‘Revenge of the nerds’: US midterms deliver a win for science – and a rebuke of Maha

The wins for Democrats come after years of cuts and upheaval to US health and science infrastructure

A political organizations behind a wave of Democratic doctors and scientists winning elections up and down the ballot is calling the stunning rebuke of Trumpism the “Stem swing” and “revenge of the nerds”.

The wins come after years of cuts and upheaval to US health and science infrastructure, as Democrats spent big on health-related ads and as voters rejected the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement.

“It’s clear from the results: 2026 was a healthcare election,” said Erik Polyak, executive director of 3.14 Action, a group that worked to elect Democratic health professionals and scientists across the country. “We’ve heard a lot about affordability. Healthcare affordability is the No 1 piece of that. Our doctors and scientists are certainly well-equipped to lead on those issues.”

Among the history-making lawmakers are Democrats Dr Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and Dr Annie Andrews of South Carolina. The last time a Democratic doctor held a seat in the US Senate was in 1969 – the era when Medicare and Medicaid were passed into law. They are far from alone: 3.14 Action is still tallying wins and waiting for results among “hundreds” of obscure state races, some of which are not even reporting results yet.

“The voters’ message is simple and clear: enough,” Dr Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to improving Americans’ health, said in a statement.

“People across America are frustrated by the high cost of living, exhausted trying to make ends meet, and fed up with a ridiculously expensive and complicated healthcare system,” said Besser. “They want leaders who understand how hard it is and will do something to make their lives better.”

Doctors and scientists have long held leadership roles in Congress, but until this election, the overwhelming majority were Republican. Perhaps unsurprisingly, scientists studied this: from 2011 to 2020, 86% of the physician-members of Congress were Republican and three-quarters were from southern states.

The 2026 election turned that on its head. Republicans like Dr Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Senate candidate Dr Roger Marshall – both allies of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr – lost. Races for three more Republican doctors were too close to call. Meanwhile, all incumbent Democratic doctors won their races.

Galvanizing Americans behind science did not come without a cost. Trump and Kennedy brought upheaval to nearly every American scientific institution and corner of American healthcare, from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to Medicaid, the public health program that insures 72 million Americans.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has lost up to one-third of its staff in the midst of a record-breaking measles outbreak. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, lost leadership and saw path-breaking research stymied amid disruptions, cancellations and censorship. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) struggled to keep up with a historic outbreak of diarrhea-inducing cyclosporiasis. On election day, New York health authorities announced that a child in the state had died of measles for the first time in 30 years.