The 2026 Midterm Verdict: How Democrats Retook Congress

Executive Summary

Democrats retook both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections, ending Republican control of Washington and reshaping the final two years of Donald Trump's presidency. The Associated Press called the Senate for the Democrats late on Tuesday night, after Josh Turek's win in Iowa delivered the decisive seat, while the party passed the 218 seats needed for a House majority as counting continued into Wednesday.

The scale of the shift is what sets this result apart from a routine midterm swing. Democrats flipped seven Senate seats, took four Republican-held governorships, and built a national House popular-vote lead of more than 12 million ballots in the Associated Press count. The new Congress is due to be sworn in on January 3, 2027, with Hakeem Jeffries expected to become House speaker.

This study measures that verdict against the pre-election picture. Our record early-voting study tracked more than 54 million early ballots cast before Election Day, and our pre-election polling study found a Democratic generic-ballot lead and a record-low presidential approval rating. The results below test those signals against the counted vote. Both studies set the baseline this results study now tests.

Methodology

Every figure in this study comes from the Associated Press live results system, network projections from NBC News, CBS News and CNN, Reuters tallies of called races, and the Guardian's governor count built on Associated Press data. Where tallies differ because counting is still under way, this study reports the range and names the source, rather than presenting any single newsroom's projection as a final result.

All counts are a Wednesday-afternoon snapshot, not a certified final result. Results are unofficial until states certify them, a process that usually takes weeks. Two Senate races, in Alaska and Mississippi, were still too early to call in the Associated Press table, and Georgia and Mississippi hold runoffs on December 1 if no candidate clears 50 percent of the vote.

Empirical Findings

The Senate flipped on a net gain of seven seats, according to the Associated Press-based tally, which put Democrats at 53 seats against 41 for Republicans with the remaining races uncalled. Before the election, Republicans held 53 seats to 47 for Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them. The flipped seats named in live tallies were Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Iowa supplied the clinching moment. The Associated Press called the Senate for the Democrats after Josh Turek's victory there, while Ohio's special election returned former senator Sherrod Brown with 48.6 percent against 46.5 percent for appointed Republican Jon Husted, on 87 percent of the expected vote counted. Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed also held a Democratic seat that Republicans had targeted.

The House moved further and faster. The Associated Press balance showed Democrats with 222 seats called and leading in 41 more, against 138 called and 34 leading for Republicans, from a pre-election chamber of 215 Democrats, 219 Republicans and one other member caucusing with Republicans. NBC News projected Democrats would win at least 244 of the 435 seats, well above the 218 needed for a majority.

The national popular vote explains the size of that House margin. The Associated Press count recorded 59,093,713 votes for Democratic House candidates against 46,829,058 for Republicans and 1,556,905 for other candidates, with 75.68 percent of precincts reporting and an estimated 87.71 percent of the expected vote counted. That gap of roughly 12.3 million votes is the widest midterm House margin in the counted data.

Governors' races extended the Democratic gains beyond Congress. Democrats flipped Republican-held offices in Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Texas, while Republicans held Florida, where Byron Donalds beat David Jolly by 50.1 percent to 48.7 percent to become the state's first Black governor. In Ohio, Amy Acton beat Trump-backed Vivek Ramaswamy by 50.9 percent to 45.8 percent, the first Democratic governor win there since 2006.

Georgia's result carried its own milestone: Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor of a US state. Counting the governors not up for election this year, Democrats will hold at least 27 governorships to 20 for Republicans, with three races still to be called in Alaska, Kansas and Nevada, all with Democrats leading, according to the Guardian's Associated Press-based count.

The political reaction was unusually candid. President Trump congratulated the Democrats, saying they did a good job, while warning that he would veto Democratic bills, posting an image of a red cap bearing the word VETO. He blamed the losses partly on the Iran war and the fuel prices it pushed up, said his absence from the ballot hurt Republicans, and insisted he would launch the war again and still planned to do something large on Iran.

Outlook

Divided government now sets the terms for the rest of Trump's presidency. A Democratic House can block the legislative agenda, open investigations and force public votes on the Iran war and tariffs, while a Democratic Senate can slow confirmations. Overriding a presidential veto needs two-thirds of both chambers, a threshold neither party holds, so negotiation, not command, becomes the only route to new laws.

Three dates frame what happens next. The December 1 runoffs in Georgia and Mississippi, if triggered, will fix the Senate's final margin; state certification over the coming weeks will turn projections into official results; and the new Congress takes office on January 3, 2027. The contrast with the Republican final-weekend push could hardly be sharper: the party that campaigned on momentum now governs from a minority in both chambers, while voters, in Tehran's reading of the result, said no to war.