WASHINGTON – Democrats seized control of both the Senate and House of Representatives on Tuesday, scoring sweeping victories in Republican strongholds for the first time in generations as tens of millions of voters delivered a scathing rebuke to President Donald Trump.
The House projection is based on an analysis that Democrats will win about 255 House seats — an estimate that could still tick up or down by a few seats but will be well beyond the 218 needed to secure a majority.
Voters in conservative bastions who had propelled the president to his second term in office just two years ago swung dramatically toward Democrats, fueled by deep frustration over the unpopular war with Iran, anxiety over the high cost of living and anger at Trump’s stewardship of the country.
In Texas, the biggest Republican state, Democrats ended a decades-long losing streak in seismic fashion, winning a Senate seat and ousting three-term Governor Greg Abbott.
Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since the Great Depression nearly a century ago, and in South Carolina, a state that Trump carried by nearly 18 points in 2024, Democrats turned aside his hand-picked Senate candidate.
The results will usher in a new era of divided government in Washington, following two years in which the Republican-controlled Congress rarely exercised its power to rein in Trump.Once seated in January, Democrats are expected to use their power to investigate Trump’s administration, family and allies and demand concessions on major legislation. The Democratic Senate can block Trump’s nominees, including any US Supreme Court justices should a vacancy arise. “There is now a generational remake of the Senate map that is going to change America,” said Chuck Schumer, the party’s Senate minority leader. “Americans voted for change, and now Democrats must deliver.”
Trump, who is barred by the US Constitution from seeking a third term, has exercised an iron grip on his party for most of the last decade. But the new balance of power in Washington may accelerate his lame-duck status, as attention turns toward the 2028 presidential race and potential successors begin competing for political influence in a post-Trump world.Despite worries from Democrats that Trump might seek to overturn the election results, as he did in 2020, the president accepted the outcome, congratulating Democrats in an interview with Fox News. He also said he would work with Democrats on issues such as immigration, though he threatened to veto any “insane” bills they passed.
Democrats focused their campaign on corruption and affordability, blaming Trump’s tariff policy and the war with Iran for driving up costs while highlighting the billions of dollars the Trump family has made since he returned to the White House.
Republicans, led by Trump, attacked Democrats over culture war issues such as transgender rights while portraying their opponents as radical and extreme. But in poll after poll, voters made it clear they were far more concerned with pocketbook issues.
The Democratic wave flooded huge swaths of the country. Republicans lost ground in all but a handful of the approximately 2,100 counties where most votes had been counted, according to tallies compiled by Reuters and USA Today.
Democrats made gains in the richest counties and the poorest; in counties where more people have college degrees and where fewer do. Democrats’ advances were particularly sharp in heavily Latino counties, including the border counties of Texas that shifted toward Trump in 2024 and the agricultural towns of the Kansas prairie.In Seward County, Kansas, home to one of America’s biggest beef processing plants and where about half of eligible voters are Hispanic, Democrat Adam Hamilton led incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall by 13 points, two years after Trump won the county by 39 points.
Democrats flipped more than two dozen House seats currently held by Republicans, locking in a majority. Democrats won all the closely contested House races that have been decided so far, and they won about a dozen races in districts that Trump won by double digits two years ago.
An unprecedented Republican gambit to redraw several House districts to make them more favorable largely failed, with Democrats hanging on to most of the targeted seats.
Midterm elections are typically seen as a referendum on the sitting president, and Trump did little to disabuse voters of that notion. In the campaign’s final weeks, he held dozens of rallies, telling supporters repeatedly to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”
He also intervened in several Republican primaries earlier this year to ensure his preferred candidates reached the ballot, despite concerns from some Republicans that his choices carried significant liabilities.
In Texas, Trump backed Ken Paxton, the scandal-ridden state attorney general, over the incumbent, Senator John Cornyn. In South Carolina, the president anointed Darline Graham, a political neophyte, after her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, died suddenly earlier this year. Both candidates lost.
US President Donald Trump said late Tuesday that he would accept the results of the midterm elections and was prepared to work with Democrats as the party took control of both chambers of Congress — the House of Representatives and the Senate, according to the New York Times.
“I am absolutely willing to accept those results,” Trump told the newspaper during a phone interview while watching election returns at the White House.
“We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out,” he added.
Trump’s remarks came as Republicans were routed in several closely watched races, with Democrats making gains that could reshape the balance of power in Washington and complicate the president’s legislative agenda for the remainder of his term.
The president blamed Republican losses partly on his absence from the ballot, arguing that the party’s performance might have been different had he been personally running in the elections.
After suffering major losses, Trump asserted he “wasn’t on the Ballot” but “would have won IN A LANDSLIDE” if he was – a reversal from his request that voters act as though he was.
For weeks, Trump had encouraged supporters to vote as though he was a candidate on the ballot, in the hopes of generating support for Republicans. But on Tuesday night, he dismissed concerns that the midterm results were a reflection of that.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Trump said.
He reiterated his claim to the New York Times, saying: “I wasn’t on the ticket, and because I wasn’t on the ticket, we couldn’t get enough people out to vote.”
The US president also told the newspaper he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results of the midterms.
Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s open US Senate seat on Tuesday, according to media projections, becoming the first Muslim elected to the chamber while preserving a crucial Democratic seat in the party’s fight for Senate control.
El-Sayed’s victory in the closely contested election marked a breakthrough for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing and denied Republicans a chance to flip the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters. El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, on Wednesday took a swipe at US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance after defeating Republican Mike Rogers, using his victory speech to highlight the irony of Vance having to formally swear him into office.
Iran’s chief negotiator in talks with the United States, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Wednesday that Americans voted “NO TO WAR” after Democrats routed Republicans in the midterm elections.
“Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” Ghalibaf posted on X.
Also, Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said Wednesday that anyone expecting a shift in US policy was “seriously mistaken,” hours after midterm elections dealt a blow to President Donald Trump.
“Those who still harbor even the slightest hope that the behavior of the hegemonic system might change through partisan or factional shifts, or who imagine that making concessions to the United States can dissuade it from hostility towards the Iranian nation, are seriously mistaken,” Khamenei said in a written statement published on his website.
Khamenei’s remarks come with diplomatic efforts underway to avert renewed fighting in the war, which broke out on February 28. US and Israeli leaders have in recent days threatened to resume attacks against Iran. “Should such aggressions be repeated, the war’s scope will become much wider,” said Khamenei, who has yet to appear in public since he took power in March.
