Democrats take House and Senate in heated midterm races
Caroline MolloyDemocrats 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.
