Democrats win the US House and Senate as voters deliver a strong rebuke to Trump and Republicans

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — De­moc­rats won con­trol of both cham­bers of Con­gress, de­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sive re­buke of Re­pub­li­can gov­er­nance in Wash­ing­ton and ush­er­ing in a new era of con­gres­sion­al re­sis­tance to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

Tues­day’s midterm elec­tions laid bare vot­ers’ deep frus­tra­tions over high prices, the Iran war and con­cerns over gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. De­moc­rats rout­ed their ri­vals across the map, flip­ping states that have vot­ed Re­pub­li­can for decades and that Trump won by dou­ble dig­its just two years ago.

That in­cludes James Ta­lari­co’s stun­ning Sen­ate vic­to­ry in Texas, where no De­mo­c­rat had won statewide of­fice in more than 30 years, and An­nie An­drews’ up­set vic­to­ry over Sen. Dar­line Gra­ham in South Car­oli­na. Trump had thrown his full weight be­hind both los­ing can­di­dates.

In Michi­gan, pro­gres­sive Ab­dul El-Sayed — one of a crop of left-wing can­di­dates who pre­vailed in De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries — topped Re­pub­li­can Mike Rogers. Even Re­pub­li­can Sen. Su­san Collins of Maine, a bat­tle-test­ed sur­vivor of dif­fi­cult elec­tions, lost to De­mo­c­rat Troy Jack­son.

The re­sults marked a fun­da­men­tal un­rav­el­ing of the coali­tion that re­turned Trump to the White House two years ago, with young peo­ple and Lati­nos mov­ing away from Re­pub­li­cans, ac­cord­ing to The AP Vot­er Poll. On­ly about one-third of His­pan­ic vot­ers said they backed the Re­pub­li­can in their lo­cal U.S. House races.

It was all a ma­jor blow to Trump, who spent near­ly every day of the last month hold­ing ral­lies to en­er­gize his sup­port­ers but was un­able to stop a wipe­out.

The re­sults will re­shape the rest of Trump’s term

While Trump has proven adept at steam­rolling ef­forts to rein him in, De­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol will pro­found­ly re­shape Trump’s fi­nal two years in of­fice and ham­string his leg­isla­tive agen­da.

Par­ty lead­ers have sig­naled they’ll use their new pow­er to en­sure Trump’s fi­nal two years in of­fice are dom­i­nat­ed by a se­ries of in­ves­ti­ga­tions of top mem­bers of his ad­min­is­tra­tion and deep­er scruti­ny of how he’s en­riched his fam­i­ly. Im­peach­ment of Trump and his Cab­i­net of­fi­cials is not off the ta­ble. De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth and tech ti­tan Elon Musk, a for­mer top Trump ad­vis­er, are among pos­si­ble tar­gets for in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

In cel­e­bra­to­ry events Tues­day night, De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate Leader Chuck Schumer called the re­sults a “gen­er­a­tional re­make of the Sen­ate map.” De­mo­c­ra­t­ic House Leader Ha­keem Jef­fries said “the Amer­i­can peo­ple are cry­ing out for trans­for­ma­tion­al change.”

Trump im­me­di­ate­ly sought to shift blame for his par­ty’s loss­es, post­ing on his so­cial me­dia site be­fore polls even closed on the West Coast that he wasn’t on the bal­lot — even though he spent weeks ask­ing vot­ers to act like he was. He vowed to ve­to De­mo­c­rat-con­trolled leg­is­la­tion, shar­ing a pic­ture of a red base­ball cap with “VE­TO” sten­ciled in the style of his trade­mark “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” cam­paign swag.

In a late-night phone in­ter­view with Fox News, Trump said he didn’t con­sid­er the elec­tions to be a per­son­al de­feat. Vot­ers, he said, “didn’t like the can­di­dates.”

De­moc­rats had braced for Trump to again try to un­der­mine the re­sults if they won af­ter he warned that nonci­t­i­zens would cast bal­lots en masse and filed law­suits in Alas­ka and Cal­i­for­nia. In­stead, he said on Fox that he would ac­cept them.

De­spite the re­sults, Sen­ate Ma­jor­i­ty Leader John Thune wrote on X that “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 they will work with Trump “to stop the worst im­puls­es of De­mo­c­rat ex­trem­ism.”

De­moc­rats chart­ed an ex­tra­or­di­nary path to Sen­ate vic­to­ry

Midterm elec­tions are typ­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult for the pres­i­dent’s par­ty, but Re­pub­li­cans had orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed that their Sen­ate ma­jor­i­ty was safe. In­stead, De­moc­rats marched through some of the most con­ser­v­a­tive states in the na­tion.

Josh Turek de­feat­ed Rep. Ash­ley Hin­son in Iowa, while Adam Hamil­ton oust­ed Sen. Roger Mar­shall in Kansas to be­come the state’s first De­mo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor since 1932. A cas­cade of sur­pris­ing De­mo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ries in­clud­ed Ta­lari­co de­feat­ing Ken Pax­ton in Texas, An­drews up­set­ting Gra­ham in South Car­oli­na, Sher­rod Brown top­ping Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio and Roy Coop­er tak­ing an open North Car­oli­na seat.

Trump played an out­sized role in many of the races. He en­dorsed the scan­dal-plagued Pax­ton and helped him de­feat in­cum­bent Sen. John Cornyn in the Texas pri­ma­ry, even as Re­pub­li­can of­fi­cials warned his ef­forts could be cost­ly. He sharply crit­i­cized North Car­oli­na Re­pub­li­can Sen. Thom Tillis, who opt­ed not to seek re­elec­tion. He al­so sup­port­ed Gra­ham, de­spite doubts with­in the par­ty that she was the right can­di­date to re­place her broth­er, who died un­ex­pect­ed­ly ear­li­er this year.

Less of a sur­prise was De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Sen. Jon Os­soff win­ning re­elec­tion in Geor­gia, de­feat­ing Rep. Mike Collins. Rep. Chris Pap­pas al­so won a Sen­ate race in New Hamp­shire, de­feat­ing for­mer Sen. John Su­nunu to re­place re­tir­ing De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Sen. Jeanne Sha­heen.

One out­stand­ing Sen­ate bat­tle­ground was Alas­ka, where the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion filed a law­suit to block cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Sen­ate re­sults if Re­pub­li­can in­cum­bent Dan Sul­li­van los­es the race, cit­ing the pres­ence of a sec­ond can­di­date named Dan Sul­li­van on the bal­lot. Mis­sis­sip­pi’s Sen­ate race re­mained too ear­ly to call.

In the House, De­moc­rats reached deeply in­to Trump-won ter­ri­to­ry to de­feat his pre­ferred can­di­dates and win in even some of the most Re­pub­li­can states. There were mul­ti­ple De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pick­ups in Iowa, Texas, Flori­da and Penn­syl­va­nia and new De­mo­c­ra­t­ic seats in Ken­tucky, Mis­souri, Ne­bras­ka, Ohio and Utah. In Iowa, there was an all-Re­pub­li­can con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion go­ing in­to the elec­tion. De­moc­rats will now rep­re­sent three of them.

Brac­ing for a tough night, Re­pub­li­cans had spent the cam­paign’s fi­nal stretch pump­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in­to states and dis­tricts that Trump won hand­i­ly two years ago, as Trump cam­paigned in heav­i­ly red ar­eas. But even Re­pub­li­cans’ mon­ey ad­van­tage didn’t stem the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic tide.

“I wasn’t on the Bal­lot and if I was, we would have won IN A LAND­SLIDE!” Trump wrote on his so­cial me­dia site.

The elec­torate is frus­trat­ed and un­hap­py

Vot­ers were sour head­ing in­to Tues­day, deeply un­hap­py with the coun­try’s di­rec­tion and pes­simistic about the fu­ture, ac­cord­ing to The AP Vot­er Poll.

Most said they felt frus­trat­ed, with about three-quar­ters say­ing they felt “an­gry” or “dis­sat­is­fied” with the coun­try’s cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry. Dis­sat­is­fac­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly high in blue states, but even in red states, a ma­jor­i­ty of vot­ers were at least “dis­sat­is­fied.”

The econ­o­my was key to Trump’s White House come­back two years ago. But the poll found that three-quar­ters of vot­ers said the econ­o­my is “not so good” or “poor.” About 8 in 10 said in­fla­tion has caused a “se­vere” or “mod­er­ate” fi­nan­cial hard­ship for their house­holds.

Gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion was al­so a big is­sue with vot­ers. Rough­ly half cit­ed it and the cost of liv­ing as “cru­cial” to their vote for Con­gress — high­er than im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment poli­cies, the war in Iran and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­ters. About 6 in 10 vot­ers said Trump pri­or­i­tizes his own per­son­al in­ter­ests more than the coun­try’s in­ter­ests.

De­spite their rel­a­tive ad­van­tage on is­sues, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty was not much more pop­u­lar with vot­ers than the Re­pub­li­cans. Just un­der half of vot­ers said they have a “some­what” or “strong­ly” fa­vor­able view of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, while about 4 in 10 viewed Re­pub­li­cans pos­i­tive­ly.

Re­pub­li­cans tried to buck his­tor­i­cal midterm prece­dent with an ag­gres­sive re­dis­trict­ing ef­fort aimed at cre­at­ing a more fa­vor­able con­gres­sion­al map. But in Flori­da and Texas, where Re­pub­li­cans hoped to pick up as many as nine seats, the plan fell short, with De­moc­rats pick­ing up tar­get­ed dis­tricts.

De­moc­rats dom­i­nate gov­er­nor’s races

Be­yond Wash­ing­ton, 36 states elect­ed gov­er­nors. De­moc­rats Josh Shapiro in Penn­syl­va­nia, JB Pritzk­er in Illi­nois, Wes Moore in Mary­land, Mau­ra Healey in Mass­a­chu­setts and Kathy Hochul in New York all won re­elec­tion. In a stun­ning up­set in Texas, Gi­na Hi­no­josa de­feat­ed Re­pub­li­can Gov. Greg Ab­bott, who was seek­ing a fourth term.

In Ohio, Re­pub­li­can Vivek Ra­maswamy lost to De­mo­c­rat Amy Ac­ton af­ter his cam­paign faced back­lash for an ad fea­tur­ing Ac­ton’s es­tranged moth­er, who lost cus­tody of Ac­ton decades ago af­ter her hus­band, Ac­ton’s step­fa­ther, was in­dict­ed for rap­ing Ac­ton as a child.

De­mo­c­rat Keisha Lance Bot­toms of Geor­gia will be the first Black fe­male gov­er­nor of any state. In neigh­bor­ing Flori­da, By­ron Don­alds be­came the na­tion’s first Black Re­pub­li­can to be elect­ed gov­er­nor.

Jef­fries, in line to make his­to­ry as the na­tion’s first Black speak­er of the House, has out­lined a 100-day agen­da fo­cused on low­er­ing the cost of liv­ing and ag­gres­sive­ly over­see­ing the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The es­pe­cial­ly strong show­ing for De­moc­rats could boost the par­ty’s large crop of po­ten­tial pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. It may al­so com­pli­cate the paths of Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance and oth­er Re­pub­li­cans who may have been look­ing to turn their loy­al­ty to Trump in­to mo­men­tum.