Democrat Donor Strike Comes Home to Roost

As the 2026 midterms rapidly approach, the consensus among the commentariat is that the Democrats will retake control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well. This meeting of the “expert” minds is based primarily on the polls, despite their increasing tendency to underestimate GOP performance, and the fact that the president’s party usually loses seats in one or both houses of Congress in midterm elections. But there is another factor at play this year that most of the pundit class has overlooked. The Democrats are usually flush with cash in midterm cycles and they use much of it to fund turnout and ad campaigns. But this year many of their donors deserted them.

This “donor strike” as the Wall Street Journal describes it, began due to deep dissatisfaction with the leadership at of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after their catastrophic mismanagement of the money donated to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. People such as George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and other high-profile donors have been loath to write the big checks Democrats have relied upon for years. The DNC isn’t the only victim of these disgruntled donors. The party committees and super PACs lag far behind their Republican counterparts across the board. This is not only diminishing their chances of winning some congressional races, it is hurting their gubernatorial campaigns, according to a Politico report.

In former and future presidential battlegrounds Florida, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada, the gubernatorial advertising gap is yawning. For the remainder of the campaign, Republicans are on track to outspend Democrats on television about 6-to-1 in Florida, more than 3-to-1 in Texas, 2.5-to-1 in Georgia, more than 2-to-1 in Wisconsin, and only slightly more narrowly in Ohio and Nevada … The Democratic Governors Association, with finite resources and 36 statehouse races on the ballot this year, is not on the air in Florida or Texas a month before the election.

Inevitably, there is a considerable amount of whistling past the graveyard by the media. The New Republic advises its readers, “The real impact of Republicans’ cash advantage will only be clear when polls close on November 3. But until then, we have one clear indicator that money might not be everything in 2026: the generic ballot. And signs point to a potential tsunami for Democrats.” First of all, the generic ballot tells us absolutely nothing about the gubernatorial contests. It’s just a poll that purports to measure voter intentions in congressional races. Moreover, as Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini points out, the polls in the last four congressional elections have consistently overstated the Democrats actual election performance.