Democrats flipped seven Republican Senate seats and hold 54 to the Republicans' 44 as of Wednesday morning, with Alaska and Mississippi still counting. NBC projects Democrats will finish with 258 House seats, a number the party last reached in 1993. Democrats have flipped 29 House districts so far. Republicans have flipped zero. Five governor's offices changed hands, all in the same direction. The last time the minority party took both chambers of Congress on one night was 2006.
Texas
The night turned in Texas, and it turned early.
The Associated Press called the Senate race for James Talarico at 10:04 p.m. Eastern, about an hour after the last polls in the state closed. He beat Ken Paxton 55% to 43% in a state Trump carried by 14 points two years ago. Talarico is the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Paxton conceded about 15 minutes after the call and told his supporters he'd pray for Talarico to represent the state well.
Paxton had beaten Sen. John Cornyn in a May runoff with a late endorsement from Trump, who then attacked Talarico at rallies across the country and used him as a stand-in for the whole Democratic Party. It was the most expensive race of the cycle. It was also the most heavily traded, with more than $280 million changing hands on the outcome across Kalshi, Polymarket and Polymarket US.
The rest of the Texas ballot followed within the hour. Gina Hinojosa beat Gov. Greg Abbott. Democrats won attorney general, lieutenant governor and railroad commissioner. No Democrat had won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, and the streak ended in a single evening. In the 15th Congressional District, in a stretch of South Texas that had swung hard toward Trump, Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy-winning Tejano singer, beat Rep. Monica De La Cruz.
Texas Republicans had redrawn the state's congressional map last year to pick up as many as five seats. They still lost the Senate seat and the governor's office.
South Carolina and Mississippi
South Carolina was the biggest upset of the night.
Lindsey Graham died in July. Trump picked his sister Darline to fill the seat and encouraged her to run for a full term, and she had never held office before. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician and political newcomer, beat her with about 51% of the vote. Trump won South Carolina by 18 points in 2024. Andrews is the first Democrat to win a Senate seat there since Fritz Hollings in 1998, and the first woman the state has ever elected to the Senate.
Republican campaign officials told PBS that the losses in South Carolina, Texas and Ohio were a direct repudiation of the president. Trump told the New York Times he had no regrets about endorsing Graham or Paxton.
Mississippi may be next. Scott Colom, a district attorney, led Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 43 votes out of more than 945,000 counted shortly before 4 a.m., with about 3% of the vote still out. Trump won Mississippi by more than 20 points and held a rally for Hyde-Smith in Corinth on October 26. Every major forecaster rated the race Likely or Safe Republican a week ago, and Decision Desk HQ gave her a 91% chance on Election Day. The last Democrat Mississippi sent to the Senate was John Stennis in 1982, and the state has no automatic recount law.
The rest of the map
Kansas elected Adam Hamilton over Sen. Roger Marshall, the first Democrat the state has sent to the Senate since 1932.
In Iowa, Josh Turek, a state lawmaker and two-time Paralympic gold medalist, beat Rep. Ashley Hinson 50% to 46% for Joni Ernst's open seat. NBC says that win clinched the Democratic majority. Iowa started the night with an all-Republican congressional delegation. It ended with a Democratic senator, a Democratic governor in Rob Sand, the first in 20 years, and Democrats in three of its four House seats.
Susan Collins conceded to Troy Jackson at 12:47 a.m., ending a Senate career that began in 1997.
Sherrod Brown won back the Ohio seat he lost in 2024 by beating Jon Husted, who had been appointed to JD Vance's old seat. Brown lost two years ago by about four points while Trump carried the state by 11. This time, AP VoteCast found about seven in ten Ohio voters under 30 backed him, up from about half in 2024.
Roy Cooper beat Michael Whatley in North Carolina in the first flip of the night. Abdul El-Sayed held Michigan against Mike Rogers and will be the first Muslim senator. Jon Ossoff won comfortably in Georgia, the first major call after polls closed at 7.
Republicans held Nebraska, where Pete Ricketts beat independent Dan Osborn 50% to 44% in a race called in the early hours of Wednesday.
Alaska is still open. Mary Peltola and Sen. Dan Sullivan are separated by a few hundred votes, with thousands of absentee ballots uncounted and a ranked-choice tabulation likely if neither clears 50%. A second Dan Sullivan, a retired teacher with no party, drew about 1.7%. The Justice Department sued to block the results before a vote was counted; a federal judge threw the suit out last week, and the department said it would appeal. Trump told the Times he'll accept the result. The state aims to certify by November 25.
The House
Democrats needed a net gain of three seats. They got that many before 9 p.m. and kept going.
NBC's estimate of 258 seats works out to an 81-seat majority. The AP has Democrats at 228 seats won and leading in 34 more. Richard Hudson, the North Carolina congressman who chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee, lost his own district, which Republicans had held since 1963. Max Miller lost in Ohio after abuse allegations from his ex-wife. Christina Bohannan beat Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa's 1st District in their third straight rematch.
Republicans in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida had redrawn their House maps over the past 18 months to protect the majority. Democrats flipped districts anyway, including some Trump won by double digits in 2024. Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become speaker in January.
Governors
Democrats flipped the governorships of Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada.
Keisha Lance Bottoms beat Rick Jackson in Georgia and became the first Black woman elected governor anywhere in the United States. Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio, the first woman elected governor there and the first Democrat in about 15 years. Rob Sand beat Zach Lahn in Iowa. In Florida, Republican Byron Donalds became the state's first Black governor, one of the few bright spots for his party.
Trump's night
Trump watched on Fox News and posted through it.
Early in the evening he complained about Jessica Tarlov's voice, called her "DUMB AS A ROCK," and said he'd watch somewhere else until she was off the air. Later he wrote that Fox "bears responsibility for these losses." After the Texas calls, he turned on Abbott: "If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn't become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn't have lost." He announced he would become "a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost."
The post everyone will remember came late. "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter."
By phone with the Times from the White House, he was calmer. "I am absolutely willing to accept those results," he said. "There was a mood in the air, I guess." He told Fox, "Congratulations to the Democrats," said he was "a little bit surprised," and dismissed the war with Iran as the reason. A White House official told NewsNation that "candidate quality matters."
The incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee told Trump and his party to "lawyer up."
How it got here
On January 1, Kalshi traders gave Republicans a 67% chance of keeping the Senate. The House had leaned Democratic for months, but the Senate map ran through states Trump won by double digits, and most forecasters called it a Republican hold.
The war with Iran began on February 28, and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Gas went from $2.98 a gallon in late February to above $4 by April 2, the first time it had passed that mark since 2022. Democrats crossed 50% on Kalshi's Senate market in mid-March. The odds swung back over the summer, when a ceasefire eased fuel prices, and Republicans peaked near 60% in July.
September broke the race open. A Houthi attack shut Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, gas climbed back toward $4.50, and the Fed raised rates on September 16 for the first time in three years. The September jobs report showed 29,000 jobs added. The last CPI report before the election showed inflation at 3.7%, with gas $1.27 a gallon higher than a year earlier, and Trump said prices were "coming down very fast." Reuters/Ipsos put his approval at 32%.
Kalshi had Democrats at 63% to win the Senate on October 2 and 74% at noon on November 2, after a New York Times/Siena poll found them ahead in seven battleground states. Polymarket had them at 73%. Both exchanges put a Democratic sweep near 75%, on more than $100 million of volume at Kalshi and more than $60 million at Polymarket. Nate Silver's model had the sweep at 82%. Decision Desk HQ had it at 63%.
The individual races moved in the final 24 hours too. Talarico went from 68% to 74% on Kalshi. Iowa went from 42% to 50% on Polymarket. Kansas went from 52% to 63%.
One Polymarket trader put $609,644 on Republicans winning none of the swing Senate races when that contract traded at 36%. It trades at 87% this morning, and the position clears about $917,000 if Alaska holds.
Wall Street
Markets sold first. S&P 500 futures fell 1.2% overnight and Nasdaq futures dropped more than 2% as the Texas calls landed and analysts talked about a Democratic Congress taking a harder look at AI and Big Tech. The 10-year Treasury yield fell six basis points to 4.906%. The dollar index slipped to 101.34, and VIX futures rose above 20.
By 7:30 a.m. the selling had reversed. Dow futures were up more than 700 points and S&P 500 futures were up 1%. Jay Woods of Freedom Capital Markets credited "the president's initial tone and reaction to the results." Democrats will control Congress but fall short of a filibuster-proof Senate, and Trump keeps his veto, so the policy math changes less than the headlines suggest.
What the markets knew
The sweep Republicans called unthinkable in January traded at roughly 3 to 1 for the final three weeks, on more than $160 million of volume across two regulated exchanges, in markets anyone could read for free.
Two Senate seats are still trading this morning. Our live odds on Alaska, Mississippi and every other race, blended across Kalshi, Polymarket and Polymarket US, are on the Exchange Alpha midterm map.
