The key facts
- Democrats won about 240 House districts and took 54 Senate seats, gaining 7
- Turnout exceeded 60 million early voters for the first time; overall turnout was about 49%
- Republican redistricting yielded only one additional seat instead of the expected 15–16
- Republican redistricting brought only one extra seat instead of the expected 15–16
The results exceeded expectations
In the US midterm elections held on November 3, 2026, Americans elected the entire House of Representatives (435 members), one third of the Senate, several dozen governors, almost all state legislatures, and numerous officials at the state and municipal levels. This is reported by Gazeta.uz in its analysis of the voting results. The elections became a referendum on confidence in President Donald Trump's policies, and the results exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts: models had promised the Democrats 15–25 additional seats in the House of Representatives and 4–5 in the Senate.
The House of Representatives and the Senate
According to preliminary data, the Democrats are winning in roughly 240 House districts and, as the remaining votes are counted, will most likely approach 250–260 seats, gaining 36–46 mandates. In the total popular vote they lead the Republicans by about 13–14% instead of the forecast 8–9% — the widest margin since the 1980s. In the Senate, the Democrats are getting 54 seats (+7), which guarantees a majority of 4 votes; results have not yet been counted in Alaska and Mississippi, where candidates are separated by only a few hundred votes. The Democrats took Senate seats from the Republicans in Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, Kansas and Texas, and won in South Carolina: a Democrat was last elected to the Senate from that state in 1998, from Texas in 1988, and from Kansas in 1932.
Redistricting backfired on the Republicans
Two years before the elections, the Republicans, at Trump's initiative, redrew district boundaries in a number of conservative states, expecting to gain 15–16 additional seats, but in the end achieved only one. In North Carolina, where they hoped to take 11 districts against the Democrats' 3, the outcome may turn out to be the opposite — 10 seats for the Democrats and 4 for the Republicans. The results were especially painful for the Republicans in California, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, where they are losing more than half of their districts.
The collapse of Trump's coalition
The elections showed the disintegration of the electoral coalition that brought Trump to victory in 2024. Compared with those elections, the Democrats received 33% more votes from voters aged 18–29, 29% more from Hispanics, 18% more from Asian Americans, and 9% more from white voters without a college degree. All of these groups swung toward Trump in 2024, and have now shifted in the opposite direction.
Governors and state legislatures
In the gubernatorial elections, the Democrats held on to the posts in Arizona, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas and Wisconsin, and for the first time in many years will take the lead in Iowa, Alaska, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Nevada. The only competitive race they lost was Florida, where Republican Byron Donalds won with a margin of just 1.3% (in 2024 Trump won the state by 13%, and Ron DeSantis in 2022 by 20%). The Democrats will gain full control — a
Why the Republicans lost
According to polls, only 35–37% of Americans approved of Trump's performance — one of the lowest figures in history, comparable only to the approval ratings of Harry Truman and George W. Bush before the elections their parties lost in 1946 and 2006. On the issue of fighting inflation, about 70% disapproved of the president, and it was rising prices for gasoline, groceries, housing, and healthcare that Americans called the main problem. Trump campaigned across the country, promising $5,000 to every adult American if the Republicans won, but, according to Gazeta.uz, he most likely hurt his fellow party members by tying them to an unpopular course. Vice President JD Vance named the war with Iran, military aid to Israel, and the inability to cope with rising prices as the reasons for the defeat. DeSantis also placed responsibility on the White House and noted that the videos about transgender athletes, on which millions of dollars had been spent, failed to resonate with voters concerned about prices.
