Democrats stormed through key battleground races across the US in their battle to capture the House and Senate on Tuesday night, marking a decisive repudiation of President Donald Trump’s second term.
The scale of victory for Democrats—in some races, the party flipped seats that Trump won by double digits just two years ago—marked a historic night that exceeded the party’s highest expectations.
Democrats pulled off arguably the greatest upset in Texas, where James Talarico defeated scandal-plagued Republican state attorney general Ken Paxton and Gina Hinojosa defeated Greg Abbott for the governorship, despite the millions and millions of dollars spent by billionaire Elon Musk on behalf of the Republicans. No Democrat had won a statewide seat election since 1994.
Democrats also seized other critical Senate races on election night, including in Kansas, South Carolina, Iowa, and North Carolina, while retaining control of seats in Georgia and New Hampshire, according to the Associated Press.
At the White House, stunned Trump officials tell WIRED that the high gas prices and increased cost of living brought on by the Iran war were the principal reasons for widespread GOP losses.
“If any good comes out of tonight for the Republican party, it’s that no Republican president will ever listen to imbeciles like Mark Levin and Marc Thiessen again,” one source close to the White House said of two commentators who had urged Trump to prolong the Iran war.
Exit polling showing massive defections from other parts of the 2024 Trump coalition show there was more to the losses than that, with Latino voters turning to Democrats as the administration pursued brutal and unpopular immigration policies.
Some officials, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, privately laid the blame at the feet of the president for taking the nation into the Middle East conflict, which he wrongly assumed would be over in a matter of weeks and has continued with no clear end in sight.
“President Trump was not on the ballot, and it’s proven that Trump voters show up when he is on the ballot,” a White House official said in a statement, even as Trump had implored his base on the trail to pretend that he was on the ballot.
“Also, candidate quality matters, and President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves,” the official added.
Many of the losing candidates were hand-picked by Trump, who forced out incumbents like Texas senator John Cornyn and blessed candidates like Darline Graham, the sister of late senator Lindsey Graham, who ran a dismal campaign in South Carolina.
Still, other Trump officials have cast about for other scapegoats, blaming a failed redistricting effort as well as candidate quality.
Republicans embarked on a strategy earlier this year to redraw numerous congressional maps, as part of a gambit that White House aides thought could yield 10 to 15 House seat pickups if Trump voters turned out. The downside, political scientists pointed out, was that it made seats harder to defend, as while there were more Republican districts, each was less Republican.
On election night, the strategy failed to yield results. Democrats won at least three House seats in Florida that Republicans had redrawn, as well as the seat in North Carolina.
The closest thing to a bright spot for Republicans came in the Senate race in Florida, which became abruptly competitive in the final days of the midterm campaign. In the end, Ashley Moody barely fended off progressive candidate Democrat Angie Nixon.
As the likely control of the House and Senate became clear, top House Democrats separately ended the night relishing the prospect of mounting an aggressive oversight campaign against the Trump administration.
Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of the House oversight committee, issued a two-word statement: “Lawyer up.”
