Republicans Discover X Isn't Real Life After Midterm Losses

Democrats swept the most powerful state offices in Texas in the 2026 midterms, and Republican railroad commissioner candidate Bo French lost by more than a million votes despite a campaign built around Master Chief imagery. In Nevada, Halo composer Martin O'Donnell lost his House race to incumbent Susie Lee. Matthew Gault's piece in 404 Media argues the right's meme-saturated culture on X mistook virality for persuasion, and the ballot box made the point.

"They deluded themselves into believing that memes carry persuasive power and that their bubble on X represented material reality," Michael Senters, a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League, told the outlet. He added that the power memes actually carry is the power to "help define linguistic and community lines" rather than to change minds, and that in his view memes "generally don't persuade."

Alyssa Mercante, an internet culture reporter writing a book called *Rage Game*, was blunter about the gap between online salience and voter priorities. "If the economy is the number one issue for both Democrats and Republicans going into the midterms, no amount of Malfoid scissoring Anakin Skywalker is going to change that," she said. On the hyper-online right more broadly, she told 404 Media, "It is not working anymore. The material reality of America is just not good enough."

The article's closing posture is the oldest line about the platform, repeated plainly: "Twitter is not real life."