Democrats seized control of the Senate on Tuesday, according to New York Times projections, capturing a powerful platform to counter President Donald Trump as voters in Republican-leaning states repudiated the president and his allies in a midterm thrashing.
Democrats clinched the Senate majority with a win in Iowa and were picking up competitive House seats around the country that pointed to a lopsided margin of control in that chamber.
The results promised a new era of divided government in Washington and a freshly assertive Congress after two years in which Republicans generally ceded power to Trump and reduced the legislative branch’s role to that of a mere bystander.
They sealed a volatile election season that began with Democrats having little chance of taking over the Senate or cutting very deeply into Republicans’ 53-47 majority.
But over the past year, the electorate soured on Trump, and Democrats even in Republican-leaning states romped to victory, picking up support in traditionally conservative strongholds by capitalizing on mounting unrest over the war with Iran and its consequences. With fuel prices soaring and tariffs exacerbating already high living costs, they made the case that Republicans in Washington were cashing in while ordinary Americans were struggling.
The result was that Democrats were able to reshape a political map that was stacked against them with seats in solidly Republican territory, flipping seats in Kansas, Texas, Ohio, and both North and South Carolina.
They held onto a pair of seats in New Hampshire and Georgia that Republicans had once hoped to flip to help offset losses elsewhere that became increasingly out of reach for the GOP amid rising discontent over Trump’s policies.
Democratic control of the Senate as of Jan. 3 will give the party veto power over Trump’s judicial and administration nominees, as well as the leadership of the committees that will have the authority to subpoena administration officials and others to follow through on investigations Democrats promised to pursue if they won.
It will also give Democrats control of the Senate floor and legislative agenda, setting up likely clashes with the White House over spending, the war with Iran and a host of special projects that the president has undertaken around Washington. The loss could spur Republicans in the coming weeks to try to push through some of their priorities in a catchall bill in an upcoming lame-duck session that begins Monday.
The outcome represents a stunning defeat for Senate Republicans who began the midterm cycle with substantial advantages but saw them eroded by the actions of the president and their unwillingness to push back on Trump.
The possibility that Democrats could be in position to win the Senate majority was almost unthinkable a year ago. The playing field was clearly tilted in favor of Senate Republicans defending seats in GOP-leaning states, and Democrats faced a challenge in retaining the 47 seats they controlled. But economic conditions and the president’s decision to initiate a costly conflict with Iran in February opened the door for Democrats.
With legislative accomplishments hard to come by, Republicans were counting on an electoral reward from the “big beautiful bill” passed under a special party-line process and signed into law by Trump in July 2025 after Vice President JD Vance was forced to break a tie vote. The measure extended income tax cuts secured by Republicans during Trump’s first term and also instituted some new breaks such as easing taxes on tips and increasing the deduction for state and local taxes.
Their opponents, however, assailed the legislation’s cuts in safety net programs and a GOP refusal to extend some subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Democrats began building a case that Republican policies were making life more unaffordable while Trump and the people surrounding him were reaping huge financial benefits.
Tariffs imposed by the president helped bolster that argument, with his trade war with Canada hitting particularly hard in Michigan and Maine, two states where Republicans hoped to win to counter potential Democratic wins elsewhere. The tariffs also drove up farm fertilizer costs and dried up commodity markets, hitting conservative voters in the agriculture states.
Then the war with Iran strangled fuel supplies, sharply driving up the price of regular gasoline and diesel fuel while frustrating voters who backed Trump for his pledges to stay out of overseas conflicts.
The president’s attacks on some in his own party also created targets of opportunity for Democrats. After Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., voted against advancing the “big beautiful bill” in June 2025, Trump laid into him. Tillis responded by announcing he would not seek reelection, putting that state’s Senate seat in play. Former Gov. Roy Cooper won the seat on Tuesday.
In Texas, Trump gave a last-minute endorsement to Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn, the Republican incumbent, in the state primary, appearing to help lift Paxton to the win. With Paxton on the ballot, Democrats rallied behind James Talarico, turning Texas, where a Democrat had not been elected to the Senate since 1988, into one of the nation’s fiercest races, forcing Republicans to invest tens of millions of dollars there.
Many analysts said in the lead-up to the election that Cornyn, in contrast, would have had a fairly easy time holding off Talarico in the general election.
But Trump held a grudge from when Cornyn in 2023 suggested misgivings about the president seeking a second term despite Cornyn’s generally supportive record.
Trump ended up backing Paxton despite the political risks.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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