Democrats win Congress in US midterms as Rubio defends Iran war

Democrats take Congress

Democrats won control of Congress in the midterm elections held on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, and ballots were still being counted when the coverage was written. Observador reports that a record 124 million American voters cast ballots. In Texas, James Talarico won a Senate seat and Gina Hinojosa defeated Greg Abbott, who had governed the state since 2015. In Kansas, Adam Hamilton became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1932. Talarico is a Presbyterian seminarian who campaigned against Christian nationalism from within his own faith, while Hamilton is a Methodist pastor who appealed for reconciliation in a conservative state.

Who voted and why

Roughly seven in ten voters under 30 backed Democrats in the House vote, and the party also regained ground among Latino voters and Black men after Donald Trump's gains with those groups two years earlier. Jon Ossoff was re-elected in Georgia with about 59% of the vote in a state Trump carried in 2024. He improved on Kamala Harris's result in all 159 Georgia counties and won twelve counties that had voted for Trump. The articles point to food prices, household rent and the war with Iran as factors that weighed heavily on voters. Daniel Oliveira, a columnist for Expresso and a commentator for SIC Notícias, argued that the millions spent in campaigns, including money tied to Elon Musk, failed to stop Democratic candidates, some of whom had opposed Musk's economic power and the AIPAC lobby.

“It looks like for every dollar they spent, they lost a vote.”

Rubio and Trump on Iran

On Sunday, 8 November, Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated that Trump started the war against Iran to protect the world from Tehran's nuclear ambitions, while acknowledging the war was not necessarily popular. Speaking in Florida before leaving for a G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Paris, Rubio declined to address the Republican defeat directly. He was asked about a social media post from Vice President JD Vance the previous week, which blamed much of the Republican losses on the war, and said Trump had identified a very real threat from Iran. Hours earlier, Trump told CNN by phone that a resumption of fighting was very unlikely if Iran signs a solid agreement, but he said he could order hostilities to restart if the situation changed. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said talks between the two countries had stalled because of the shock caused by the defeat of Trump's campaign in the midterms.

The 2028 race starts

735 days separate the midterms from the 2028 presidential election, and potential candidates are already positioning themselves in both parties. No heavyweight name has formally entered a race, although hopefuls are accumulating on both sides of the spectrum. Scott Ferson, a Democratic strategist and author of How the Democrats Lost America, named money, status and an original vision as the three pillars of a winning campaign. He argued to Observador that viable candidates rarely have all three. Todd Belt, a professor of political management at George Washington University, said the election turned on Trump's economic mismanagement and that voters expressed discontent with Trump rather than backing the Democratic message.