Tuesday’s results are likely to have significant implications for the 2028 presidential race. Governors play a major role in voting access, election administration and efforts to redraw congressional maps, and all five states have vacillated between presidential nominees of both parties in recent elections. They will play critical roles in 2028 as Donald Trump enters the final two years of his second term, with the US Constitution barring him from seeking another.
Jackson, a billionaire who ran in Georgia, a state central to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential results, had called Biden's win "totally ridiculous" and criticised Georgia state officials for not complying with Trump's demands to "find" extra votes. "Our people really let us down," Jackson said when he was pressed on the 2020 election during a campaign event earlier this year.
Biggs and Tiffany voted in January 2021, as members of the US House of Representatives, to overturn the 2020 results, and both signed on to a lawsuit seeking to invalidate results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. James was not in Congress when the results were certified; he had unsuccessfully run for the US Senate in that election cycle, then won a House seat in the 2022 midterms and acknowledged Biden's victory that year. He reversed his position in June, telling podcaster Benny Johnson that the 2020 election was "rigged and manipulated".
Garrity, elected to her current position in 2020, campaigned with Trump to reverse his election defeat and appeared at a rally in Pennsylvania on January 5, 2021, calling on state lawmakers to decertify the 2020 results. A day later, Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. Tiffany, Garrity and Jackson have since released statements or clarified their previous actions regarding the 2020 election and acknowledged that Biden won. Biggs and James have not.
It is unclear whether Tuesday’s results will affect the momentum of a push Trump has made over the past year and a half to rally state leaders to redesign congressional maps to help Republicans. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican prevented by term limits from running this cycle, said on Wednesday he would not call a special session of the legislature to redraw the state’s maps before his Democratic successor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, is sworn in. Some Democratic-led states, notably California under Governor Gavin Newsom, have responded with their own efforts at gerrymandering.
Trump told The New York Times on Tuesday night that he was "absolutely willing" to accept the midterm results and pledged to work with the Democrats, who handily retook control of both chambers of Congress. "We'll, you know, look forward to working with them," he said. "We'll probably work something out."