BRIGHTON, Mich. Doug Vandewarker, a software consultant, said he usually votes Republican. But he was voting Democratic this time because he didnt think Donald Trump should be the face of our country.

Over the course of two hours outside a polling place in Brighton, a small Michigan city roughly equidistant between Detroit and Lansing, I heard many more statements similar to that like when Mike Blood, managing director at a software company, said he wanted a bulwark against the current administration, and when Crystal Straughan, a hairdresser, said, I dont think the president is a good example for my child.

All of these people said theyd voted for Republicans at points in the past, as did Mary Ann Budd, a horticulturalist. But on Tuesday, she said, I voted Democratic all the way through and I havent done that in years. Im independent, leaning conservative. There needs to be more balance.

It was a lot different from what Id heard two years ago outside another Michigan polling place in Macomb County, the heavily white, middle-class Detroit suburb where the most energized voters were the ones who hated Hillary Clinton. The angry mood was a hint of things to come that night.

Id picked Brighton for this years stakeout in the hopes it would be similarly revealing. The city sits in Michigans 8th Congressional District , which Trump carried by 7 percentage points and Mike Bishop, the Republican incumbent, won by even more in 2016. But this time Bishop was running against Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA officer who had served in Iraq. Her big issue was Bishops vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and its highly popular protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

The argument over health care along with a devastating television ad may have made the difference. Slotkin won, with the Wednesday morning tally showing her vote share at 50.8 percent to Bishops 46.8 percent, for a margin of roughly 13,000 votes.

Slotkins victory was part of a bigger trend, one that was arguably Tuesdays most important result: Democrats winning back the House of Representatives . As of Wednesday morning, Democrats seemed poised to claim about 230 seats overall, giving them a 25-seat majority, give or take more than enough to stop Republican legislation and, no less important, to start Democratic investigations.

The push to repeal Obamacare by legislation will stop, at least for now. The Trump administrations management of government, not to mention Trumps personal and financial conduct, will finally get some congressional scrutiny .

Democrats made other major gains like the election of Americas first openly gay governor in Colorado and the passage of ballot initiatives in three deeply conservative states that will allow 300,000 low-income working adults to get Medicaid . Two years ago, in the wake of Trumps election, shell-shocked Democrats probably would have cherished such victories.

But the mood among Democrats and their supporters was pretty mixed as Tuesday slipped into Wednesday.

How The System Is Still Rigged Against Democrats

Partly the disappointment was a function of losses by a handful of candidates, like Beto ORourke, the Texas congressman running for the Senate, in whom Democrats across the country had invested so much emotionally.

Partly it was how the night played out: The first big news came from Florida, where progressives watched one of their heroes, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, lose his bid to become governor even as they saw one of their villains, outgoing governor Rick Scott, move ahead in the vote for U.S. senator. (A recount is now likely in the Senate race.)

But the setbacks went beyond that.

Control of the U.S. Senate had also been in play this election and, although the polls had suggested for a while that Republicans were likely to retain their majority, many Democrats grasped at encouraging signs like shocking early turnout numbers in Texas or a late-breaking media investigation of the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri. In the end, the polls were right and the upset didnt happen.

Republicans will actually emerge from the election with a larger majority in the Senate than they had before, ensuring no media narrative about a blue wave. But it would have been that kind of wave if votes actually translated more directly to results. Democrats won the national popular vote by more than 7 percentage points , according to the latest data.

Its no secret why Democrats nevertheless emerged with fewer Senate seats. The Constitution gives disproportionate power to small states in the upper chamber, which in the current political alignment means conservative-leaning states have extra representation. This is an ongoing problem that will undermine Democrats in the next election just as surely as it did this one.

A similar problem plagues the House, where the incoming Democratic majority is probably smaller than it might have been because of partisan gerrymandering . And the newly elected Democrats who won in Republican-leaning districts like Michigans 8th are sure to face difficult challenges winning re-election in two years. As gerrymandering expert Dave Daley told HuffPost recently, If it requires a generational wave to give Democrats [the House], thats a sign of just how powerful gerrymandering is, not a sign that it can be conquered.

In 2020, Democrats will have to confront another familiar obstacle: the Electoral College, which also gives smaller states extra power. Its why Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, with the lone loss a relatively small one, but in three of the six elections a Republican went to the White House anyway.

This is the new normal in America, the political minority wielding power that looks more like a majoritys, and the problem seems likely to get worse as Republicans find more and more ways to protect themselves politically.

Some of the most arresting images from Tuesday showed the long lines in Georgia , where Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state who was also the partys nominee for governor, told a private gathering that Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams voter mobilization continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote. (Kemp was ahead on Wednesday morning, though Georgia was still counting ballots.)