Democrats win both US congressional chambers and nearly all Texas statewide offices

Democrats take both chambers of Congress

The midterm elections on Tuesday, 3 November, gave Democrats majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, chambers that Republicans had held until now. All 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats were up for election. The results leave President Donald Trump facing a Congress that no longer reliably backs him. The consequences for Texas and for the federal government are hard to overstate and could shape US politics for decades.

A near clean sweep in Texas

Democrats won practically every statewide office in Texas. Their candidates took the governorship, the lieutenant governorship, the attorney general's office and the chair of the state railroad regulator. They also won all four seats on the Texas Supreme Court. James Talarico becomes the first Texas Democrat elected to the US Senate since 1988. Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate whom Trump pushed through, was defeated. Julie Fine, Texas bureau chief of Bloomberg, said Republicans had taken the state's red color for granted for so long that they treated it as a given.

Republicans search for answers

Ted Cruz, the other Texas senator whose seat was not up this year, called the result a blue tsunami on X and said his party had lost touch with voters, particularly in Texas. He described the rebuke as being on the scale of Watergate rather than the usual midterm losses for the party in power. In a longer analysis, Cruz said too many Republicans had not understood or cared about economic hardship, citing high gasoline prices, rising foreclosures and vehicle repossessions, and a record number of Americans donating blood plasma each week. Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak told MSNOW that the evening was a thermonuclear event for Texas Republicans and that Paxton was the weakest top candidate in the state in at least 38 years. Political expert Tobias Endler told ntv that Republicans were in chaos after the wave and described Trump as a wounded grizzly.

Pressure on Trump from his own side

On Wednesday, 4 November, Republican allies and strategists pressed Trump to change course, calling for a staff overhaul in the White House, more discipline, and an end to contested policies including the Iran war and tariffs. Strategist John Feehery called the outcome a huge catastrophe for Trump and said he would become a lame duck with each passing day. JD Vance, seen as Trump's likely political heir, had already distanced himself from Trump and blamed the Iran war for the losses. Trump told Fox News on the evening of Tuesday, 3 November, that he did not see the result as a blow against him. At his first appearance after the vote on Wednesday, 4 November, he cut off reporters' questions about a possible impeachment by Democrats and turned to his renovation projects, including the ballroom at the White House.

Races still being counted

Mississippi's Senate race remains unresolved. With about 96% of votes counted, Democrat Scott Colom leads narrowly over Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, but the margin is too small to call a winner. Around 15,000 provisional affidavit ballots could decide the contest, many cast by voters who lacked photo identification or who were missing from the voter roll after being marked inactive. According to CNN, voting rights activists suspect that many of these ballots stem from new state procedures for cleaning up voter rolls, which wrongly marked some eligible voters as inactive. Local authorities must try to contact affected voters, who can supply missing information until 10 November, and mail-in ballots arriving by then can also be counted. Mississippi has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than 40 years. In Alaska, incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan faces former Democratic representative Mary Peltola, and the count could take even longer. A dispute over a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot could escalate if the Republican loses, and Trump criticized the vote count in Alaska.