2026 midterm election results: Who won the key House and Senate races?
Political analysts attributed Democratic wins to voter dissatisfaction over the Trump-initiated U.S. war with Iran, rising gas prices and broader economic anxieties, including the persistent affordability crisis.
Democrats seized control of the House and Senate in commanding fashion during Tuesday’s midterm elections, flipping seven Senate seats and making history in multiple races in a widespread rebuke of the Trump administration and Republican candidates.
Political analysts late Tuesday and early Wednesday largely attributed the victories by Democrats to voter dissatisfaction over the Trump-initiated U.S. war with Iran, rising gas prices and broader economic anxieties, including the persistent affordability crisis.
It’s “a full-blown repudiation of [Donald] Trump and GOP policies,” said Costas Panagopoulos, a distinguished professor of political science at Northeastern University.
Voters also expressed frustration with the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement and what many of them described as the president’s failure to deliver on promises to lower prices and improve the economy.
Projected Democratic victories included Keisha Lance Bottoms’ capture of the Georgia governor’s office, making her the nation’s first Black woman governor; Chris Pappas’ victory in New Hampshire’s Senate race, making him the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate; and Hakeem Jeffries’ reelection to the House, positioning him to become the first Black speaker if Democrats elect him to the post.
In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa prevailed over Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, becoming the state’s first Latina governor and the first Democrat to hold the office since Ann Richards left in 1995.
On the Republican side, Rep. Byron Donalds won Florida’s gubernatorial race, becoming the state’s first Black governor.
“This is a change election,” Jeffries said. “And we understand as House Democrats we need to deliver dramatic change. Things are broken.”
Other high-profile races included Democrat Roy Cooper flipping a Republican-held Senate seat in North Carolina by defeating Republican challenger Michael Whatley, according to the Associated Press.
Democrat Annie Andrews defeated Republican Darline Graham, Lindsey Graham’s sister, in South Carolina. In the Lone Star State, U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico became the first Democrat to win a statewide office in 32 years by defeating Republican Ken Paxton, a Trump pick.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers to win the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, becoming the first Muslim elected to the Senate. In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson ousted longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins, ending her nearly 30-year Senate tenure and making him the first Democrat elected to represent Maine in the Senate since 1995.
The results so far point to a major night for Democrats, with victories in several key races and historic firsts for the party.
Whether those wins amount to an endorsement of a broader Democratic policy agenda is a more complicated question, said Martha Johnson, an associate professor of political science at Northeastern University.
She said the Democratic victories also suggest “problems with candidate quality on the Republican side,” which “is itself a reflection of Trump and his influence” over the primaries.
“Democrats are benefiting from Americans’ dissatisfaction with inflation, tariffs and the war with Iran, as well as frustrations with how Trump is governing,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the Democrats still need to articulate how they will generate improvements for people across the country,
“I do not think we can see this as a clear victory for the Democratic Party’s policy agenda or priorities, which are themselves hard to pin down given the wide variety of candidates and messages in the party,” she said.
Trump remained adamant that Republicans faced such a defeat because he wasn’t on the ballot.
“If I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!,” he wrote Tuesday evening on his social media platform, Truth Social, despite the fact that during the campaign, the U.S. president had encouraged supporters to “vote like I’m on the ballot.”
Which races still haven’t been called?
As of 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, the winners in several key Senate races had yet to be determined, including in Alaska and Mississippi. Sixty-eight House races were still being called.
The Democrats flipped Senate seats in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina.
By 8:30 p.m Tuesday, preliminary results indicated various likely outcomes: Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff won reelection against challenger Republican Rep. Mike Collins and Democrat Chris Pappas was declared the winner of the Senate race in New Hampshire.
Historically, the House of Representatives swings away from the party in power by an average of 25 seats. Experts have pointed to multiple factors that might indicate a larger victory for Democrats, including the state of the economy and Trump’s low approval rating.
Heading into Election Day, the most closely watched Senate races were those in the battleground states of Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. Republicans held a 53-47 majority prior to the midterms.
What the experts are saying
Candidate quality may have made an impact in several races. In Texas, Talarico benefited from a laundry list of liabilities tied to Paxton: corruption allegations, a 2023 impeachment by his own party and polling that showed voters viewed Talarico more favorably and trusted him more on corruption.
In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate El-Sayed’s strong appeal among voters has made the race a test of the influence of the party’s progressive wing.
“Michigan … is interesting because it is being taken as a bellwether for the intra-Democratic factional dispute between the left and the center-left,” said Nick Beauchamp, an associate professor of political science at Northeastern University.
According to data analysis by the New York Times, Democratic candidates outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 vote tally in Kansas, and in South Carolina, counties that voted for Trump swung to the left by an average of about 21 percentage points. Meanwhile, in Florida, at least three House seats where maps were redrawn to favor Republicans ended up going Democratic, CNN reported.
“Democrats are performing well in areas that Trump won in 2024,” said Kayla Wolf, an assistant teaching professor of political science at Northeastern University.
Europe looks on
Many observers in Europe and elsewhere weighed in with election reactions as the Democrats secured control of both chambers.
In the UK, London Mayor Sadiq Khan congratulated the Democrats on a “huge victory.”
“With a focus on hope, unity and supporting families with the cost of living — their campaign was a true rejection of the damaging and divisive politics of Donald Trump,” Khan posted on X.
Under a Democrat-controlled Congress, analysts said there could be considerable changes in several European issues, including America’s role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, which Trump has repeatedly threatened to nix.
Democrats could reimpose economic sanctions on Russia that the Trump administration recently paused. The threat of a U.S.-occupied Greenland could fade and far-right movements in Germany and France could lose the momentum that they have gathered over the past two years due to their links with the Trump administration, the analysts said.
“It is likely that [Democrats] would try to challenge the Executive more on decisions in these areas,” Josephine Harmon, assistant professor in political science at Northeastern University London, Harmon told Northeastern Global News.
Rich McKay contributed to this report.
