Who won the 2026 elections?

The voters.

In Utah and across the United States, the people took seriously their own power to choose who will govern them. They overcame gerrymandered congressional districts and shrugged off many millions of dollars in billionaire spending to have their say.

Election officials — Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson chief among them — stood up to intimidation from the White House and Justice Department to run clean elections. County election officials, volunteer poll workers and activists of all stripes worked to get out the vote and to count it.

Credit, also, to all the candidates who didn’t get elected to anything Tuesday, even after months of hard work. Without them, it’s not a democracy.

Rumors of federal efforts to meddle in the vote, maybe by sending ICE agents to intimidate voters at the polls, thankfully did not materialize. Perhaps because it was clear even to this administration that the people would not stand for it.

Listen to the voters

Now, those who were elected have the chance, and the responsibility, to do real governing, wisely, judiciously and for the benefit of the people. To do that, officials of both parties, in Congress and in the Utah Legislature, must actually listen to the voters.

This time, the beneficiaries of the widespread throw-the-rascals-out mood were the Democrats. In blue states, red states and purple states — and Utah is clearly purpler than many may suspect — voters wanted a change.

They were tired of inflation, corruption, inflation, war, inflation, ICE violence, prohibitively expensive health care, disdain for the poor and for struggling families, inflation, secret deals, xenophobia, data centers and AI, abuse of power, destruction of the environment, cozying up to foreign dictators, disregard for women’s rights and, most of all, inflation.

Often, spikes in inflation are due to factors beyond the easy control of a president, even though they bear the political blame. This time, Donald Trump’s economically illiterate tariffs and the oil shortages caused by his irrational war against Iran meant that the blame for the rising cost of gas, diesel and other goods belonged squarely on his shoulders.

A Republican-controlled Congress was unwilling to do anything to curb the president’s excesses, to do its job as a constitutionally co-equal branch of government. Many of its members justly paid the price.

It is now appropriate that the Democrats who will run Congress for the next two years develop their oversight muscles, investigate the corruption and self-dealing of the administration and pass necessary laws to restrain executive power.

But the new Congress cannot just be about revenge. It must be about building a stronger society.

Reversing Trump’s efforts to strip food benefits from poor families, to make health care unreachably expensive, to shred the nation’s environmental protection rules and boost fossil fuels over renewable energy sources, to side with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. All of those will be areas where the Democratic Congress, and whatever allies they may be able to raise across the aisle, can earn the trust that it has been temporarily given them.

A more balanced Utah

The national blue tsunami produced some currents in Utah.

It was not only that the new 1st Congressional District, designed to give a real voice to Salt Lake County voters, returned Ben McAdams to Washington by a wide margin.

The Republican super-duper majority in the Utah Legislature was significantly, if not thoroughly, eroded. Votes are still being counted, but as this is written it appears that Utah Democrats are on track to flip as many as 17 seats in the House and two in the Senate.

Among those on the verge of being unseated are Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore and influential Reps. Jim Dunnigan and Ken Ivory, the latter a leading culture warrior and driving force behind Utah’s embarrassing book-banning law.

This is on top of the ouster of Senate President Stuart Adams, Sen. Dan McCay and Rep. Trevor Lee in the June Republican primary.

Numbers available so far also indicate that Democrats will be the majority on the Salt Lake County Council for the first time since 2010, and will increase their numbers on the Utah State Board of Education from two to five — out of a board of 15.

These results don’t give Utah Democrats a lot of influence so much as they should be a strong signal to Republicans that their power is fleeting. That, if they want to keep that power, they should stop governing as our ruling class and start comporting themselves as servants of the people.

More support for education. Fewer back-room deals for developers, data centers, nuclear power entrepreneurs and fossil-fuel dead-enders. No more tax cuts that benefit the rich and won’t buy most families a pizza night out. An end to the culture war hysteria that attacks education, demonizes gender minorities and pretends that diversity efforts are a threat to society.

And stop trying to amend the state Constitution in ways that limit the people’s power to govern themselves. Such as this year’s Amendment B, an attempt to require a 60% vote for any citizen’s initiative that would raise taxes. The voters rightly crushed that feint, rejecting it by a vote of 71% to 29%.

This election shows that the voters are watching.

They need to keep it up.

Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.