Carville declares DeSantis ‘Republican winner’ after midterms

Democratic strategist James Carville suggested Wednesday that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was the 2026 midterms’ “Republican winner” after Democrats made sweeping gains across the country and reclaimed both chambers of Congress.

Carville, political adviser Mark McKinnon and Gen Z for Change founder Aidan Kohn-Murphy were talking about the potential for a post-President Trump GOP on Carville’s “ Politics War Room ” podcast when he made his claim about the Florida leader.

“The Republican winner last night was Ron DeSantis,” he said. “But Ron DeSantis can say we did better in — you know, ‘We want to win? Look at what we did in Florida’ … If I’m not a Republican, I don’t like Ron DeSantis … But everybody had dismissed him as out of hand.”

Carville noted that the Republican Party’s image will go down following Tuesday’s losses, but DeSantis’s “stock … doubled in the last 24 hours.” McKinnon chimed in, saying Florida’s and Texas’s results starkly differed, with Democrats making major gains in the Lone Star State while Republicans held firm in Florida, crediting DeSantis.

“The greatest beneficiary of this election may be Ron DeSantis,” he added.

Kohn-Murphy added that Democratic gains, but not wins, in Florida were “a pretty devastating result” that “could have been better.” But after seeing the Republican governor on the “national stage” before, the activist said he was unsure if “people will really take him seriously.”

DeSantis, who entered office in 2019 with Trump’s support and praise until the two faced off during the 2024 Republican presidential primary, has been seen as a potential successor to the president’s legacy. The Never Back Down PAC presented the governor as the future of the GOP in 2023.

Democrats gained ground in Florida state races and defeated Republican candidates for House seats, although the GOP maintained control of other major statewide offices. Voters chose Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) to succeed the term-limited DeSantis, becoming the Sunshine State’s first Black governor.

The outgoing Florida governor called the outcome of the midterms an “ extinction-level event ” for Republicans across the country while the party narrowly hung on to Florida.

“In January, when everyone in office leaves who are either term-limited or got voted out, of the 10 largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control … the state of Florida,” he said at a press conference Wednesday.

DeSantis also diagnosed the election result as “no question … a rebuke of the president and the Congress by Democrats, independents and some Republicans that crossed over,” in an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham later Wednesday.

“But a lot of our voters who stayed home, they stayed home because they were frustrated with the lack of productivity from Republicans in the House and Senate,” he continued. “That’s just a fact. They were promised big things, and they didn’t deliver it.”