Democrats win House, Senate in US midterms
Democrats have won control of both chambers of the US Congress, NBC News projects, a sharp rebuke to President Donald Trump halfway through his second term.
For readers outside the US, this matters because Congress controls federal spending and can investigate or block a president’s agenda, so Trump will now face a hostile Congress when the new session starts in January. I could not see AP’s chamber seat counts, so the control call rests on NBC and CNN projections, and some races are still being counted.
The Senate was the surprise. Republicans held it 53 to 47, and Democrats needed a net gain of four seats on a map that favoured Republicans. NBC and CNN report that Democrats flipped six Republican-held seats: Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa, North Carolina and South Carolina. In Texas, James Talarico beat Ken Paxton, and in Ohio, Sherrod Brown beat Sen. Jon Husted. In Kansas, pastor Adam Hamilton beat Sen. Roger Marshall, and one newsletter reports it is the first Democratic Senate win there since 1932, which I could not confirm elsewhere. In Iowa, Josh Turek beat Rep. Ashley Hinson, and NBC’s page showed him at about 51% to 46% with roughly 91% of the expected vote counted. Roy Cooper beat Michael Whatley in North Carolina, and in South Carolina, Annie Andrews beat Darline Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, which CNN calls a stunner. A Democrat has not won a Senate race in South Carolina since 1998. Democrat Jon Ossoff also won re-election in Georgia. Races in Michigan, Maine, Minnesota and Alaska were still being counted when these reports were written.
In the House, Democrats needed a net gain of three seats. A newsletter citing NBC projects about 248 seats, which would be their largest majority in nearly two decades, but I could only find that figure in a partisan source, so treat it as unconfirmed. CNN reports Democrats held three Florida districts that Republicans had redrawn to guarantee wins, and that a swing among Latino voters has largely erased Trump’s 2024 gains there, though Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar led by just over a thousand votes.
Why did it happen? CNN, whose coverage is openly framed around a “blue wave,” points to cost of living and to Trump’s interventions in primaries. Candidates he backed, including Paxton in Texas, Graham in South Carolina and Mike Collins in Georgia, struggled or lost. Surveys also showed voters unhappy with prices. The average US gas price was $4.15 a gallon on Election Day, a record for that date, and diesel was $6.28, both linked to the Iran war, and Democrats ran on those costs and on tariffs. Midterm elections also typically punish the president’s party, so some of this is history, though the scale is unusually large.
Trump’s response was brief. After three hours of silence, he posted that he “wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE.” CNN notes he spent weeks telling supporters to pretend he was on the ballot, and that officials appeared to be positioning any losses as the candidates’ fault. Republicans can reasonably argue that midterms are rarely kind to the president’s party and that final results are not yet in.
What is known and what is not: the six Senate flips and the control projections come from NBC and CNN. The exact seat totals, the outcome in Michigan, Maine, Minnesota and Alaska, and whether any losing side contests results are not settled. Counting continues and calls can change.
Sources: CNN, NBC News (Democrats win Senate), NBC4 Washington (Iowa results), NBC News (Talarico), Al Jazeera (Cooper), Reuters via ARY News, Daily Montanan, Breitbart, The Parnas Perspective, BradBlog, Newsweek and The Tribune (NYT/Siena polls).
