The Democratic Party of 2026 is not the Democratic Party of 2024. During the last election cycle, then-Vice President Kamala Harris struck a hawkish note. While the Democratic Party squashed a rebellion of voters angry about the Gaza war, Harris attacked then-Republican candidate Donald Trump for appeasing Iran and North Korea.

But after two years of turmoil in the Middle East, including Trump's unsuccessful Iran war, the Democratic Party has changed. Establishment politicians like Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.) have openly said that it was a mistake to become associated with "neoconservative global dominance visions," and more hawkish incumbents were overthrown in primaries that were very much about the war.

The feeling is mutual. Communities attached to the military-industrial complex in northern Virginia leaned much more Republican in their donations this year. ZIP code 22101 is home to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and several military contractors in McLean, Virginia. Between the 2024 and 2026 campaigns, the partisan split of donations moved from overwhelmingly Democratic to roughly balanced between Democrats and Republicans.

A disclaimer on the data: Not everyone who lives in Langley works for the CIA, and not everyone who works for the CIA lives in Langley. And as Americans, they have a right to donate to whatever causes they see fit; there are some unfortunate privacy implications to the government making individual donations public information. The currently-available filings also only extend through September 2025.

But in aggregate, the data tell an interesting story about communities whose livelihood comes from the deep state. That story is partly similar to 2024. While residents of Langley and McLean overwhelmingly prefer Democrats to represent themselves—Rep. James R. Walkinshaw (D–Va.) handily won reelection—they are OK with helping Republicans get elected in other states. The outside Democrats that Langley and McLean residents do donate to tend to be centrist hawks.

This year, however, there were fewer such Democrats to donate to. During the 2024 cycle, eight of the top 15 out-of-state recipients of Langley and McLean donations were Democrats. This cycle, only four were Democrats who ran in the general election. Another candidate on the list, Alex Vindman, ran for Senate in Florida on his national security credentials but lost the Democratic primary to progressive upstart Angie Nixon.

And the money from Langley and McLean was less effective this cycle. Only four out of the top 15 out-of-state recipients in 2024 lost their elections. (One of them, Kyrsten Sinema, dropped out of the Arizona race.) This cycle, six of the top 15 lost.

Mike Rogers, a consummate hawk and perennial Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, was on the losers' list both times. In 2024, he lost to Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA officer who was also on the top 15 list. This year, Rogers lost to Abdul El-Sayed, an antiwar Arab progressive, in a much bigger rebuke to the national security state.

The overall donation data tell an even more dramatic story. In the 2024 cycle, Langley and McLean residents gave $1.25 million to Republican Party committees, and $2.3 million to Democratic Party committees. This cycle, donations to Republican committees increased to $1.5 million while donations to Democratic committees fell to $601,616.

Meanwhile, although donations through the Democratic aggregator ActBlue doubled from $1.25 million to $2.8 million, donations through the Republican aggregator WinRed quadrupled from $308,864 to $1.59 million.

Some of the shift was clearly from the same people shifting. Bipartisan donors—those from Langley and McLean who gave to candidates and committees from both parties—gave $1.9 million to Democrats and $1.2 million to Republicans total in 2024. This cycle, the same category of donors gave $955,492 to Democrats and $1.39 million to Republicans.

It's worth noting how unusual this bipartisan split in individual donors is. Americans overwhelmingly pick one party and stick to it; only 0.5 percent of donors nationwide this cycle gave to both parties. Yet 2.5 percent of ZIP code 22101 donors gave to both. Despite shifts on the national level, plenty of other Democrats are still hawks or willing to accommodate hawkish policy.

Again, not everyone in Langley and McLean votes solely based on the interests of the local institutions. But the Langley and McLean donation numbers are an indicator of where things are going. That part of the country had less reason to favor Democratic control of Congress this year than they did for Harris' coalition. The real question is whether the same will be true when the White House is back in play in 2028.

The post Langley Donors Shift Republican in 2026 appeared first on Reason Magazine.