Midterm Democratic Socialist Wins

The midterm elections results are in, and the Democratic Socialist field fared well.

As of the morning of November 5, 2026, the Grid's roster of the 162 named candidates from DSA's election night tracker reads 61 elected, 24 lost, and 77 not yet called. Every status on the roster now carries the result that moved it — a called race, an official results portal, or a local paper's called line — and the multi-seat contests were checked against their published seat counts before anyone was marked a winner or a loser. Below are some major victories.

The big one

Abdul El-Sayed, U.S. Senate (Michigan). The former Wayne County health director won the state's open Senate seat by 7 percentage points over former Rep. Mike Rogers, in a race the Associated Press called as a historic win. El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, becomes the first Muslim senator in the United States — the product of a grassroots campaign built around Medicare for All, money out of politics, and strong criticism of the war in Gaza. "The bad guys lost," he told supporters, and for the movement the arithmetic is the point: the most-watched contest in the field was decided not despite the platform but on it.

The House field: seven for seven

Every named House target on the roster came home.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) held the first district ever to elect a democratic socialist to Congress — 107,129 votes to 29,505 with about 96% of precincts reporting, a margin of roughly 57 points. Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) retook hers 247,185 to 68,960, fully reported, another 55-point hold.

The three primary-season upsets all finished the job: Melat Kiros (CO-1) won her first term 192,446 to 34,396 with 78% reported; Claire Valdez (NY-7) won 135,179 to 24,370 with 97% reported; and Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13) ran over Adriano Espaillat's side of the race 141,014 to 18,308, the widest margin in the field at 76 points. Chris Rabb (PA-3) — the data-center moratorium, the public groceries, the working-class checklist — won 252,629 to 17,298, effectively uncontested at 94 to 6. And Donavan McKinney (MI-13) held 209,882 to 54,484, with the race fully reported.

Seven seats, seven wins, margins from "safe" to "landslide." The primary upsets were not a fluke that the general would correct. The general confirmed them.

The ground floor

The local and state rows are where the roster lives, and the morning of November 5 looks good.

In Washington, D.C., Janeese Lewis George won the mayoral race 151,539 to 18,073 — 84% of the vote with 81% reported — and Aparna Raj won Council District Ward 1, 19,072 to 1,141, the kind of margin that ends the debate about the city's direction for a full term.

In Vermont, Tanya Vyhovsky is one of the three winners in Senate District Chittenden-Central — 14,776 votes, third of four, in a 3-seat district the local press called outright. In Berkeley, the pro-tenant slate on the Rent Stabilization Board won four of the five seats up: Vylma Ortiz (17.8%), Nathan Mizell (17.7%), and Avery Arbaugh (17.6%) all took seats in a six-candidate field where the top five win — the tenants' slate lost only Derek Rodriguez, sixth. The board that has been the city's line of defense on rent goes back to session with its anti-displacement side in the majority.

The losses, where they are, are honest: three contested Vermont state House districts where the runner-up held the lead at 100% reported (Adam Franz, Jeffrey Peterson, Matt Gile), Mitchel Kulage third of four in Hastings, Minnesota's two-seat at-large city council race, and Rodriguez in Berkeley. The 77 rows still marked running are races that had not reached a called state as of this writing — they will flip as the counting finishes, each one against a source.

What the tally tells us

Sixty-one of 162 — 38% of the candidates we could point a reader to — are now in office, from the U.S. Senate down to a rent board. The base rate for a named democratic socialist candidate in an election year is supposed to be much worse than that. It is not, because the base of the list is not ambitious name-recognition; it is local seats held by local people, in the districts where those seats actually get decided. The Senate win is the headline. The rent board is the infrastructure.

The full roster is updated, filterable by office, state, status, and name, and every entry carries its source and the date it was checked. If a result came in that the list got wrong, or a name should be on it that is not, tell the editors.