Democrats win both chambers in US midterms, and Spanish columnists read it as a Trump setback

The midterm result

Projections give Democrats control of both chambers of Congress after the midterm elections held on Tuesday, 3 November, and El País columnists read the vote as a rebuke of Donald Trump and his allies. La Razón notes that the projections force the Trump administration to face a new political reality, although it argues the result does not end the strength of the US economy or the MAGA movement. According to El País, Trump accepted the outcome rather than contesting it with fraud claims, though one column says he spent the aftermath blaming others. Jorge Dezcallar, writing in La Vanguardia, calls the vote a referendum on the president and says Democrats also won the Senate, which he describes as the harder of the two chambers to take. La Razón recalls that in 1994 Democrats lost both chambers of Congress, and that Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996 with 379 electoral votes to Bob Dole's 159.

Prices, tariffs and the Iran war

Columnists trace much of the rejection to prices rather than to ideology. El País links the vote to a sharp rise in oil prices and to purchasing power eroded by what it calls universal tariffs and the war against Iran. Dezcallar says gasoline prices rose 43% and diesel 68%, a hit he puts at about two thousand dollars for each household, and he calls the war a mistake that drove prices up. Another El País column says polls it reads agree that the cost of living was the main reason voters punished Republicans. La Razón takes a gentler view, arguing that an economy can grow strongly while voters remain uneasy about groceries, housing and fuel.

The Democratic message

An El País column argues that Democrats began to take seriously the anger of their voters, presenting the cost of living as a problem with identifiable responsible parties rather than a technical issue. It cites Zohran Mamdani in New York, who turned that message into policies such as a freeze on rents for one million apartments. In Texas, the column says, a seminarian defeated the Republican Ken Paxton despite more than 200 million dollars from Elon Musk, campaigning against a system it describes as rigged in favour of the richest 1%. Dezcallar lists other firsts from the election, including the first Muslim senator, the first openly gay senator and the first Democratic senator from Texas in 33 years.

Limits on presidential power

An El Mundo column argues that US institutions have checked Trump, pointing to a Federal Reserve president who ignored his orders to cut interest rates. The same column cites a Supreme Court justice who annulled his tariffs on the grounds that they belong to Congress rather than the president. Both were appointed by Trump, yet the column says they put the preservation of institutions ahead of their political leanings. It also cites Daron Acemoglu, who told Bloomberg that inflation-adjusted wages for men without a university degree fell between 1980 and 2013 while the economy grew. The column warns that if Western democracies do not give their middle classes some certainty about prosperity, another Trump will follow.

Spain and Europe

El País says the election wave reaches Europe and sets back the far right, naming Meloni, Le Pen, Weidel and Abascal. El Mundo lists Viktor Orbán and Alexsandar Vucic among populist leaders who have also suffered setbacks recently, and argues that Pedro Sánchez governs in an illiberal way, a charge it says his supporters reject. La Moncloa, according to El Mundo, suggested the result foreshadows a Socialist recovery, though polls still show the party trailing. Eldiario.es says the Spanish right is distancing itself from Trump and links Feijóo and Abascal to promises of cuts, while noting that Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo announced her first measure would be banning simultaneous interpreting devices. El Mundo's column concludes that if the same pattern repeats in Spain, Sánchez himself would leave power.