Former journalist, longtime investor and Willett Advisors CEO Steven Rattner has sorted through the post-mortem data from the 2026 election, surfacing trends that have flown largely under the radar in the broader analysis. Among his findings is one data point that amounts to a bombshell for the GOP.

Speaking on "Morning Joe" Thursday, Rattner explained that Republicans have largely reigned supreme since 1994, before President Donald Trump and the modern GOP helped change that pattern. The majority Democrats won on Nov. 3 is their second highest in the post-Watergate era. House majorities matter beyond the headline, too: all 435 seats are contested every two years, and the majority party elects the speaker and sets the chamber's agenda.

The more consequential finding, however, concerns Trump's MAGA base: it did not show up.

"About 25 million 2024 Trump voters didn't vote in a midterm House race," Rattner said on X, posting an accompanying chart. Another "3.6 million [who] backed a Democrat." For scale, Trump drew roughly 77 million votes in 2024, so that dropout equates to close to a third of his 2024 coalition.

In Rattner's assessment, the election was decided not only by those who voted, but by those who stayed home.

"So, if you take the [Kamala] Harris voters, 75 million of them back two years ago, all of these folks voted for Democrats. Virtually none of them voted for Republicans, but a hunk of them stayed home. When you look, and this is typical, of course, in midterms, when you look at Trump voters, you can see, again, very few of them, a few more, but not a huge number defected to the Democrats."

Put another way, Democratic turnout shifted from its 2022 level and looked more like 2018's, while Trump voters simply did not show up. Although a solid chunk of Republicans crossed party lines, a "much larger share of the Trump voters stayed home, just didn't vote." Rattner's comparison does carry a caveat: the Harris figures come from a general election, where turnout is generally higher.

Data from the Brennan Center for Justice point to another major difference: Black voters. The Black vote dropped significantly in 2022 compared with 2018, a year when turnout was higher. In 2026, it was higher than at any point in the past 16 years, and PBS News reported that this year's numbers among Black voters rivaled those of President Barack Obama's election in 2008.

Youth turnout also surged. Participation among voters aged 18 to 29 was the second highest it has been in 30 years, surpassed only by 2018, according to the Center for Information Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).