Florida, once a toss-up state that is now deeply red after some COVID-fuelled ideological and demographic changes, a Democrat won Miami's mayoral race this month with a strong majority. It was the first win by a Democrat there in 28 years and one the local media is calling "a good omen" for a party that has long struggled to connect.