This Might Be the Most Eye-Opening Way to See the Midterm Results
A video circulating on social media redraws the 2026 midterm map one voting group at a time, and the country looks different in almost every frame. Under the heading “2026 Midterms If Only… Voted,” it colors each state red or blue depending on how men, women, white men, Latino voters, Black voters, Protestants, voters under 30, and about a dozen other groups cast their ballots.
Using information from AP VoteCast 2026 and 2024 (via NBC News and Fox News) and NBC News results, the team behind Dear Data gave us a new and different perspective on the results. “We wanted a full map for every group on screen, and we wanted to show as many groups as we could without misleading anybody,” the team wrote. “That meant filling gaps with estimates. About 79% of the colors come directly from the poll and we estimated the other 21%.”
However, national estimates from The New York Times and Tufts University’s CIRCLE broadly line up with what it shows.
If Only White Men Had Voted, Most of the Map Turns Red
In the frame showing the country if only white men had voted, most of the map turns red, including New York, Illinois, and Texas. At the same time, a cluster of states including California, Colorado, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Virginia stays blue. The map gets redder still when it narrows to white voters without a college degree, leaving Colorado and Hawaii among the few blue states on the screen, and the Protestants frame is nearly as lopsided, with only a handful of Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states and Hawaii holding for Democrats.
In national estimates, white voters, who made up 70% of the electorate, backed Republican House candidates by 4 points, and white voters without a college degree did so by 20 points, according to Times Voter Trends, The New York Times’ estimate of how different groups voted. The national summary from the Times does not break out white men or Protestants on their own.
Age cut across that pattern, since young white men backed Democrats for the House by 10 points, according to CIRCLE, the youth civic research center at Tufts University’s Tisch College.
Women and Black Voters Turn the Map Almost Entirely Blue
In the video’s women-only frame, only eight states stay red, mostly across the Mountain West and the Plains, along with Kentucky and West Virginia. Women, who made up 53% of voters, backed Democrats 61% to 38%, a 23-point margin, compared with a 3-point Democratic edge among men, according to the Times estimates.
The Black voters frame is blue from coast to coast. Black voters supported Democratic House candidates 91% to 8%, according to the Times, the widest margin of any racial group in its estimates.
Latino Voters Swung Hard Toward Democrats
In the video’s Latino frame, only six states stay red: Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Alaska. Hispanic voters backed Democrats 70% to 29%, according to the Times estimates, a 41-point margin that represents a 30-point shift toward Democrats compared with the 2024 presidential election. Among young voters, 71% of Latino youth chose a Democratic House candidate, CIRCLE found.
Their share of the vote lagged behind their share of eligible voters, 10% compared with 14%.
In the Video, Voters Under 30 Turn Every State Blue
The youngest voters produced the only other fully blue map in the video. Voters ages 18 to 29 backed Democrats 70% to 28%, according to The Times, a 33-point shift toward Democrats from 2024. Voters 30 to 44 were close behind in the video, with only Idaho, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Kentucky staying red.
Fifty-nine percent of young men voted for a Democratic House candidate, compared with 70% of young women, according to CIRCLE, which noted that 56% of young men had supported President Donald Trump in 2024, based on AP VoteCast data from that election. Among young people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or “something else,” 86% backed Democrats, the center found.
Voters under 30 made up 12% of the electorate but 20% of eligible voters.
Rural America Stayed Red, Even Among the Young
The rural voters frame is almost a mirror image of the youth map, with only a few states, among them California, Washington, Colorado, and New Mexico, staying blue. Rural youth still leaned Republican, 50% to 44%, according to CIRCLE, though that margin was smaller than in 2024, when 60% of rural youth voted for Trump. The independents frame, by contrast, has only Wyoming, West Virginia, and Vermont in red.
The video’s maps are hypothetical, and several outlets describe their own numbers as estimates that will be refined as additional data arrives. For its part, The Times based its figures on interviews with 25,236 voters through The Times/Siena Poll, precinct-level results, and voter files. At the same time, CIRCLE’s analysis draws on the NORC Civic Health & Elections Project, a survey of more than 90,000 voters backed in part by The Washington Post.