Republicans lose all three redrawn Florida House seats

Ossoff’s Georgia re-election becomes a clear Democratic outcome

Republicans lost all three Democratic-held Florida House seats after Republicans in the state legislature redrew the seats’ boundaries to make them much easier for the party to win. BBC News North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher wrote that the results were shaping up to be a very good night for Democrats in the 2026 midterms. Much of the vote had been counted in the eastern United States, while polls were closing in key Midwestern battleground states.

Republicans had expected to win other House races in Florida by comfortable margins, but those contests turned into what the BBC described as dogfights.

In races considered toss-ups across the East, Democrats were poised for the kind of victories that would help secure a House majority for the first time since 2022, BBC analysis said. Democrats flipped an open seat in western North Carolina and appeared in position to make gains in Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana.

Jon Ossoff’s Georgia re-election and the open Republican-held North Carolina race had both been considered battlegrounds a year earlier, but BBC News described both as clear Democratic outcomes. In North Carolina, former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper defeated Republican Party insider Michael Whatley. The BBC said Cooper’s victory was the first of four Senate pickups Democrats needed to wrest control of the Senate.

Attention then shifted to Republican-held Senate seats in Texas, Kansas and Ohio, where counting was taking place. CBS News, the BBC’s U.S. partner, was rating the South Carolina race as leaning Democratic. South Carolina also remained unresolved because the assessment was a rating rather than a declared result.

BBC News analysis said Democrats’ performance was “on the back of” high turnout, particularly among Black voters in the South, and of winning back Hispanic voters in Florida who had supported Republicans two years earlier.

In South Carolina counties with majority-Black populations, Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews was significantly outperforming the presidential numbers Kamala Harris recorded there in 2024. In Miami-Dade County, which Donald Trump carried in 2024, Democratic candidates were back on top.

Florida as a whole still appeared to tilt to the right. Republican Senator Ashley Moody narrowly won re-election, and Republican Congressman Byron Donalds won his bid for governor. The statewide Republican results contrasted with Democratic strength in Miami-Dade and with Democratic performance in the three redrawn House districts.

Zurcher wrote that the mood of the electorate appeared to have turned against Donald Trump and Republicans across the board. He cautioned that the United States is a vast nation with unique geographic and demographic characteristics, so a good night for Democrats in the East does not necessarily translate into similar performance across the country. Even electoral waves can crash differently in different places.

It was still early, BBC News said, but Democrats had strong reasons to be hopeful. Continued counting in Texas, Kansas and Ohio and the unresolved South Carolina contest left the overall result undetermined.