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President Donald Trump’s aggressive campaign to cut the size of the federal government, through the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, will likely play a large role in the upcoming midterm elections, especially in the D.C. region.
“I think you can pretty much boil down most of U.S. electoral politics in terms of what the economy looks like, and DOGE took a wrecking ball to the D.C. area’s economy,” said Alex Keena, associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Probably everyone who’s listening to this knows somebody who was affected by it.”
More than 260,000 workers left federal service due to Trump administration initiatives in 2025, according to the Office of Management and Budget, including reductions in force, early retirement, deferred resignations and a hiring freeze.
Led by billionaire Elon Musk, Keena said DOGE cuts didn’t only affected federal employees and contractors.
“All these people go out and go shopping — all these people contribute to the local economy,” Keena said. “Not to mention the rush of people putting their homes on the market.”
Professor Karen Hult, with Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs, agreed DOGE “could well have some effects in terms of turnout for both parties.”
“Many people have lost their jobs and left the area entirely,” Hult said. “So, that may have some effects on whether they decide to vote to begin with.”
Keena said the economic toll of DOGE remains.
“There’s destabilizing of the housing market in D.C. and in the suburbs,” he said. “So, that’s affecting people who don’t even have jobs with the government, whose housing prices are negatively affected by all the cuts.”
And, according to Keena, there’s nothing to show for DOGE’s efforts.
“You compound it with the fact that DOGE kind of fizzled out after a couple of months, and they didn’t really end up accomplishing much savings at all,” he said. “It didn’t come with the expected benefits, just the costs.”
With Trump in office, Hult said Republicans and Democrats are more polarized than ever.
“Much of that polarization is ‘affective polarization,’ which is our fancy term that people are going beyond ideology and policy differences, and saying there are really some deeper emotional and cultural differences,” in which people of different parties increasingly dislike, distrust or feel hostility toward one another.
In addition, Hult said the distrust may be skewing polls.
“The number of people that are willing to participate has clearly diminished, quite a lot,” Hult said.
“I think we pay far too much attention to what pollsters are predicting,” Hult added. “Many candidates are saying, the real poll here is what the outcomes are on Election Day.”
Both experts said the party of the incumbent president generally has a disadvantage in midterm elections.
“At the end of the day, people go out and buy stuff like groceries and gas, and they have a tendency to blame the party in power,” Keena said. “Even when the economic situation is good, there’s still a tendency to vote against the party that controls the White House.”
While the Virginia primary had light voter turnout, the midterm elections will decide which party controls Congress.
Former Rep. Elaine Luria again won the Democratic nomination for the 2nd District House seat in the Virginia Beach area, setting up a rematch with GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans, who defeated Luria in 2022. Kiggans is considered the most vulnerable Republican lawmaker in Virginia.
In the 1st District, Republican Rep. Rob Wittman will seek reelection against former Henrico County prosecutor Shannon Taylor. As for Republicans, they hope GOP nominee Douglas Ollivant can knock off Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman in Virginia’s 7th District.
“I wish I had a crystal ball, but I don’t have one,” Keena said. “But I think we’re going to see a change in control of Congress.
The phenomenon of a shift in Congress during a midterm election “is becoming more and more frequent — and certainly everyone in the D.C. area knows what that’s like, and how it feels.”
Hult said the original concept of DOGE may stick with voters during the upcoming midterms.
“Some people do believe that the federal government has gotten too large. There’s too much involvement in regulations and in a variety of ways in people’s lives,” Hult said.
Keena said there are many political science models that can be used to project what could happen.
“But, at the end of the day, there’s just sort of a vibe that you can pick up in D.C. when the winds of change are coming in,” he said.
WTOP’s Mitchell Miller contributed to this report.
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