Democrats sweep both houses of Congress in midterm landslide, handing Trump a major rebuke
Democrats have won control of both the US Senate and the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections, flipping seats in Texas, Kansas, Maine and other Republican-leaning states.
The Democratic Party has won control of both houses of the United States Congress in Tuesday's midterm elections, according to projections by the Associated Press reported by Nikkei Asia, the Indian Express and USA Today, delivering a sweeping rebuke to President Donald Trump in the final two years of his presidency.
In the Senate, Democrats flipped Republican-held seats in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Kansas and Iowa, clearing the 51-seat threshold in the 100-seat chamber, and then added Maine, where Democrat Troy Jackson defeated long-serving Republican incumbent Susan Collins, according to the AP. Tallies reported on Wednesday put the Democrats at about 54 seats, with two races, in Alaska and Mississippi, still uncalled.
The House followed later on election night, with the AP calling the chamber for the Democrats once the party passed the 218 seats needed for a majority. Some tallies put the party at 225 seats or more, after flipping dozens of seats from California to New Jersey, including three in Iowa, though dozens of House races in western states were still too close to call on Wednesday.
The scale of the result surprised even seasoned observers. Decision Desk HQ had forecast a narrower Democratic Senate majority, and several of the flipped seats were in states that have voted reliably Republican for decades. In Texas, James Talarico became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat there since 1988, while in Kansas a Democrat won a Senate seat for the first time in nearly a century, according to reports of the results.
The night also produced a string of historic firsts. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York is now in line to become the first Black Speaker of the House. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the Senate, and in New Hampshire Chris Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the chamber, USA Today reported.
Governorships told a similar story. In Texas, Gina Hinojosa became the first Hispanic woman to win a governorship, in Georgia Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman governor, and in Florida Byron Donalds became the first Black Republican governor, according to USA Today's live coverage.
Analysts and the outlets reporting the results pointed to the same drivers: widespread anger over the cost of living, inflation, tariffs, the growth of artificial intelligence data centres and the war in Iran, which began in February and has pushed fuel prices higher. President Trump himself has acknowledged that the war probably hurt his party, saying voters were probably not ready for the short-term consequence of paying more for petrol.
Markets reacted with a relief rally on Wednesday. Nikkei Asia reported that United States stocks opened sharply higher after the result, with Nasdaq futures paring an earlier fall of more than 2 per cent, while CoinDesk noted that the dollar index slipped to its lowest since late September and gold gained nearly 3 per cent.
For the Trump administration, the practical consequences are immediate. A Democratic House can block the president's legislative agenda and launch sweeping investigations into his administration, and talk of a third impeachment has already surfaced: the Economic Times, citing Newsweek, reported that betting-market odds of an impeachment by the end of 2027 rose from 20 per cent to 49 per cent overnight, though such odds are a measure of market sentiment, not a prediction.
What happens next will depend on the final counts and on the new Congress when it sits in January. Democrats must still settle their leadership and priorities, the remaining races must be called, and the fate of pending legislation, including the crypto market-structure bill known as the CLARITY Act, is now uncertain, with American Banker reporting that Senator Elizabeth Warren is likely to chair the Senate Banking Committee. For now, the one settled fact is the scale of the shift: both chambers have changed hands in a single night.
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