“Democrats delivered a blue shellacking in Tuesday's midterm elections, reclaiming control of the Senate and putting the party on pace to recapture the House, as voters voiced their discontent with President Trump and prepared to usher in a new era of divided government during his final two years in office.
"This is not a blue moment. Or a red moment. It's a red, white and blue moment because America has won tonight," said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader who is in line to become the nation's first Black speaker of the House in the next Congress.
Republicans lost Senate seats that they held in South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas and Iowa, according to the Associated Press, giving Democrats a Senate majority through a campaign map full of Republican terrain. All of those states Trump had won, in many cases by double digits, in 2024. Democrats had needed a net gain of four seats in order to reclaim a majority.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff cruised to re-election in Georgia in a race that Republicans had targeted at the start of Trump's second term. Democrats easily maintained a seat in New Hampshire and held a lead in Michigan, an open seat. Democrat Penny Flanagan held that party's Senate seat in Minnesota.
In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician and gun safety advocate, beat Republican Sen. Darline Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsay Graham, an unthinkable pickup opportunity until recently. Trump won the state by 18 percentage points in 2024.
"We will not bow down. We will not back down. And we will chart our own course," Andrews said at a victory party in South Carolina.
Democrats won victories on a historic scale. In Kansas, Adam Hamilton, a minister, became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1932, defeating Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.
In Texas, Democrat James Talarico trounced scandal-plagued Republican Ken Paxton to become the first member of his party elected to the Senate from the Lone Star State since 1988. In Iowa, Josh Turek, a state lawmaker and one-time paralympic basketball player, defeated Rep. Ashley Hinson to become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat there since 2008.
And in Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown staged a political comeback in defeating Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to the seat after JD Vance became Trump's vice president.
The AP had not yet called the House, but Democrats were on track for a majority. They flipped a western North Carolina seat that had been held by Republicans and won seats in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, New Jersey and Virginia. In Florida, Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Kathy Castor won re-election despite GOP redistricting efforts in the state that aimed to oust the Democrats. They picked up another Florida seat that had been redrawn in the Republican-led redistricting effort.
Democrats also swept into governor's mansions in battleground and Republican states.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former mayor of Atlanta and Biden White House adviser, will be the next governor of Georgia, the first Black woman elected governor of a state in U.S. history.
Amy Acton, the former director of Ohio's Department of Health under Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, will be the next governor of Ohio. And Gina Hinojosa, a lawyer and state representative, unseated three-term Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Rob Sand, Iowa's auditor, will be the that state's next governor.
Republican candidates have faced consistent backlash over Trump's governing, including complaints over inflation and the broader state of the economy. Voters were particularly frustrated with the president's use of tariffs, launching the Iran War and an aggressive deportation strategy.
Voters this year blamed Trump for high prices, according to the first wave of results from a poll of more than 79,000 registered voters. Almost two-thirds said inflation was up more because of his policies.
The poll was conducted on behalf of the Associated Press and all of the major television and cable news networks.
The president, for his part, sought to distance himself from the midterm results that were so damaging for his party. "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!" the president posted on social media late Tuesday night.
The sentiment ran counter to what he had been saying for weeks at rallies across the country. "I want you to do me a big favor -- pretend I'm on the ballot," he said in mid-October, one of the many times over the last few weeks he has repeated the line.
Trump's 2024 coalition picked up new voters across the board. But two years later, that coalition had begun to fray and Republican candidates were the ones expected to face the fallout. Recent polling and interviews showed that Hispanic voters, young voters, Make America Healthy Again voters had all begun to shift away from Republicans in response to the Trump administration's policies.
"Democrats now have the potential to win their largest majority since 2009," wrote Erin Covey, the House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, in announcing a dozen House races were moving toward Democrats last week.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) spent Election Day morning in South Texas, trying to get out voters in the predominantly Hispanic area that had been a Democratic stronghold but swung toward Republicans in recent years.
"We're leaving it all on the field," Johnson wrote on X.
In the Rio Grande Valley, Republicans had sought to flip two Democratic-held seats that were redrawn to be more red-leaning during mid-decade redistricting brought about by Texas Republicans at Trump's urging. But Democrats held both of those seats -- and were on track to flip a Republican seat in a neighboring district Trump won by 18 percentage points in 2024.
In that district, the Democratic congressional candidate was Bobby Pulido, a Tejano singer and local celebrity who ran as a moderate focused on affordability -- the central issue litigated in the midterms. He had double the number of votes as his Republican opponent with 74% of the vote in.
Pulido's approach was one that a number of Democrats embraced this cycle: distancing themselves from partisan politics and criticizing their own party.
"How do you gain trust when both parties are hated?" Pulido said in an interview. His campaign has tried not "to make the party the most important thing for us. We made the people the most important thing for us."
In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, was attempting to win a sixth term in a state that then-Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, won in 2024. Collins faced Troy Jackson, a Democratic former state Senate president who was chosen during an unusual special party convention after Graham Platner's candidacy imploded in scandal.
Michigan remained a focal point for Democrats, who were trying to retain the seat of retiring Sen. Gary Peters. Tensions within the party exploded over the final weekend when Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who had lost to progressive former public health official Abdul El-Sayed in the Senate Democratic primary, endorsed his Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers, after initially endorsing El-Sayed.
The move created a distraction for Democratic leadership and their allies, who had sought to fortify El-Sayed's candidacy with money and campaign surrogates to avoid a loss to Rogers.
Democrats during this cycle fielded an assortment of candidates with a range of backgrounds and political profiles, some of which had endorsements from both the party's progressive and centrist wings, including a former smoke-jumper in Montana, a union ironworker in Ohio and clergy members in Iowa. They touted their candidates for being messengers with real credibility and connection to their districts, part of the party's strategy to reconnect with working-class voters.
A number of Democratic candidates embraced a populist message this cycle. That comes as voters in general show they have moved toward a more populist approach to governing, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll.
A memo from the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC on the eve of the election celebrated the rebranding, noting that even the most moderate candidates were "running ads centered around a pro-working class message, opposing billionaires, foreign wars, corruption, and corporations."
"Not a single Democrat is running on a return to the status quo," the memo read.” [1]
1. Democrats Score Big Wins --- Historic victories in deep-red states flip Senate, House poised to slip from GOP control in major shift in power. Collins, Eliza; Rodriguez, Sabrina; Thomas, Ken. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 04 Nov 2026: A1.
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