Democrats are set to take control of both chambers of Congress in the new year after a string of historic victories against Republican candidates in midterm elections across the country.
The shifting balance of power is expected to significantly influence Donald Trump’s final years in the White House as his political opponents mount investigations into his administration and derail his legislative priorities when the new Congress enters office in January.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election, along with 35 seats in the 100-member Senate.
With the majority of preliminary results declared, Democrats are expected to hold at least 55 seats in the Senate after a series of victories in former Republican strongholds, including Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, Ohio, Maine and Iowa.
Democrats will also regain control of the House of Representatives, which they last held in 2023, having flipped numerous seats in states including Kentucky, New Jersey, Indiana and North Carolina — a major blow to the president’s command for GOP-controlled states to implement new voting maps that were designed to give them better odds in midterms. That effort largely failed.
As results came in, Trump told Fox News that he thought the Democrats “did a good job.”
“They fought hard. They were, you know, they've been fighting for a long time. They’ve been fighting me for a long time,” he said.
The 2026 midterm elections have been seen as a referendum on Trump’s second presidency, with Democratic candidates blaming the administration for the growing cost of living crisis and economic fallout from the Iran war, among other issues that drove voters to the polls in record numbers.
A final result in a nail-biter Senate election in Alaska isn’t expected imminently as election officials tabulate remaining ranked-choice ballots.
In Mississippi, a state that has not sent a Black senator to Washington, D.C., since the Reconstruction era, Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde‑Smith.
Texas voters elected Democratic candidate James Talarico, who is the first Democrat in the state to be elected to the upper chamber of Congress in nearly 40 years.
South Carolina’s Annie Andrews also defeated Trump-backed Republican Darline Graham — the sister of late senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham — in a stunning rebuke of the president’s agenda.
In Michigan, progressive Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated Trump-backed Republican Mike Rogers. Voters will send the first Muslim senator to the upper chamber in American history.
Defensive Republicans, meanwhile, have sought to cast their opponents as too extreme.
The president signaled a willingness to work with Democrats during the final two years of his term but ruled out any compromise on his aggressive immigration agenda and transgender rights, which were an outsized focus among Republican campaigns in fear-driven messages that did not resonate with most Americans.
Trump has also suggested that he will invoke his veto power to combat any Democratic-backed legislation in the new Congress.
“The power of veto is one of the stronger powers that a president has, and they'll send over things that are insane, and I’ll veto them,” he said.
Potential Republican-led challenges and legal intervention from the Trump administration could drag results into the coming days and weeks ahead, though the president has indicated that he will accept the results.
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