WASHINGTON — Democrats have won control of both chambers of Congress, flipping the House of Representatives and the Senate in a midterm sweep that reached from the Texas border to the coast of Maine and ended, among other things, a 94-year Democratic drought in Kansas and Susan Collins’s three decades in the Senate.
The Senate fell first. The Associated Press declared Democratic control of the chamber at 11:35 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, the moment it called Iowa’s open Senate race for state representative Josh Turek over Republican Representative Ashley Hinson — one of the Republican Party’s star recruits of the cycle. NBC News, NewsNation and CNN made the same call within the same minutes. The House followed in the early hours of Wednesday, when the AP confirmed the Democratic majority that Decision Desk HQ had projected just after 8 p.m. and CNN had confirmed an hour after that. Republicans went into the night holding the Senate 53–47 and the House 218–212. They come out of it holding neither.
Seven Seats Change Hands
Democrats needed to flip four Senate seats. They flipped seven, and lost none of their own that were called. In Texas, state legislator James Talarico defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton — Texas will send a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1988. In Kansas, Adam Hamilton, a Methodist megachurch pastor, defeated incumbent Senator Roger Marshall; Kansas had not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, the longest such losing streak in the country. In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown returned to the chamber by unseating Republican Senator Jon Husted in the special election. In North Carolina, former Governor Roy Cooper took the open seat. In South Carolina, Annie Andrews beat Senator Darline Graham in the upset of the night. And in Iowa, Turek — a two-time Paralympic gold medallist in wheelchair basketball — beat Hinson in a state the president carried by 13 points two years ago.
The seventh flip came in Maine, where the AP called the race at 1:02 a.m. for Troy Jackson, the former state senate president who was drafted onto the ticket in July after the original Democratic nominee’s campaign imploded. Jackson defeated Senator Susan Collins, who had held the seat for nearly 30 years and leaves as the longest-serving Republican woman in Senate history. Collins called Jackson to concede shortly after midnight, before the AP call. Maine had not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988.
Michigan Holds, And Makes History
The seat that completed the picture was not a flip at all. In Michigan, the AP called the open race at 2:27 a.m. for Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the physician and former Detroit and Wayne County health director, who beat former Representative Mike Rogers by 2,497,852 votes to 2,162,890 in the AP count. El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, becomes the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate. “My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,” he told supporters in Detroit. “I am so proud and honoured to stand here as your Senator-elect for the great state of Michigan.” Michigan also elected Democrat Jocelyn Benson governor, and Democrats there won both chambers of the state legislature.
What Is Still Open
On NBC’s tally of AP calls early Wednesday, the new Senate stood at 53 Democratic seats to 43 Republican, with the final size of the majority not yet settled. Alaska and Mississippi remained uncalled on Wednesday morning: Alaska’s count runs for days under its ranked-choice system, with early returns favouring Democrat Mary Peltola over Senator Dan Sullivan, and in Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith held a narrow lead over Democrat Scott Colom in a partial count that was still too close to call. The final House margin also remains unsettled, with counting continuing in districts across the West; the AP noted that Democrats flipped House districts the president had won by as much as 18 points in 2024.
The governors’ races ran the same way. Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms becomes the first Black woman elected governor of an American state. Ohio elected Democrat Amy Acton over Vivek Ramaswamy. Iowa flipped its governorship to Democrat Rob Sand. President Trump, responding to the results late on Tuesday, said: “I wasn’t on the ballot.” CNN’s election-night analysis noted that several of the defeated Republican Senate candidates had been hand-picked by the president. The new Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027: for the last two years of Mr. Trump’s term, the gavels, the subpoenas and the spending bills will be in Democratic hands.
The Sweep — In Short
Democrats have won both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterms. The AP called the Senate for Democrats at 11:35 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and the House in the early hours of Wednesday. Seven Republican Senate seats flipped — Texas (Talarico), Kansas (Hamilton, the state’s first Democratic senator since 1932), Iowa (Turek), Ohio (Brown), Maine (Jackson, ending Susan Collins’s nearly 30-year tenure), North Carolina (Cooper) and South Carolina (Andrews) — and Michigan’s open seat stayed Democratic as Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the Senate. Alaska and Mississippi were still uncalled on Wednesday morning, as was the final House margin. The new Congress sits on January 3.
Sources: Associated Press race calls and vote counts, November 3–4, 2026; NBC News, CNN, CBS News and Decision Desk HQ projections, November 3–4, 2026; USA Today and Detroit Free Press election reporting, November 4, 2026; CNN midterm takeaways, November 4, 2026.
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