The focus after a landslide midterm election has largely been on the American South, but the results also point to a major political shift in New England. After Democrat Troy Jackson defeated Susan Collins in Maine, no Republican senators from New England are expected to serve next year. For a region whose Republican identity dates to abolitionism and Abraham Lincoln, the outcome is the end point of a realignment in which the two parties have effectively traded regional bases.

The region—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut—will also send no Republicans to the U.S. Congress, either in the Senate or the House of Representatives, with one exception. Maine is sending former Gov. Paul LePage to the House to represent the 2nd Congressional District.

The Boston Globe described that outcome as “supremely ironic.” Although the midterms represented a broad rejection of the president and his political program, the newspaper wrote that “LePage claims he was Donald Trump before there was Donald Trump. LePage likes to threaten people and routinely says outrageous, bigoted things. He and his hero are like peas and carrots.”

The political histories of New England and the South have developed in opposite directions. The South was once home to the slaveholding states, with Democrats serving as their primary political vehicle. New England was associated with abolitionism, while Republicans represented that cause. The Republican Party emerged from the remnants of the Whig Party and gained power with Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1865.

Both regions changed over time as the country fought over the place of minority rights and freedoms in national politics, particularly the rights of Black Americans. The South moved from blue to red, with no Democratic senators remaining there by 2015. New England moved from red to blue, and by 2027 it is expected to have no Republican senators—a process that began more than 160 years ago.

The shift in New England has extended beyond federal elections. Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Nevada saw their state governments move from partial Democratic control to full Democratic control. In Connecticut, by contrast, Democrats already held the majority. Even so, Donald Trump’s political presence has left state and local Republicans facing what the article describes as despair.

Next year, Connecticut’s state Senate is expected to have its largest Democratic majority in 140 years, according to the Register. The result would also represent the party’s largest majority in state history. Of the chamber’s 36 seats, Democrats are expected to hold either 32 or 33, with one election still pending. Republicans will hold either three or four seats. Either outcome would leave the minority with roughly one seat in ten.

The state House is projected to have its largest Democratic majority since 1975, the year after Watergate. Democrats could hold as many as 118 of the 151 seats—a margin of better than three to one.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont also became only the second governor to win three consecutive terms. He did so with the largest margins achieved by a Democrat in the state since Watergate: three percentage points in his first victory, 13 points in his second and 18 points in his third.

The results have benefited Lamont each time he has campaigned for governor, with Trump present in the broader political background. Only 10 years ago, Connecticut’s state Senate was tied, 18-18. In 2016, Democrats held 79 seats in the state House and Republicans held 72, out of a total that was then 150 seats. The intervening political change has been attributed in the article to Trump’s impact on the Connecticut Republican Party.

Connecticut Republicans now face the same dilemma as Republicans in other Democratic-leaning states: They remain tied to their past association with Trump while hoping to build a future less defined by him. The article identifies right-wing media and organizations as a central obstacle. Despite the midterms’ decisive losses, those groups continue to punish Republican officeholders for disloyalty, while making it difficult for them to distance themselves from a president described as the most unpopular since Herbert Hoover, who left office amid the Great Depression.

A leading Arizona Republican called Turning Point USA, the organization founded by the late demagogue Charlie Kirk, “a destructive force” that is “driving us to extinction,” comparing it to a parasite slowly killing its host. In New York, a leading Republican in the State Assembly said the state Republican Party needed “an enema” after Republican-held offices turned Democratic and the state’s congressional delegation declined from seven members to six out of 26. The New York Times reported on the New York results, while the New York Times covered the Arizona comments.

The article identifies Trump as the central problem. Republicans were defeated in part because of a Hispanic backlash against his deportation program. Yet on Friday, Trump promoted Stephen Miller, described as the architect of that program. The president has also sought to hold together a fracturing coalition by threatening its various factions.

In a memo sent the previous week to more than 3,000 right-wing groups, the White House criticized Republicans who blamed Trump for the midterm losses. The memo added, “we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations.” The Wall Street Journal reported on the White House warning.

The article suggests that political self-preservation may eventually prompt some Republicans to distance themselves from the president. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson could be one example. Earlier this year, following the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Johnson opposed Democratic efforts to impose limits on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as reported by Politico.

After the midterms, however, Johnson said there was corruption “within the Trump administration.” He did not directly criticize Trump, instead referring to unnamed White House aides whom he accused of serving corporate interests rather than the public. Johnson is up for reelection in 2028 and said Republicans must “embrace the enduring principles of our founders, limited government.” The Washington Post reported his comments.

If Johnson seeks reelection in a state that has shifted fully toward Democrats, the article argues that he will need to recast himself as a “constitutional conservative” rather than the authoritarian figure he has presented himself as being. That would require him to maintain the loyalty of Republican voters who support Trump while convincing other voters that he is not defined by the president.

The midterms completed a long political transformation in New England. The region was once solidly Republican; 161 years later, it is solidly Democratic, with the “supremely ironic” exception of LePage’s House seat.

The results may also mark a new phase in Southern politics. The South had not elected a Democratic U.S. senator in eight years, but it is expected to have four, assuming Mississippi’s race goes to Scott Colom. The article concludes that Trump has broken the Solid South, while New England’s Republican era has ended. It also recalls Barack Obama’s 2012 discussion of a future in which the political fever that gripped the Republican Party after his 2008 election would subside, adding that the change may now be beginning.