Democrats take control of Congress in 2026 midterms

Senate flips and House gains reshape Trump’s remaining two years

Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, according to Associated Press results, dealing a decisive blow to Republican control in Washington and opening a new era of legislative opposition to President Donald Trump. Republicans had expected their Senate majority to be safe, but Democrats mobilized in some of the country’s most conservative states and flipped seats in Texas, South Carolina, Maine, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and North Carolina — states the AP described as having been in Republican hands for decades and carried by Trump by double-digit margins just two years earlier. Democrats also won Senate races in Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire, holding seats already in the party’s column, and gained House seats in several Republican-leaning states.

The shift places Democrats in control of congressional votes and oversight during the final two years of Trump’s term. Although Trump has shown an ability to overcome attempts to contain him, according to the AP report, Democratic control of Congress will reshape his remaining time in office and hinder his legislative agenda. Democratic leaders said they would use their positions to pursue a series of investigations of senior administration officials and intensified scrutiny of how Trump has enriched his family. Impeachment of Trump and administration officials has not been ruled out. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk, a tech magnate and former senior adviser to Trump, figure among the possible investigation targets. Trump, in turn, said he would use his veto power to block the Democratic agenda.

The AP Voter Poll found voters arriving at election day in bad spirits, deeply dissatisfied with the country’s direction and pessimistic about the future. Roughly three-quarters of voters reported feeling angry or dissatisfied with the country’s trajectory. Dissatisfaction was particularly high in Democratic-leaning states, but large shares of voters in Republican-governed states also reported being at least dissatisfied. About three-quarters of voters said the economy was not doing so well or was doing badly, and roughly eight in 10 said inflation had caused moderate or severe financial hardship in their households.

Government corruption and the cost of living were cited by about half of voters as crucial to their congressional vote, ahead of concern about immigration enforcement policies, the war with Iran and AI data centers. Around six in 10 voters said Trump prioritized his own interests over the country’s. The Democratic Party was not much more popular than the Republican Party: just under half of voters viewed Democrats favorably, compared with about 40% who viewed Republicans positively.

AP Voter Poll data also indicated that the results marked the collapse of the coalition that returned Trump to the White House two years earlier, with young voters and Latino voters moving away from Republicans. Only around one-third of Hispanic voters said they backed the Republican candidate in their local U.S. House races. Historically, midterm elections have been difficult for the president’s party, and Republicans tried to break that pattern with an aggressive redistricting effort aimed at producing a more favorable electoral map.

James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton in Texas, producing a Democratic Senate victory in a state where no Democrat had won statewide office in more than 30 years, and Democrat Annie Andrews defeated Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina. Trump played a disproportionate role in the contests in Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina, and had given his full backing to both Republican candidates. He backed Paxton and helped him defeat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Texas Republican primary, even as Republican officials warned that the effort could carry a political cost. He also supported Graham despite internal doubts about whether Graham was the right candidate to replace her brother, who died unexpectedly early in the year. Trump harshly criticized Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who chose not to seek reelection.

In Michigan, the progressive Abdul El-Sayed — part of a group of left-wing candidates who won Democratic primaries during the campaign — defeated Republican Mike Rogers, keeping a Democratic-held seat in the party’s hands. Even Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a veteran survivor of difficult elections, lost to Democrat Troy Jackson. Josh Turek defeated Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa, and Adam Hamilton unseated Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas, becoming the state’s first Democratic senator since 1932.

The cascade of surprising Democratic victories also included Sherrod Brown’s defeat of Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio and Roy Cooper’s capture of an open seat in North Carolina. Less surprising was the reelection of Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia over Rep. Mike Collins. In New Hampshire, Rep. Chris Pappas won a Senate contest after defeating former Sen. John Sununu to succeed outgoing Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

Two Senate races remained unsettled in the Associated Press report. In Alaska, the Trump administration had filed suit to block certification of the Senate results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan lost, citing the presence of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot. In Mississippi, it was too early to project a winner.

The results were a hard blow for Trump, who had visited nearly two dozen states during the final month of the race in an effort to mobilize Republicans but could not avoid the defeat. He moved quickly to distance himself from his party’s losses: before polls closed on the West Coast, he wrote on social media that he was not on the ballot — after weeks of urging voters to act as though he were — and that Republicans would have won by a wide margin if he had been. He promised to use his veto power to block the Democratic agenda and shared an image of a red cap bearing the word veto, styled after his signature Make America Great Again campaign item.

In a nighttime telephone interview with Fox News, Trump said he did not consider the election a personal defeat and said voters had not liked the candidates. Democrats had prepared for him to try to undermine the results again if they won, after he warned that noncitizens would vote en masse and filed lawsuits in Alaska and California. Instead, in his Fox comments, Trump said he would accept the results.

At election-night celebrations, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer described the outcome as a generational reshaping of the Senate map. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, said the American people were clamoring for transformative change. Senate Majority Leader John Thune wrote on X that Senate Republicans would not stand by while the far-left socialist wing of the Democratic Party tried to undo everything they had done, and said they would work with Trump to stop what he called the worst impulses of Democratic extremism.

Democrats carried their campaign into territory Trump had won, defeating his preferred House candidates and winning even in some of the most Republican states. They posted multiple advances in Iowa, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania and picked up new seats in Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Utah. Iowa, which had sent an entirely Republican congressional delegation before the election, will now have three Democratic representatives.

Republicans spent the final stretch of the campaign pouring tens of millions of dollars into states and districts that Trump had won comfortably two years earlier, and the president campaigned in some of the most Republican states. Even that financial advantage did not contain the Democratic wave. In Florida and Texas, where Republicans had hoped to add as many as nine seats through redistricting, the plan appeared to fall short, with Democrats winning target districts.

Thirty-six states will elect governors, and Democrats dominated those contests. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, JB Pritzker in Illinois, Wes Moore in Maryland, Maura Healey in Massachusetts and Kathy Hochul in New York won reelection. In a surprise result in Texas, Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who was seeking a third term.

In Ohio, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy lost to Democrat Amy Acton after his campaign faced criticism for an advertisement featuring Acton’s estranged mother, who lost custody of Acton decades ago after her husband — Acton’s stepfather — was accused of raping Acton when she was a child.

The Associated Press reported that Keisha Lance Bottoms would become Georgia’s governor and the first Black woman governor in the history of any state. In neighboring Florida, Byron Donalds became the country’s first Black Republican elected governor.

Jeffries, a New York Democrat positioned to make history as the first Black speaker of the House if his party’s sweep carries it to power, outlined a 100-day agenda focused on reducing the cost of living and aggressive oversight of the Trump administration. A particularly strong Democratic performance could also lift the party’s prospective presidential candidates and complicate the paths of Vice President JD Vance and other Republicans who may seek to turn their loyalty to Trump into political momentum.

Democrats now control the votes needed to set the congressional agenda, while Trump retains the veto he has said he will use. Mississippi’s Senate outcome and Alaska’s certification dispute remained the two unresolved Senate threads in the Associated Press report.