What you need to know
- Tens of millions of voters delivered a scathing rebuke to President Donald Trump in Tuesday’s midterm elections
- Democrats are projected to win majority control of the House, according to US media, having flipped at least eight Republican seats in states including Kentucky, New Jersey and North Carolina
- Democrats Roy Cooper, Annie Andrews, Sherrod Brown, Adam Hamilton, James Talarico and Josh Turek won six Senate seats previously held by Republicans, exceeding the four-seat net gain needed to take control of the chamber, according to projections
- The blue wave reflected voters’ deep frustration with Trump’s handling of the economy and his decision to launch a war against Iran, which sent gasoline prices sharply higher
- Trump said he’ll accept the midterm results, blaming Republican losses on the fact that he was not on the ballot
9:06pm
‘We won on affordability’
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has been giving TV interviews about how things will change with his party in control of Congress.
He said his caucus would focus on addressing rising costs, including for health care, and the economic impacts from the Iran war, as well as corruption.
“The American people don’t want us to get even. They want us to get things done on their behalf,” he told MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” program.
“We ran on affordability. We won on affordability. And now it’s our job to govern on affordability… we’re going to work hard to make that happen.”
“It’s important for the president, before we even cross over into the new Congress, to end this war in Iran. That was clearly one of the messages that the American people decisively sent last evening,” Jeffries added.
He also said that Americans had “connected” that corruption had adversely impacted policies over the past two years.
“It’s going to be our responsibility to follow the facts, apply the law, be guided by the Constitution, let the chips fall where they may, and make sure that wrongdoers are being held accountable.”
8:35pm
‘Texas is not for sale’
Texas Senator-elect James Talarico has been talking about Elon Musk, who donated $158 million to a Republican super PAC supporting Talarico’s rival Ken Paxton.
“Last night the people of Texas delivered a crystal clear message to the world’s first trillionaire: Texas is not for sale,” Talarico said in an interview with CBS.
Musk lives in Texas and has relocated SpaceX, Tesla, X and other businesses there.
8:25pm
“New era in world relations”: Global reaction to historic Democratic midterm victory
World leaders and politicians have reacted to the Democrats’ victory in the US midterm elections, which saw the party take control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The result could have significant implications for global trade, security and energy prices, prompting reactions ranging from celebrations over a potential shift in US policy to calls for continuity in diplomatic relations.
Here are some of the latest comments:
Spain: The country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the US has voted “against the policies that only impoverish. Against hate. Against machismo. Against climate denialism and against the privileges of the elites.”
Iran: Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, posted on X that Americans used the elections to say, “NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.”
Russia: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said US President Donald Trump “continues to hold office, and we sincerely hope that he will also continue his peace-making efforts.” Meanwhile, Russian parliamentarian Leonid Slutsky told CNN, “We’ll check the situation. It’s now maybe early for a final conclusion, but it’s not necessary for conclusion. Now Trump is absolutely in (a) negative situation.”
United Kingdom: UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the results give the world “an opportunity now to unite” around the issue of the cost of living. He said he will be calling on fellow world leaders to focus on resolving Russia’s war on Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.
Norway: Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told the Reuters news agency the election results were a “powerful political signal about a change of course among American voters.”
South Africa: President Cyril Ramaphosa said the results will “introduce a new era in world relations,” Reuters reported. “We have seen that the Democrats have taken control of the Senate and of the House, and the people of America have spoken.”
8:10pm
Texas GOP state rep: “It was a political extinction for Republicans up and down the ballot”
Republicans in Texas faced a resounding defeat in the midterm elections, in part because they haven’t been talking about the issues that Americans care about, a Texas state representative told CNN Wednesday.
“It was a political extinction for Republicans up and down the ballot,” Republican Texas State Rep. Dade Phelan said to CNN’s Erin Burnett. “The president said, ‘act like I’m on the ballot,’ and voters act(ed) like he was on the ballot, and they voted out every single Republican up and down the ballot.”
“The governor all the way down lost, and that’s what happens when you cannot run on issues,” he added.
Republican politicians couldn’t effectively talk to voters about cost of living issues, “because we owned that,” said Phelan, who formerly served as speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.
“We were the party in power, right? Instead, we were running ads about China and girls and boys sports for six straight years. That’s all we’ve been talking about, and it was not resonating with voters,” he said.
8:00pm
Trump adviser says midterms were “too big to rig” and election challenges are unlikely
Advisers to President Donald Trump privately acknowledge that the outcome of Tuesday’s elections were so favorable to Democrats that they do not anticipate the Trump administration pushing to challenge results on a broad scale – if at all.
“It was essentially too big to rig,” a Trump adviser told CNN, referencing one of the president’s favorite phrases of his 2024 presidential win.
In the lead up to the election, Trump and his allies had begun laying the groundwork to potentially challenge the results. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of US elections and continued to make the unsupported assertion in recent months that the system is rife with fraud.
The Department of Justice had preemptively filed a lawsuit in Alaska to potentially block the certification of the state’s results if the Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan, failed to win — given another Dan Sullivan was also on the ballot.
Trump had also attempted to force California to sideline potentially thousands of ballots that the Justice Department claimed may have been cast by noncitizens, though the Supreme Court rejected the effort on Monday.
7:37pm
Florida’s Republican governor sees bleak prospects for his party in Congress
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has predicted a prolonged period of Republican weakness in Congress, saying Democrats could retain control of the legislature for years.
DeSantis, a Republican who sought his party’s presidential nomination in 2024, made the assessment in a post on X.
“Dems will get 55 Senate seats and 250+ House seats. Looking at the Senate map and considering such a massive House margin, it is very unlikely Republicans will recapture the Congress in 2028. Might not have a shot at Senate control until 2032,” he wrote.
6:50pm
No recounts in Mississippi’s tight Senate race
Democrat Scott Colom is just 43 votes ahead of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Mississippi Senate race, with 96.5% of the votes tallied as of this morning.
Mississippi state law does not allow recounts in elections, but a candidate can mount a challenge to exclude certain ballots from being counted. Mississippi does count ballots that arrive up to five business days after Election Day, so long as they are postmarked by Election Day. That means it could take a while before we find out the result of this race.
6:40pm
Netanyahu rivals seize on US results to try and oust him
The Democratic sweep is having some immediate political fallout in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rivals are looking for a way to form a government without him.
The midterms came just a week after an Israeli election in which Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition lost its parliamentary majority but no one else emerged with a clear path to unseat him.
Now, Netanyahu’s rivals have seized on the results as proof that he has squandered generations of bipartisan American support for Israel.
Yair Golan, head of the center-left opposition Democrats party, said on X that the midterm results “reveal just how toxic Netanyahu is among both Democrats and Republicans.”
Centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid said the results showed “Israel cannot afford” for Netanyahu to remain in office.
The US has been Israel’s staunchest ally for generations under presidents of both parties, providing billions of dollars a year in military aid since the 1970s.
But unlike previous leaders who assiduously courted Democrats and Republicans alike, Netanyahu has openly backed Republicans.
Support for Israel in US public opinion fell during Israel’s military assault on Gaza following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack.
It fell further this year since Trump and Netanyahu ordered a joint attack on Iran.
Some Democratic candidates made criticism of American military aid to Israel a prominent campaign argument.
6:35pm
Democrats win all of Texas’ statewide offices for the first time since 1961
Texas Republicans and Democrats alike are facing a political reckoning.
Democrats won five of the state’s most powerful elected offices for the first time since 1961, according to the Texas Tribune, marking a stunning reversal in a state Republicans have dominated for decades.
Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton for the US Senate, while Gina Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott. Vikki Goodwin unseated Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, while Nathan Johnson won the attorney general’s race. And Jon Rosenthal beat Bo French in the race for railroad commissioner, marking the end of 36 years of Republican control of the commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry.
6:25pm
Trump refuses to take responsibility for GOP wipeout
As the blue wave swelled overnight, Trump shared his thoughts on why Republicans racked up so many losses: the Iran war, high gas prices, weak GOP candidates on the ballot.
On a call with Fox News late last night, Trump said that the Iran war has led to a spike in gas prices, which he dismissed as “a short-term problem, but for long-term gain.” He said some of the Republican candidates that he backed “fought me,” and that his MAGA base did not like that.
But Trump – the leader of the Republican Party who insisted that voters pretend he was on the ballot — refused to take responsibility for the wipeout.
“I don’t view it as a hit on me,” he told Fox News. “We’ve had the greatest two years in the history of the presidency in terms of the economy, in terms of all the things that we’ve done.”
Later that night, he told Politico on a call Republicans would not have had such a difficult night if he had been on the ballot.
“If I was on the ballot, we would have won. We would have won it all very easily,” he said, a sentiment he echoed on Truth Social.
Trump also said he was willing to work with Democrats.
“I don’t want to be just sitting there for two years vetoing everything,” he told Politico.
5:49pm
Midterm drubbing demonstrates the power of data-center opponents
Opponents of data centers were among the biggest winners in the Democratic landslide.
In Texas and Georgia, Democrats who advocated a data center moratorium won governorships the party hadn’t held in decades.
Data centers are central to the AI boom but they are also loud, thirsty for water, hungry for electricity and increasingly unpopular with their neighbors.
Investors said the results were likely to usher in tougher regulation and could ripple across financial markets.
AI stocks were falling on Wednesday.
Still, many analysts said a slowdown in US data center construction wouldn’t necessarily herald a change in demand for AI or computing power.
Some view a roughly 8% drawdown in the Nasdaq over the past month as a buying opportunity.
5:24pm
Iran’s Supreme Leader says US hostility will persist
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said the midterms results would not change Washington’s hostility towards Tehran and that making concessions to the US would make no difference either.
Khamenei warned that Iran’s response to any renewed US aggression would be on a much greater scale.
He said Tehran’s destruction of US bases in the region and its management of the Strait of Hormuz had been part of a campaign against US hegemony.
“The US sees the end of its hegemony as distant; we see it as near,” he said.
Earlier, Iran’s Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said in a post on X that “Americans said no to war.”
Trump has conceded that the war in Iran had weighed on Republican candidates, but stood by his decision to start the war.
4:37pm
‘I did the right thing,’ Trump says on Iran war
Earlier, we brought you comments from Trump’s interview with Fox News, in which he acknowledged that the war in Iran played a role in his party’s crushing defeat.
In a separate interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said “Iran was a piece of it,” but he stood by his decision to start the war.
“I did the right thing,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “I would have done it again.”
The war, now in its ninth month, has been unpopular among Americans since it began.
On the campaign trail, Democrats across the country blamed the conflict for driving up the cost of gas and other goods.
Trump has offered shifting goals and timelines for the war, threatening to ramp up US military strikes and also saying he could end the conflict at any time.
4:19pm
‘We just took back Texas’
Earlier, we brought you Democrat James Talarico’s victory speech after he was projected to become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Texas since 1988.
“We just took back Texas. We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We’re the underdogs in this race,” he told supporters.
“This win is for every underdog who’s been counted out and left behind.”
3:02pm
Meanwhile, Alaska results could take days
In Alaska, both Republican Senator Dan Sullivan and his Democratic challenger, Mary Peltola, cautioned supporters that it might be days or weeks before a winner is declared.
In the meantime, Peltola told supporters, “we are getting our country back,” in reference to the wave of Democratic victories across the country.
A few blocks away, Sullivan acknowledged that national results were “a little depressing.” Later, he told supporters to “stay on it. We are going to win this race!”
2:38pm
‘Our job now is to roll up our sleeves’
We’ve now heard from former President Barack Obama on the election results.
In the campaign’s closing week, Obama joined the trail for several Democrats, frequently criticizing Trump and his administration in his speeches.
After results projected that Democrats would win control of both the Senate and House, Obama said on X that the Democrats’ job now is to “roll up our sleeves” and “make changes wherever we have the power to do so, prevent further damage.”
“Tonight, the American people sent a clear message — they want a politics that brings people together rather than divides them, and leaders who offer concrete solutions to the challenges they face,” Obama said.
2:48pm
The last time Democrats won a US Senate race in these states
Democrats scored historic Senate victories in several states that had not elected a Democratic senator in decades, breaking long-standing Republican dominance in parts of the country.
Here’s how long it had been since Democrats last won Senate elections in some of these states:
Kansas: 1932
Adam Hamilton ended a 94-year drought, the longest among the states Democrats flipped this year.
Texas: 1988
James Talarico became the first Democrat to win a US Senate election in the state since Lloyd Bentsen’s re-election.
South Carolina: 1998
Annie Andrews ended a 28-year drought, dating back to Fritz Hollings’ re-election.
North Carolina: 2008
Roy Cooper ended an 18-year gap since Kay Hagan became the last Democrat elected to the Senate from North Carolina.
Iowa: 2008
Josh Turek’s victory marked the first Democratic Senate win in the state since Tom Harkin’s re-election.
2:01pm
Trump-backed Senate candidates pay the price
Trump asked voters to pretend he was on the ballot in the midterm elections and handpicked Republican candidates in some of the country’s most consequential Senate races.
By Tuesday night, voters had rejected them.
Trump-backed candidates in South Carolina, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas all lost.
As we reported earlier, the defeats helped hand Democrats control of the chamber and exposed the limits of Trump’s political influence.
For more than a decade, Trump has reshaped the Republican Party around his MAGA movement, dictating primary matchups and pushing aside conservative figures he considered insufficiently loyal.
He repeatedly favored loyalists and ideological allies over more established Republicans with stronger statewide networks and proven electoral track records, betting that his endorsement could outweigh their political liabilities.
The results suggest that his influence over Republican primaries did not translate into enough support among the broader electorate to carry his chosen candidates to victory.
Read the full analysis here by our colleagues Jacob Bogage, Jarrett Renshaw, Nandita Bose and Steve Holland
1:54pm
Muslim advocacy group calls El-Sayed’s win ‘historic’
The Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations, which documents hate against Muslims and Arabs in the United States, welcomed Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Senate race.
It called the result an “historic win” achieved “despite endless Islamophobic attacks.”
Civil rights groups had raised concerns about the anti-Muslim messaging by Republicans, saying such framing risked encouraging discriminatory attitudes towards Muslim and Arab Americans.
1:49pm
‘One of the ugliest campaigns we’ve seen’
Earlier we brought you some remarks from Abdul El-Sayed to supporters before his victory was projected by major media networks.
We can now bring you more of what he said.
It was not the typical victory speech with calls for unity and bipartisan cooperation.
He blasted his Republican opponent Mike Rogers for running what he called “one of the ugliest campaigns we’ve seen in our lifetimes”, targeting the Democrat’s Muslim faith.
“You chose hate, and Michigan chose hope,” El-Sayed said.
El-Sayed, an Egyptian-American Muslim born in Michigan, decried what he described as a torrent of racist and Islamophobic attacks he faced during the race against Rogers.
“They were just weren’t just attacking me. They were targeting and attacking you. They were targeting and attacking the very idea of America,” he said.
“See, they hate the idea of an America big enough for anyone who looks a little different, or prays a little different, or whose family comes from a different part of the world.”
Taking aim at Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan, El-Sayed argued that America’s greatness lay not in its past but in its capacity to improve.
“We don’t need to be great again. We need to embrace that thing about us that has always made us great: the will to be more perfect, and right now that means taking on the corporations and the billionaires, special interests who rigged the system against us for far too long.”
1:30pm
What to know about Abdul El-Sayed
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is a 42-year-old former public health official whose campaign focused on lowering costs for working-class Americans while casting his opponent Mike Rogers as a rubber stamp for Trump.
Earlier this year, he became the first progressive to win a statewide Democratic primary in a state that Trump carried in 2024. He describes himself as a capitalist and rejects the socialist label.
El-Sayed, an Egyptian American born in Michigan, is the first Muslim to be elected to the US Senate.
He won after facing a campaign of racist and Islamophobic verbal attacks. Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly questioned his loyalty to the United States and baselessly called him a terrorist sympathizer whose election would invite attacks on Americans.
Rogers has also argued that El-Sayed’s support for universal healthcare and other progressive policies places him outside the political mainstream.
El-Sayed’s views on Israel have both energized and alienated parts of Michigan’s Democratic base. Some Jewish voters have expressed reservations over his comments on Israel’s offensive in Gaza while Arab American and Muslim voters have voiced strong support for him.
12:54pm
Anti-Muslim misinformation targeted El-Sayed
During the campaign, Republicans portrayed Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan as a Muslim extremist and social media posts targeting him circulated false or misleading claims.
Here are some claims that Reuters fact-checked ahead of the election:
SHARIA LAW
South Carolina Republican US Representative Nancy Mace shared a video that she said showed El-Sayed “advocating for Sharia law in the US.” The video shows him speaking about a 2010 Oklahoma referendum on Islamic religious law.
In the video, El-Sayed criticizes the proposal. He does not advocate for the implementation of Sharia law in the US.
9/11 VIEWS
A years-old remark by left-wing streamer Hasan Piker that “America deserved 9/11” was misattributed to El-Sayed in social media posts. El-Sayed briefly campaigned with Piker but condemned the streamer’s past comments, calling them “dumb.” Piker has also said his past remark was inappropriate.
12:45pm
El-Sayed has claimed victory in Michigan
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is addressing supporters at his watch party in Detroit.
“I am so proud and honored to stand here as your Senator-elect for the great state of Michigan,” he said.
Major media networks have not yet projected a winner in the Michigan Senate race.
El-Sayed is up against Republican Mike Rogers.
In his remarks, El-Sayed did not reach across the aisle, portraying his campaign as one of hope and Rogers’ as one driven by corporate interests.
“We spoke of a brighter, a bigger, more hopeful Michigan. Theirs, an astroturfed, corporate-funded advertising campaign built to deceive and distract,” he said.
El-Sayed, an Egyptian-American Muslim born in Michigan, addressed the torrent of racist and Islamophobic attacks he faced during the race against Rogers.
“At first, they pointed to my name and my faith as if to say, you know, he’s a little different. And when it didn’t work, they tried to guilt me by association. And when that didn’t work, they went all in on one of the ugliest campaigns we’ve seen in our lifetimes,” he said.
“They might have been pointing to my name and my faith, but we all know that my name and my faith aren’t the reason you can’t afford your gas, they’re not the reason you can’t afford your groceries, not the reason you can’t see a doctor.”
12:11pm
The last polls have closed
It is now past 1 am ET (0600GMT) and the last polls have closed in Alaska, marking the end of voting across the United States on Election Day.
Results from Alaska could take longer to come in, however, with late-arriving ballots potentially delaying the final picture in some races.
12:02pm
Democrats’ gains were sharp in heavily Latino counties
Republicans lost ground in the richest US counties and the poorest; in counties where more people have college degrees and where fewer do.
Democrats’ gains were particularly sharp in heavily Latino counties, including the border counties of Texas that had heavily swung toward Trump in the 2024 election and in agricultural towns across the Kansas prairie, according to tallies compiled by Reuters and USA Today, which are partnering to collect live election results.
In Seward County, Kansas, home to one of America’s biggest beef processing plants and where about half of voting age US citizens are Hispanic, Democrat Adam Hamilton led incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall by 13 points, two years after Trump won the county by 39 points.
11:45am
Trump congratulates the Democrats
Earlier we brought you some comments from Trump’s Fox News interview.
During the interview he was also asked whether he accepted the results.
Trump replied: “Yes. Why wouldn’t you?”
“Congratulations to the Democrats. They did a good job,” the president said, adding that Democrats had “been looking for this one for 11 years.”
However, he said he did not view the results as a personal rebuke, adding: “I don’t view it as a hit on me.”
11:36am
‘Americans said no to war,’ Iran’s parliament speaker says
Reacting to midterm results, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf posted on
11:32am
Trump acknowledges Iran war’s role in Republican losses
Trump has been speaking to Fox News.
He conceded that the war in Iran had weighed on Republican candidates while insisting voters backed his handling of it.
“I think a part of it was Iran, but at the same time, people understood the importance of what I’ve done with Iran,” he said.
Trump also said Democrats would send legislation he considered “insane” to his desk and that he would veto it.
“After a couple of months of vetoes, they’ll call and they’ll say, ‘How do we get this stuff done?’ And we’ll work together,” he said.
11:23am
What to know about Troy Jackson
The Democrat who beat veteran Republican Senator Susan Collins is a fifth-generation logger who previously served as Maine Senate president.
Troy Jackson, 58, emerged victorious from a party scramble to replace Graham Platner, who withdrew as a candidate for the US Senate in July because of allegations of sexual assault, which Platner denied.
Like other Democrats, Jackson focused his campaign on cost-of-living issues, seeking to tie Republicans to high prices hurting voters.
He has called for abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency that has killed several people in high-profile incidents this year, including a 26-year-old Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13.
Jackson now supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage, but he opposed both in his state legislative career until his second state Senate term in 2016.
Opponents have attacked him over a 2021 incident in which he flung a water bottle during a legislative debate on prescription-drug costs. He has said he was passionate, but wished he had not yelled or thrown the bottle.
Democrats had not won a Senate race in Maine since 1988.
11:17am
News media projects Flanagan wins
Democrat Peggy Flanagan won Minnesota’s US Senate race, US media outlets projected.
Flanagan, the state’s lieutenant governor, defeated Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NFL television journalist, extending Democrats’ Senate winning streak in a state that has not elected a Republican senator since 2002.
Flanagan will succeed retiring Democratic Senator Tina Smith, meaning the party won’t lose the competitive seat they currently hold. Democrats have already flipped six Republican Senate seats to gain control of the Senate.
Tafoya had sought to distance herself from some of Trump’s policies.
Flanagan campaigned against Trump’s immigration crackdown, which brought thousands of masked federal agents to Minnesota and led to the shooting deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis.
11:98am
‘The American people have spoken’
In a victory speech, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he and his fellow Democrats will work to help communities all across the country, including those in which Republicans were long dominant.
“Today begins the great American comeback,” Jeffries said.
“The American people have spoken and made clear that they’ve had enough of the extremism, enough of the corruption. They want a Congress that’s going to deliver for the American people,” he said.
He focused his remarks on the need to address the high costs of housing and healthcare and protecting the Social Security retirement program.
He also attacked the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill” enacted by Trump and congressional Republicans that requires huge cuts in spending on the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor and disabled.
11:05am
Who will be speaker of the House?
With Democrats capturing a majority in the House of Representatives, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York is in line to become the next speaker of the House, which ranks second in the presidential line of succession after the vice president.
But he would still need to secure the support of a majority of House members in a formal vote to win the position.
If elected in that vote, Jeffries, who is currently the House Democratic leader, would become the first Black American to serve as speaker of the House.
He would have the power to direct House committees to launch investigations into a range of controversial activities by Trump and his associates.
Jeffries has repeatedly said Democrats would investigate what he has called “unprecedented levels of corruption” during the Trump administration.
He could also steer Democrats’ legislative priorities through the House, though any such bills would face a Trump veto.
10:38
Democrats win control of Senate
Democrats cemented control of the Senate with an upset victory in Iowa.
It was the latest in a succession of victories in Republican bastions like Kansas, Texas and South Carolina that gained Democrats six seats in the chamber.
Democrats could lose both of the seats they are defending in Michigan and Minnesota and still have enough to have a majority in the Senate.
In Texas, where Democrats have not won a statewide office in more than 30 years, Democrat James Talarico decisively defeated Trump’s chosen candidate, Ken Paxton.
In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews defeated incumbent Republican Darline Graham, who had been handpicked by Trump to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham after he died this year.
And in Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown claimed a seat that two years ago was held by Vice President JD Vance.
Together, those victories illustrated the scale of Democratic gains Tuesday.
Trump won South Carolina by 18 percentage points two years ago and Kansas by 16 percentage points.
10:56am
Can Democrats reverse Trump’s tariffs?
All of Trump’s second-term tariffs were imposed through executive order, so Democrats’ options for reversing these are limited in the face of Trump’s veto, trade law experts and congressional aides say.
With Democrats on course to win both the House and the Senate, they may be able to pass legislation reversing some of Trump’s tariffs, such as those on Canadian goods, or scrapping archaic statutes used to back them, such as the never-before-used Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.
If they regain control of trade committee agendas, Democrats will likely launch a cascade of oversight hearings and investigations into Trump’s trade policies, such as how tariff exemptions were determined, or the opaque provisions of hundreds of billions of dollars in investment pledges included in trade agreements with other countries.
10:46am
Stratton makes history as Illinois’ second Black woman senator
Democratic former Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, now senator-elect, has made history as the second Black woman elected to the US Senate from Illinois.
Her victory means three Black women will serve in the Senate simultaneously for the first time in US history.
She is the sixth Black woman ever elected to the chamber.
Addressing a crowd of supporters, Stratton pledged to put their needs first.
“I won’t confuse being elected with being entitled to this job. I’m headed to Washington to do the people’s work,” she said.
Stratton tied the economic pressures facing working families to what she described as dysfunction in Washington, arguing that ordinary Americans were bearing the costs of policies that benefit wealthy and politically connected interests.
“The corruption in Washington is directly connected to the struggles people face around their kitchen tables,” she said.
10:32am
News media projects Turek wins
Josh Turek is a two-time Paralympic gold medalist in wheelchair basketball.
The 47-year-old Democrat first won election to the Iowa legislature in 2022 by just six votes. He was reelected in 2024.
Supporters hoped his history of getting elected in Republican areas would help him appeal to disaffected Republicans and independents.
He was born with spina bifida, which he attributes to his father’s exposure to Agent Orange while fighting in Vietnam. He often draws on his experience navigating the healthcare system to talk about his agenda.
Turek has described himself as a “common-sense prairie populist” and has championed access to healthcare, a living wage, affordable housing and other policies important to working families.
He, along with other Democratic candidates in races in Iowa, has distanced himself from progressive positions on transgender issues, such as transgender girls’ participation in women’s sports.
10:30am
Hinojosa projected to defeat Abbott in Texas governor’s race
Democrat Gina Hinojosa is projected by US media to defeat Republican Governor Greg Abbott in Texas, ending 32 years of Republican control of the governor’s office.
Hinojosa, a Texas state representative, would become the state’s first Democratic governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995.
10:22am
News media project Hamilton wins
Democrat Adam Hamilton is the founding pastor of a Methodist megachurch.
Hamilton ran against Trump’s tariff agenda and what he called the president’s “erratic leadership.”
He also said during the campaign that he would work with Trump when it makes sense and stand up for Kansans when Washington policies hurt farmers and rural hospitals.
Hamilton was criticized by his Republican rival’s campaign over an incident in which a volunteer at a camp connected to his church was accused of molesting two teenage boys.
Church leaders initially only investigated the incident internally, later reporting it to police when the volunteer returned to the camp and was again accused of inappropriate behavior.
Hamilton has since said the church should have gone to police first and that it changed its policy after the incident to require that.
The last time Kansas voters elected a Democrat to the US Senate was 1932.
10:13am
What to know about Sherrod Brown
Democrat Sherrod Brown previously served as a senator for Ohio for 18 years, until he lost his 2024 reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno.
This time he was running in a special election against Republican Senator Jon Husted, who was appointed to the Senate to replace JD Vance when he left office for the White House.
Brown will serve the remainder of Vance’s term, which expires in January 2029.
Brown was also previously a United States representative, Ohio’s secretary of state and a member of the Ohio General Assembly.
A native of Mansfield, Ohio, Brown is a populist Democrat who long railed against US trade deals with foreign competitors.
His campaign promises included bringing down prescription drug costs and capping utility rate increases.
Data centers also featured prominently in the race, with Brown repeatedly criticizing Husted for promoting AI infrastructure development and tax incentives.
Husted’s campaign rejected the criticism, saying he has sponsored legislation that would require data-center operators to cover the cost of building more electricity generation and transmission.
10:13am
News media project Brown wins
10:11am
Democrat Amy Acton wins governor’s race in Ohio
Democratic candidate Amy Acton defeated Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in the race to become Ohio’s next governor, a seat currently held by a Republican, US media projected.
Ohio turned into a battleground state this year after having had the reputation as a reliably Republican state since 2016 when Trump won it with strong support from working-class voters.
The race between Ramaswamy and Acton, a physician, drew national attention over an explosive attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother.
In a video run by the Ramaswamy campaign, Donna Arthur disputes Acton’s account of a childhood marked by homelessness and sexual abuse and urges Ohioans not to vote for her.
Acton, a former director of the Ohio Department of Health who led the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has said she was sexually abused by her stepfather. The stepfather, who died in 2004, fled the state after he was charged with raping his stepdaughter and never stood trial.
10:09am
Trump says he’ll accept the midterm results
Trump told The New York Times he would accept the midterm election results and is willing to work with Democrats, blaming Republican losses on the fact that he was not on the ballot.
“I am absolutely willing to accept those results,” he said. “We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out.”
Trump also said he had no regrets about endorsing candidates who lost, including South Carolina’s Darline Graham, whose defeat surprised him.
“I see that Darline lost. Wow, that’s amazing,” he said.
10:08am
Fact Check: Misinformation about Talarico’s whereabouts went viral during the campaign
Democrat James Talarico campaigned remotely for several weeks after saying on September 30 that he was recovering from the flu.
His temporary absence from public events prompted his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, to post a wanted poster featuring Talarico.
Trump also said Talarico was “MISSING IN ACTION.”
Right-wing commentator Rhein Amacher then claimed on X that Talarico had been treated at the Ohio-based mental health treatment center Lindner Center of Hope, citing an alleged phone call with an employee.
But the facility publicly denied the claim, saying Talarico had never been a patient there. Talarico said he had “never even been to Ohio,” and his campaign said he was recovering at home in Texas.
Publicly available photos and videos showed Talarico in Texas during that period. His campaign also provided security camera images that it said placed him at his residence between October 1 and October 8.
10:07am
Outgoing Texas Senator congratulations Talarico
In a statement on X, outgoing Republican US Senator John Cornyn congratulated Democrat James Talarico and offered assistance with the transition.
“The voters have spoken,” said Cornyn.
Trump backed scandal-plagued Ken Paxton over incumbent four-term Senator Cornyn in the Republican primary.
10:04am
More on Talarico’s win in Texas
State Representative James Talarico won the Senate race in Texas, according to media projections, defeating Trump-backed Republican Ken Paxton.
It was a striking Democratic breakthrough in a state Republicans have long dominated. Trump carried the state by 14 percentage points in 2024.
Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has been at the center of controversies that include a 2023 impeachment and a securities fraud case.
Talarico, a four-term state legislator and one of the nation’s top Senate fundraisers, overcame heavy outside spending in the most expensive Senate race of the cycle.
He began as an underdog against former US Representative Colin Allred, the 2024 Democratic Senate nominee, who later withdrew to run for Congress again.
Talarico went on to defeat US Representative Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination, dealing a political blow to his former state legislative colleague.
Republicans spent more than $316 million to retain the seat. Republican US Senator John Cornyn was ousted in a primary runoff after Trump endorsed Paxton. Republican leaders had viewed Cornyn as the stronger general-election candidate.
Talarico was ahead of Paxton by nearly 1 million votes with about 80% of the expected vote counted as of 11:04 p.m. ET, according to data compiled by Reuters and USA Today. Reuters and USA Today partnered this year to collect live election results for U.S. Senate and House races.
10:00am
News media project Talarico wins
09:56am
How do the results compare to 2024?
Republicans lost ground compared to Trump’s election victory in 2024 across a wide swath of the country, according to tallies compiled by Reuters and USA Today, which are partnering to collect live election results.
The party lost ground in all but a handful of the approximately 1,000 counties where nearly all of the votes had been counted Tuesday night.
Republicans’ share of the vote in those places was about 9 percentage points smaller than Trump’s performance two years ago.
09:51am
Just joining us?
Democrats were on track to win the US House in Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to media projections, and were moving closer to a Senate majority after seizing Republican seats in South Carolina and North Carolina.
The early results were a sweeping rebuke to Trump and his Republican Congress.
In South Carolina, pediatrician Annie Andrews became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1998.
Andrews’ win, along with Democrat Roy Cooper’s win in North Carolina’s Senate race, gave the party two of the four seats it needs to net in order to take the chamber.
The results also suggested that a Democratic wave was growing large enough to swamp even deeply Republican areas.
However, it was still too early to determine whether Democrats would be able to replicate those performances in the other races that will determine the Senate majority.
That includes Alaska, Iowa, Michigan, Maine, Ohio and Texas, with millions of votes still uncounted in those states.
While several TV networks projected that Democrats would eventually win a House majority, most of the chamber’s most tightly contested races had yet to be called.
So far, Democrats have picked up four seats from Republicans, meaning they can afford to lose one existing seat and still take control of the 435-member chamber.
Midterm elections are typically viewed as a referendum on the president.
History is against Republicans: The sitting president’s party has lost ground in Congress in all but two midterms since World War Two.
09:49
Democrats are winning in Trump’s strongholds
As we’ve been reporting, Democrats have flipped two of four Republican Senate seats needed to win Senate control, including the seat in South Carolina — a state long dominated by Republicans.
09:46
What Trump promised and what he has delivered so far
TRUMP-OCT-CAMPAIGN
Trump campaigns in San Antonio, Texas, October 7, 2026. REUTERS/Callaghan O’Hare
Trump is not on the ballot this time but has told supporters to act as if he is.
Here’s a look at what he has promised compared to what he has accomplished:
THE ECONOMY
Promised: Lower consumer prices, a boosted economy and tariffs that would help eliminate the $1 trillion annual trade deficit.
Delivered: The shock of import tariffs and energy costs from the Iran war have driven prices higher. Fuel averaged $4.30 a gallon in mid October, while diesel hit a record $6.53 in September. Prices were as low as $2.85 a gallon in February, before the war started.
IMMIGRATION
Promised: Sweeping new immigration restrictions and a vow to embark on the biggest deportation effort in American history.
Delivered: The administration sent National Guard troops into Democratic-run cities and expanded sweeping immigration raids, which led to fatal encounters with federal immigration agents. Fewer migrants are heading to the US and hundreds of thousands of immigrants have already been deported.
WORLD PEACE
Promised: Trump vowed to be a “president of peace” and swiftly resolve conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, the latter of which would be done “Day One” in office.
Delivered: The US and Israel launched a war against Iran, killing thousands, most of them in Iran and Lebanon. In Gaza, Trump’s deal initially secured a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages seized in Hamas’ 2023 attacks on Israel. But the plan has stalled, with Israel continuing near-daily attacks and occupying around two-thirds of the enclave. Trump has also failed to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal.
GOVERNMENT REFORM
Promised: Trump vowed to slash federal bureaucracy and cut costs, and tapped billionaire supporter Elon Musk to help lead the effort.
Delivered: Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” made dramatic moves to slash the federal workforce, dismantle agencies, and cut aid to foreign countries. Despite this, this fiscal year saw the US annual budget gap hit nearly $2 trillion, marking the largest shortfall in five years.
Source: https://www.tbsnews.net/worldbiz/usa/us-midterm-elections-2026-live-results-democrats-build-momentum-control-congress-stake
