Blue wave or blue tsunami? ITV News asks how bad the midterms could get for Trump
A walk through the Capitol sets up the stakes, before the Cook Political Report's Jessica Taylor weighs the economy, the Latino vote and an unexpected issue: AI data centers.
ITV News
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 437,705 views a day, 16 times a normal first day on this channel (28,032).
US midterm elections: How bad could it get for Donald Trump?
Things we can learn from the video
Press to jump
- 0:14Outside the Capitol, the House and Senate are explained by comparison with the UK Parliament.
- 0:46A divided Congress would mean legislative deadlock and investigations for Trump, the correspondent says.
- 1:44Republicans hold a slim House majority, and every House seat is up for election.
- 2:56Key Senate contests: Texas (Paxton vs. Talarico), Kansas, Michigan and Iowa.
- 4:32Jessica Taylor on Democratic gains, the Latino vote shift, the economy and AI data centers.
- 11:34Taylor says a third impeachment effort would not be smart for Democrats and notes Republicans' turnout challenge.
Gridlock and investigations: those are the two words ITV News' Washington correspondent puts on screen as he walks the corridors of the Capitol, sketching what a Congress in Democratic hands would mean for Donald Trump's last two years.
The explainer, "US midterm elections: How bad could it get for Donald Trump?", passed 313,000 views within 13 hours of going up. Its comment section was already more than twice as busy as a usual first day for the channel's regular videos.
It starts with the basics, written for a British audience. Standing outside the Capitol, the correspondent compares the House and the Senate with the two chambers at Westminster, then runs through the arithmetic: a slim Republican majority in the House, where every seat is on the ballot, and 35 Senate seats in play. Texas gets top billing among the races, with Ken Paxton facing James Talarico, followed by Kansas, Michigan and Iowa. Archive clips of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama absorbing their own midterm defeats make the point that this has happened before.
The longer half belongs to Jessica Taylor of The Cook Political Report, interviewed on the National Mall. "The question is whether this is a blue wave or a blue tsunami," she says, and her answers keep circling back to one subject: "It all comes back to the economy." She also calls AI data centers "the sleeper issue of the campaign," and near the end argues that a third impeachment would not be a smart move for Democrats.
One detail has a number of viewers reaching for the reply button: the report labels Paxton a former governor of Texas, and several commenters note that he was the state's attorney general.
It was a busy day all round for the channel. A report on a Norwegian teenager jailed for 20 years over a murder plot in Huddersfield also drew far more viewers than usual.
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- Channel
- ITV News
- Subscribers
- 2,250,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 8,407,737
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,361,769 (on a normal day: 1,192,124)
- Video published
- October 16, 2026
- Video views so far
- 313,125 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 437,705
The numbers
The explainer pulled in a first-day audience far beyond what the channel's regular videos usually see, with a comment section to match.
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