Democrats take House and Senate in heated midterm races

Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in the Nov. 3 midterm elections, capturing a 54-seat majority in the Senate and a narrower 228-seat majority in the House of Representatives, flipping 25 House seats from red to blue. Not all House races have been called yet as of time of writing.

Senate seats representing Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas, all previously held by Republicans, flipped to Democrat control. Democrats also won Senate seats representing Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Virginia.

In one of the most surprising results of the night, Democratic state legislator James Talarico defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton to take the Senate seat representing Texas. The race was the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history, with Talarico’s campaign spending more than $135 million and outside groups spending more than $435 million. Talarico is the first Democrat to be elected to represent Texas in the Senate since 1988.

In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman, despite controversy over El-Sayed’s reported ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and a last-minute endorsement for Rogers from Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic Senate primary to El-Sayed earlier this year.

Ohio voters chose to send former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, back to Washington, D.C. instead of incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to fill the seat left vacant by Vice President JD Vance.

In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed to fill the seat left vacant by her late brother, Lindsey Graham, while Democratic former governor Roy Cooper bested former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley for the Senate seat representing North Carolina and Democratic newcomer Adam Hamilton unseated incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas.

Republicans also lost several significant gubernatorial races. Democrats flipped the governor’s mansion in Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas.

Congressional Republican leaders conceded defeat before the final polls had closed. Incumbent House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cast the GOP’s losses in the House as inevitable, while touting his party’s efforts to maintain a majority.

“From the first day of this election, we knew that to keep the House and sustain our majority, we would have to defy more than a century of midterm history. It's only happened twice in 90 years that a sitting president has picked up or held seats for his party in that first two-year cycle,” he said in a speech late Nov. 3. “There's a lot of reasons for it. It's very, very difficult to overcome, and it looks like history will be kept.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., emphasized GOP accomplishments over the past two years and pledged to oppose the new Democratic majority in the Senate.

“As we head into 2027, Senate Republicans will not stand idly by as the far-left, socialist wing of the Democrat Party attempts to unwind everything we’ve done,” he said in an X post shortly after midnight on Nov. 4. Thankfully, we still have President Trump in the White House, and we’ll work with him to stop the worst impulses of Democrat extremism. We cannot let their fringe positions become the mainstream.”

President Donald Trump adopted a more defiant tone, threatening to use the “power of veto” against practically all legislation the incoming Democrat-controlled Congress sends to his desk.

“It’s one of the stronger powers that a president has,” he said in a Fox News interview. “And they’ll send over things that are insane and I’ll veto them. And after a couple of months of vetoes, they’ll go out and they’ll say, how do we get this stuff done? And we’ll work together.”

The President also said that a number of newly elected or reelected Democrats have already called him to broker deals to ensure that their legislation is signed into law. While the Democrats did not take a large enough majority in either chamber of Congress to override a presidential veto, they did capture enough Senate seats to stall judicial appointments.

One White House official was quoted by Breitbart News saying that Trump “did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves” and that Republican voters simply do not turn out for elections when Trump is not on the ballot. The official also predicted that voters will regret their decision to elect Democrats.

“Also, anyone who voted Democrat today is going to have a serious case of buyers remorse when gas prices come down quickly when the Iran conflict is solved but they’re still stuck with a list of liberal extremist Democrats,” the official said, noting that Democratic Senators will hold their seats for the next six years.

For their part, Democrats have also taken a “defiant” stance, threatening to target Trump and his administration with congressional investigations and even impeachment proceedings. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., who is expected to become the next chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, issued a statement warning the President to “lawyer up.”

Incumbent House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a speech that the Democratic gains indicate that voters have “had enough of the extremism, enough of the corruption. They want a Congress that’s going to deliver for the American people.”

Jeffries also claimed that Democrats “will work hard to revive” the American dream “for every single person in this land.”

“We understand as House Democrats that life is way too expensive in this great country of ours,” he added. “There are far too many people who are struggling to survive, and certainly cannot thrive here in the United States of America.”

Democrats campaigned heavily on the issue of “affordability,” linking high gas and grocery prices to Trump administration policies, especially the conflict with Iran. Preliminary exit polls showed that cost-of-living was a significant factor for a majority of voters. Overall, 88% of voters said that affordability was either a “crucial” or a “major” factor in their decisions at the voting booth, according to a CNN exit poll.

NBC News exit polls similarly found that 89% of voters described affordability as either a “crucial” or a “major” factor in their decisions, while 65% of voters said that Trump’s policies have “worsened” economic conditions in the U.S. and 74% described the conflict with Iran as either a “crucial” or a “major” factor in their votes.

This is a developing story.