Published Nov 04, 2026 | 3:20 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 04, 2026 | 4:49 PM
Democrats have regained the US Senate majority, signaling a clear rejection of Republican leadership.
The Democratic Party has regained control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the United States just three years and nine months after losing control of both chambers.
At the time of going live, the Democrats had clinched 54 of the 100 seats in the Senate and 228 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives.
Among the notable Democratic Senate wins in the mid-term polls were those in South and North Carolina.
Former paediatrician Annie Andrews bested Darline Graham, sister of the late Lindsey Graham, to clinch South Carolina. It was the first time Democrats had won the Senate seat since 1998. President Trump had clinched the state by 18 points during his presidential run in 2024.
“I see that Darline lost. Wow, that’s amazing. How do you think Lindsey would have done if he ran?” President Trump was quoted as saying by The New York Times in a phone interview.
Andrews’ colleague Roy Cooper became the first Democratic senator from North Carolina since 2008.
“We knew that the chaos and corruption in Washington were hurting our people. Today you said this has to stop,” the two-time governor of North Carolina said in his acceptance speech.
“I am not going to Washington to be something,” he went on to tell his voters. “I am going to do something.”
There were also big upsets in Texas and Iowa, where Josh Turek, a former wheelchair basketball gold medallist, was elected.
Texas voted for a Democratic senator for the first time in 32 years. James Talarico triumphed over Republican Ken Paxton, who was blighted by scandals.
But the Texan upsets did not end there. Democratic candidate for Texas governor, Gina Hinojosa, stunned three-time governor Greg Abbott.
“Talarico is a symbol. Gina is an earthquake,” Garry Mauro, a former Democrat who served as Texas land commissioner till 1999, told the Times. “It’s a tsunami. The world has changed. The political maps will never be the same again.”
Abbott and the Republicans had backed the data centre boom in Texas, set to host nearly 30% of the active US data centres by 2028. This was one of the hot-button issues at the polls and appears to have fuelled voter anger.
The decisive issue, though, was probably the rising cost of living across the US.
“No one can afford anything anymore,” the Times quoted a voter in Texas as saying. “Our water and air are the dirtiest, and our education is horrible.”
Egyptian-American economist Mohamed A El-Erian, who is currently a professor at The Wharton School, was among those who laid the blame for the Republican showing squarely on the wider economic pain in America.
“A wide range of indicators confirm that the economy has been the main issue for voters in the US midterm elections. Within the economy, it’s primarily about affordability … and within affordability, a major focus remains gas (fuel) prices,” he wrote.
Even the President’s gamble of announcing the withdrawal of $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel on voting day failed to influence voters.
President Trump remained defiant while acknowledging the defeat in what the Times dubbed a “short conversation” over the phone.
He called the decision to go to war with Iran “a very wise decision” and the first two years of his second term “the most successful… in the history of any president.”
“We’ll probably work something out (with the Democrats),” he told the paper. Reckless Trumpian hope, it may well be.
Buoyed by their showing, Democrats are expected to push for investigations into the president and his cabinet members, many of whom have been accused of corruption.
As right-wing political commentator and talk show host Sean Hannity said on election night, “I think the hatred for this man (Trump) is unprecedented. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Democrat Suhas Subramanyam, a 40-year-old born to Tamil parents with roots in Bengaluru and Chennai, was re-elected to the US House of Representatives from Virginia.
Another Democrat, Pia Dandiya, also a first-generation American born to parents from Jaipur, clinched a high-profile victory in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District over Republican Marine veteran Casey Askar.
Her uncle Avi Dandiya congratulated Pia for “flipping a seat right in the heart of Republican territory in Florida.”
Aruna Miller, who was born in Hyderabad, was re-elected as the lieutenant governor of Maryland. She had earlier made history as the first South Asian-American woman and the first immigrant to hold statewide office in Maryland after taking office in January 2023.
Trump favourite Vivek Ramaswamy, who faced heavy criticism for an ad widely seen as a below-the-belt hit job, lost the Ohio gubernatorial race to Amy Acton.
The campaign ad had featured Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, as saying her daughter “lied her entire life”. What had been left unsaid was the fact that Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, had been jailed for raping Acton when she was 12 years old.
“My opponent keeps mistaking kindness for weakness. Kindness isn’t weakness. It’s a fierce, fierce commitment to justice,” Acton, who rose from being homeless as a child to become a doctor, had said on the campaign trail.
The Los Angeles mayoral race featuring Democrat Nithya Raman, who has roots in Kerala and who worked in Chennai, is still too close to call.
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(Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)
