Democrats will control both chambers of Congress for the rest of President Trump’s term. The 2026 midterm election results were clear within hours of the last polls closing in the East. The Associated Press called the Senate for Democrats shortly before midnight Eastern on Tuesday and the House at about 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday, according to live coverage from TIME and PBS NewsHour.
As of 11:30 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, two Senate races and dozens of House seats were still uncalled. Neither changes who holds the gavels in January, but they will decide how large the new majorities are.
Seven Senate flips, from Maine to Texas
Republicans went into Election Day holding the Senate 53-47, NPR reported. Democrats needed a net gain of four seats. AP race calls, as set out in the AP’s overnight story, gave them seven.
The flips reached deep into Republican territory. James Talarico beat Republican Ken Paxton in Texas, the first Democratic Senate win there since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
Adam Hamilton ousted Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas, the state’s first Democratic senator since 1932. Two more sitting senators lost: Susan Collins to Troy Jackson in Maine, and Jon Husted to Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
Democrats also took Republican-held seats in Iowa (Josh Turek over Rep. Ashley Hinson), North Carolina (Roy Cooper) and South Carolina (Annie Andrews over Darline Graham). They held Georgia with Jon Ossoff and New Hampshire with Chris Pappas.
In Michigan, the AP called the Senate race for Abdul El-Sayed over Republican Mike Rogers, NPR reported. El-Sayed will be the first Muslim American to serve in the Senate. His primary rival, Rep. Haley Stevens, had endorsed Rogers after losing to El-Sayed by about a point.
NBC News, which runs its own decision desk, showed Democrats at 54 seats and Republicans at 44 as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern, with Mississippi and Alaska uncalled. Both are Republican-held, so the final Senate will sit somewhere between 54-46 and 56-44.
A House majority, with 60 seats still open
AP said early in the night that it would call the House only when one party reached 218 seats. Before the election, Republicans had 219 members and two seats were vacant, an AP entry on the PBS live page said.
AP made that call at about 1:30 a.m. Eastern.
At 11:30 a.m., NBC News projections had Democrats at 231 seats and Republicans at 144, with 60 races uncalled and a net Democratic gain of 29. We could not open a comparable AP tally. Treat the NBC numbers as one desk’s count, not AP’s.
The gains came in places Republicans had worked to secure. The AP reported Democratic pickups in Florida and Texas districts that Republicans had redrawn.
They beat incumbents Tom Kean in New Jersey and Ryan Mackenzie, Scott Perry and Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania. Counting in New York’s 17th District, where Rep. Mike Lawler faces Cait Conley, was pushed to Wednesday after a ballot-scanning problem, PBS reported.
The races still counting
Two Senate races remain open, and the gap between them is striking. The table shows the latest figures we could confirm.
| Race | Leader | Margin | When it could be settled | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mississippi Senate | Scott Colom (D) | 65 votes of 945,587 counted (AP, 1:05 p.m.) | Counties have five business days for absentee and affidavit ballots | WDAM, NBC News |
| Alaska Senate | Mary Peltola (D) | 626 votes in first choices (ADN, after 2 a.m.); 48.2% to 47.9% with about 74% of expected vote in (NBC, 11:24 a.m.) | Ranked-choice count Nov. 18; certification Nov. 25 | Anchorage Daily News, NBC News |
| California Prop 40 | No, 55.6% | About 60% reporting | Ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 count if received by Nov. 10 | NBC Los Angeles |
| 60 House seats | Various | Various | Varies by state | NBC News |
Mississippi is the closest Senate race in the country. Colom, a Democrat, led Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith 462,821 to 462,778 in the 3 a.m. count, WDAM reported.
That gap is less than five thousandths of a percentage point. About 44,000 votes are still to count, roughly a thousand times the margin. By 1:05 p.m. Eastern, Colom’s lead was 65 votes, 462,857 to 462,792, on the AP’s results page, and the race was still uncalled.
Mississippi allows no recount without a court order, and there is no runoff: the top vote-getter wins, the Mississippi Free Press reported. Hyde-Smith told supporters, “We still don’t have all the votes in,” WLOX reported.
Alaska waits on mail and ranked choices
In Alaska, Peltola had 102,701 first-choice votes to Sen. Dan Sullivan’s 102,075 after 2 a.m., the Anchorage Daily News reported. A second candidate, Dan J. Sullivan, took 1.7%, a quirk we explained before the vote.
Mailed ballots count if they arrive within 10 days, or 15 from overseas, Alaska Public Media reported. If no one passes 50%, the ranked-choice tabulation runs on Nov. 18.
Ohio’s governor and California’s billionaire tax
Further down the ballot, Democrat Amy Acton defeated Republican Vivek Ramaswamy for Ohio governor, the AP reported. She is the first Democrat to win the seat in 20 years and the first woman elected to it. “The healing begins today,” Acton said.
In California, Proposition 40, a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of roughly 200 billionaires, was losing 55.6% to 44.4% with about 60% of the vote reporting, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Proposition 3 was a projected winner with 58.7%. It would make permanent the higher income-tax rates on top earners that voters first passed in 2012. The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates it would raise $5 billion to $15 billion a year.
California keeps counting after the Supreme Court on Monday refused the Justice Department’s request to hold back some of the state’s mail ballots.
What control changes on Jan. 3
The new Congress takes office at noon on Jan. 3, 2027, the date set by the 20th Amendment. From then, Democrats chair every committee, which means they decide which hearings happen and whom to subpoena. The AP reported that Democrats plan to investigate senior administration officials and said impeachment is “not off the table.”
The Senate majority matters most for nominations. NPR reported that it will end the steady confirmation of Trump’s judicial picks, and that cabinet nominees will need at least some Democratic votes to serve permanently.
Trump keeps his veto. Democrats also lack the 60 votes to break a filibuster, so new laws will still need Republican support. Divided government after a midterm is a familiar pattern: the president’s party has lost House seats in 18 of 20 midterms since 1946.
Trump told The New York Times he was “absolutely willing to accept those results,” according to PBS. On Truth Social he wrote, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” In a call with Fox News he said Democrats “did a good job” and added, “I don’t view it as a hit on me.” He also said he would become “Mr. Veto,” NPR reported.
Schumer, in line to become majority leader, told supporters that “relief is on the way.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Republicans “will not stand idly by.” The next fixed date is Nov. 10, California’s deadline for late-arriving mail ballots, and Mississippi’s counties are working through absentee and affidavit ballots this week.
