Democrats just had a resounding midterm victory across the nation. But they’d be remiss to believe that the election results are an endorsement of the party’s creep to the far-left.

Analysis of Tuesday’s results shows that progressive and DSA-adjacent Democrats actually underperformed relative to their more moderate peers. That’s true across the country, with no major exceptions.

Voters who came out for Democrats in the midterms are sending a very specific message: they want moderation, not radical DSA craziness. Hopefully Mamdani and AOC won’t take the “blue tsunami” as permission to pursue their most extreme political dreams. 

“It’s very hard to find a race with a high-profile progressive who is not underperforming in this election,” New York Times Political Analyst Nate Cohn said in a Thursday episode of The Daily. “In [every] high-profile contested race where there was a big primary, the progressive candidate in the general election has gone on underperforming. And it’s just hard to find counterexamples.”

As proof, Cohn cited the election results in Michigan, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed campaigned on a platform of Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, and stopping arms sales to Israel. Yes, he won, but far more modestly than other Democrats in the same state. 

He ran a full two points behind mainstream Democrat governor-elect Jocelyn Benson. And his 7-point margin was far more modest than the 11-point advantage enjoyed by Michigan Democrats in the state house elections.

Other candidates that tacked more to the center and distanced themselves from DSA-style Democrats, such as re-elected Georgia senator John Ossoff, won with more comfortable victories. In Ossoff’s case, he pulled off a whopping 18-point advantage over Mike Collins. 

Additional analysis from Third Way also confirmed that seven center-left Democrats ran an average of five points ahead of the Democratic statewide House vote in their states. Meanwhile more DSA-leaning candidates — including Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan and Maine’s Troy Jackson — ran a solid five points behind it.

More coverage of the 2026 midterm elections:

• Live updates on the midterm elections
• NY suburbs’ last GOP strongholds flip as blue wave makes history on Long Island, Westchester
• Dems prep anti-Trump blitz during first 100 hours when they take back Congress
• Dem House majority swells to Obama-era levels as more GOP incumbents are wiped out
• NY’s top 5 most expensive House races include a whopping $308M in total spending

Americans have made themselves clear: they want change from the Trump-era status quo, but they’re not resoundingly calling for a socialist revolution. In fact, it seems like the candidates who flirt with those politics sort of scare them.

Unfortunately, many progressives aren’t getting the message. 

“Tonight we celebrate an incredible victory. Tomorrow the real work starts,” Texas representative and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Greg Casar said on X on Tuesday night. “This is a mandate to deliver big change. No complacency.”

And New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the following morning that “this country has elected a new generation of leadership, a generation with a mandate.”

This is a mistake American politicians keep making — and probably part of the reason that we just experienced this blue wave in the first place. 

In 2024, Trump pulled off a resounding victory with a new coalition of voters — including young men, Hispanics, and Black men — who showed up for Republicans in historic numbers. In his election speech, the president declared that he’d been given “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

He invoked the mandate again and again as he carried out aggressive ICE raids and imposed unpopular tariffs. Ultimately, it seems many voters in 2026 came out to take a stand against that so-called mandate, but they may only end up empowering a different group of politicians with another one.

Overzealous DSA types declaring a victory are missing an important trend: More Americans than ever are identifying as independents — and they’re often casting their votes between “lesser-of-two-evils” candidates with reservations rather than complete moral certainty.

A wise Democratic party would take 2026 as a mandate for moderation. But the radical extremists, no doubt, will be quick to declare this victory their own — and make everyone suffer on account of it.