Tuesday saw seismic results in the midterm elections as Democrats virtually ran the table of competitive races, and voters delivered a powerful rebuke to President Trump and the GOP.
The bottom line is that Democrats have won control of the Senate and the House. And while the precise tally in each chamber remains unclear, the party will have bigger majorities than many were projecting just weeks ago.
Trump sought to pin the blame on Republican candidates — a case he made on social media and in a midnight interview with Fox News.
But plenty of people in his party are murmuring about his role in the debacle, given his low approval ratings and the fact that his preferred candidates in key Senate races went down to defeat.
There are other questions only time will answer, including what Democrats will do with their newfound power, and what impact the results will have on the 2028 race for the White House.
But here are the main takeaways from Tuesday.
The blue wave happened – and then some
Democrats had gone into Tuesday buoyed by strong opinion polls and by the belief that the nation was growing tired of Trump’s antics amid worries about the economy.
But liberal America had also grown nervous about elections, wounded by Trump’s 2016 and 2024 victories, and cognizant of his propensity to outperform the polls.
In the end, the night could hardly have gone better for Democrats.
In the battle for the Senate, they won, or are set to win, virtually every competitive race.
Seats that seemed at the outer edges of their ambitions, including in South Carolina and Kansas, have turned blue. Adam Hamilton’s victory over Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) was the first Democratic Senate victory in Kansas in almost one hundred years.
