US Midterms, Democrats regain control of House and Senate

US voters have handed Democrats control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This is reported by CBS News and ABC News, which describe the result of the 2026 midterm elections as a rejection of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The change in majority brings with it a series of upsets in states that for decades had elected only Republican representatives to the Senate. Texas and Kansas sent their first Democratic senators to Washington in decades: James Talarico for Texas and Adam Hamilton for Kansas. The Democratic Party also won Senate seats in Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina and South Carolina, districts in which the Senate had remained firmly in Republican hands in previous electoral cycles.

In Texas, the change also affected the office of governor: outgoing Republican Greg Abbott lost the race against Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who thus becomes the first Democratic woman to lead the state since the time of Ann Richards, according to ABC News. This is one of the signals most cited by the two US outlets to gauge the scale of the vote: Texas had not elected a Democratic governor in generations, and Abbott’s defeat comes in the same cycle in which the state sends a Democratic senator to Congress for the first time.

Among the races confirming Democratic resilience in districts already held by the party is that of Georgia, where outgoing Senator Jon Ossoff won re-election. The call of the race, attributed by Georgia Public Broadcasting to Associated Press, was published by Georgia’s public broadcaster at 19:55 on November 3; one minute later, at 19:56 local time, the same projection was also reported by Atlanta News First. Ossoff commented on the victory addressing supporters gathered for the vote count: “Georgia, you did it!” (transl. from English) — Jon Ossoff, Democratic senator from Georgia, re-elected.

The picture emerging from the two national projections and the two local projections on Georgia outlines an electoral map that crosses different regions of the country: the Deep South with Texas and Georgia, the Midwest with Ohio and Iowa, the Carolinas on the Atlantic coast. None of the sources consulted has yet provided the overall count of seats assigned to each party in the two chambers, a figure that will emerge as the count continues.

In the coming months, the new composition of the Senate will affect federal appointments requiring the chamber’s consent, starting with the Ohio and Iowa delegations, where representation will now be split between the two parties after years of entirely Republican delegations.