Republicans outnumber Democrats two to one in the western Pennsylvania district where Lisa Boeving-Learned, a veteran and retired police sergeant with a wife and deep family ties in the region, is running for the state legislature. In western Wisconsin, networks of local grassroots activists are supporting a female, Native American former Marine running for state assembly in a region that swung hard for Donald Trump. And in Catawba County, North Carolina—which Trump won by 38 points—three Democratic women, including the area’s first candidate from the local Hmong community, are running for slots on a five-person county commission that has been Republican since the mid-1980s.

There has been much media coverage of the women running for office in 2018. Most of it centers on their personal motivations, presuming, for instance, that these women were inspired by the #MeToo moment or threats to abortion access. But these readings oversimplify the wide range of concerns energizing women candidates and activists. Most fundamentally, they overlook the key role of new groups and grassroots networks in making campaigns viable where political professionals thought they couldn’t be. Women (and some men), activated by the current moment and aided by civic groups of their own making, are heading out—into neighborhoods, church halls, and county party committees—working to oust unresponsive incumbents and rebuild participatory democracy.

Not since the Tea Party wave in 2009 has this country seen such a sharp uptick in the creation of local groups, activists, and candidates. And for the first time in a generation, this sustained political engagement is happening on the left, not the right. Our research (conducted in part with doctoral student Leah Gose) draws on in-depth observations and surveys of grassroots organizations in eight pro-Trump counties in North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, as well as participant observation and interviews with three dozen grassroots groups in the Pittsburgh suburbs and small cities of southwest Pennsylvania. Local groups like the ones we study have revitalized existing local Democratic structures but also made it possible to cut around traditional gatekeepers, getting new candidates onto ballots and new supporters knocking on doors. This is the biggest story of the 2018 midterms—not the primary challenges from the left nor the surging poll numbers for blue candidates in red districts but the shared trend underlying both: The Democratic Party, long in retreat, is being rebuilt from below across a geographic spectrum that would have seemed impossible two years ago.

The Tea Party ultimately pulled the Republicans further toward the far right and away from the possibility of compromise. Will the new Democratic activists provoke the same result? Almost certainly not. They are, on the whole, more liberal-minded than the current, mostly Republican officeholders in their districts—but that doesn’t make them radicals. In rural areas, many are gun owners. In suburbs, they run their local Parent Teacher Organization. They are active in their churches and religious groups. And they organize vigils to protest family separation at the border, support youth who #marchforourlives against gun violence, and cheer candidates who demand health care for all. Their ideological and cultural range makes a mockery of the strategists and pundits who claim to know who Democrats’ “energized base” really is. Viewed up close, they offer little support for narratives of civil war or disarray. They’re too busy planning the next canvass.

On the eve of the 2016 election, barely half of the local Democratic committeeperson seats across the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania were filled. That’s an estimate: Party leaders were not even attentive enough to the structures of local participation to keep systematic track of whether or not they had been filled.