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Election special: how the Democrats won the entire Congress

Seven Senate seats changing hands, dozens more in the House and a president with a historically low approval rating. What happened, why, and what it means for Trump.

The Democrats will have a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in January, according to projections by AP, CBS News and NBC News. Halfway through Donald Trump’s second term, the Republicans are even losing seats in states considered safe, such as Texas, Kansas and South Carolina.

In the House of Representatives, the Democrats needed a net gain of three seats for a majority. According to NBC News’s count, by Wednesday afternoon (Dutch time) they had secured 231 seats, against 144 for the Republicans; 60 races had yet to be decided. The Democrats have so far gained a net 29 seats. NBC expects them to end up with at least 258 of the 435 seats.

The Republicans lost in every part of the country. In Pennsylvania, moderate Brian Fitzpatrick was defeated by Democrat Bob Harvie; in Ohio, Max Miller lost to Brian Poindexter; and in Texas, Monica De La Cruz lost to Bobby Pulido, CBS News reports. In Iowa, three districts went to the Democrats. In New York, Republican Mike Lawler conceded defeat to Cait Conley.

In the Senate, the Democrats needed four additional seats; they gained seven. According to AP, they now have 54 seats, including the independents who vote with them, against 44 for the Republicans. Before the election, the Republicans held 53 of the 100 seats.

The most striking victory came from Texas, where James Talarico defeated Republican attorney general Ken Paxton. In Ohio, former senator Sherrod Brown won back a seat from Jon Husted, while in Maine experienced Republican senator Susan Collins lost to Troy Jackson. Democrats also won in Kansas (Adam Hamilton against Senator Roger Marshall), Iowa (Josh Turek against Ashley Hinson), North Carolina (former governor Roy Cooper against Michael Whatley) and South Carolina (Annie Andrews), according to CBS News.

Two races remain open. In Mississippi, with 96 per cent of the vote counted, Democrat Scott Colom and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith were both on 48.9 per cent; Colom had a lead of 43 votes. In Alaska, Senator Dan Sullivan leads with 48.7 per cent against 47.5 per cent for Mary Peltola, with about two-thirds of the vote counted. According to Peltola, counting could take weeks.

How did it happen so quickly? The election became primarily a judgement on Trump. In the CBS News exit poll, 38 per cent of voters were satisfied with the president, possibly the lowest score ever for a president in a midterm election. About three-quarters were dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and roughly six in ten said Trump had influenced their vote. In the NBC News exit poll, nearly half said the election was an opportunity to rein Trump in.

The cost of living was an underlying factor. The war with Iran, which began on 28 February, pushed up petrol and diesel prices, and inflation rose to 3.7 per cent in September. In Maine, 69 per cent of voters said in the CBS exit poll that Trump’s tariffs had harmed the local economy.

Redistricting did not save the Republicans. At Trump’s urging, Republican states drew new maps halfway through the decade to secure seats. Yet in Ohio, Democratic representative Marcy Kaptur won in a newly drawn district where Trump would have won by 11 percentage points in 2024, NBC News reports. In Texas, Latino voters shifted towards the Democrats, according to NBC’s exit poll, partly because of the tough crackdown on migrants.

The Democratic Party also gained ground in gubernatorial elections. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott lost to Gina Hinojosa; in Ohio, Amy Acton defeated Republican Vivek Ramaswamy; and Democrats also won in Georgia (Keisha Lance Bottoms) and Iowa (Rob Sand). In Florida, Republican Byron Donalds won.

Trump told The New York Times that he ‘absolutely’ accepted the result and wanted to work with the Democrats, for example on migration. On Truth Social, he wrote that he himself had not been on the ballot and would otherwise have won ‘overwhelmingly’. Earlier in the evening, he pointed out that he had ‘ultimate power’: the veto.

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer called it a victory ‘against all expectations’. Hakeem Jeffries, who is expected to become Speaker of the House in January, wrote: ‘Victory for America!’ Republican Senate leader John Thune, who is losing his majority, said that his party ‘will not stand by passively’.

What will change? With a majority in the House, the Democrats can subpoena witnesses and launch investigations into the administration. In the Senate, they can block Trump’s appointments. They cannot push laws through: Trump can use his veto, and overcoming it requires a two-thirds majority, which the Democrats will not achieve, according to NBC News. Democratic members of Congress cite reversing the tariffs and ending the war with Iran as priorities.

The new Congress will be installed at the beginning of January. Until then, the Republicans retain their majority in both chambers. The results are media projections; the states’ official certification will follow in the coming weeks.

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