Mother Jones illustration; Doug Mills/The New York Times/AP; Getty
The Democratic Party will control both houses of Congress through 2028, with a commanding majority in the House of Representatives, another commanding majority in the Senate, and signal victories in governor’s mansions, state legislatures, and statewide offices—many in parts of the country where Democratic wins looked unthinkable just a year ago.
In the House, notable victories by Democrats ranged from new districts heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans to upsets in deep-red regions like eastern Kentucky, where Navy veteran Zach Dembo defied another GOP gerrymander to win by nearly 10 points. In Virginia, former Rep. Elaine Luria, gerrymandered out in 2022, retook office. And North Carolina’s eleventh district, which hadn’t elected a Democrat in over a decade, saw another bellwether win by Democratic farmer Jamie Ager; former Rep. Heath Shuler, the last Democrat in office from 2007 to 2013, was Ager’s grandfather.
As my colleague Jeremy Schulman wrote:
Tuesday’s result won’t put an end to the president’s ability to wreak havoc across the globe, but it will enable Democrats to push back far more effectively against the administration. They will now have far more authority to hold hearings, compel testimony, and subpoena documents, as well as to derail Trump’s legislative agenda, control federal spending, extract policy concessions, and—critically—exercise oversight and launch investigations of the administration’s misdeeds.
The result is a body blow to both the hard-right House Freedom Caucus—the engine of the MAGA agenda in Congress—and the efforts of right-wing billionaires, especially Elon Musk, to put a thumb on the electoral scales. It also brings a freshman class of unprecedented diversity into the House, Senate, and state offices, from Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, the state’s first non-white executive, to Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, soon to be the nation’s first Muslim senator.
The crown jewel of Democrats’ sweep was gaining control of the Senate. Less than a year ago, it was common wisdom that the Senate map left Republicans firmly in power, no matter unpopular they became. A rubber stamp for Trump’s judicial nominees and White House appointees looked all but guaranteed until the end of his term.
Instead, the party notched historic wins like James Talarico’s in Texas, a rebuke to the uber-Trumpy Ken Paxton, and Annie Andrews’ in South Carolina—a rejection not just of MAGA, but of the legacy of the late, longtime Trump ally Sen. Lindsay Graham, embodied by his sister Darline, the Republican candidate.
In Michigan, physician and epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed will be the nation’s first Muslim senator, cruising to victory in the face of relentless and often breathtakingly racist attacks by Trump, GOP candidate Mike Rogers, and their friends. El-Sayed ran on an unapologetically progressive platform—and Michiganders liked it. Even the last-minute defection of his primary opponent Rep. Haley Stevens didn’t move the needle.
In Iowa, former Paralympian state Rep. Josh Turek became the state’s first Democratic senator since Senate stalwart Tom Harkin, who endorsed him, retired in 2015. Harkin’s “considerable sway in the state was an asset” for Turek, my colleague Julia Métraux wrote Tuesday (she profiled Turek earlier this year). Meanwhile, as in many races, Trump’s endorsement of his opponent, Rep. Ashley Hinson, may have backfired:
Caufield believes that a competitive Democratic primary this year may work in Democrats’ favor, especially if Hinson’s status as a sitting national politician—a DC insider—doesn’t help in a populist swing state like Iowa. A vote for a Democrat from an independent or Republican voter in the general election, after all, would most likely be a rebuke of Trump.
In Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown is once again heading to the Senate, ousting Republican incumbent Jon Husted despite weeks on the campaign trail with a clearly besotted Trump. And in Maine, progressive former logger Troy Jackson—on the campaign trail for barely 100 days—put an end to the three-decade Senate career of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, whose legacy will live on through her key votes to confirm Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
My colleague Sophie Hurwitz covered Jackson’s victory speech:
“If you’re watching this after getting home from a shift, or sitting at the table wondering how you’re going to pay the next bill, I want you to hear something very clearly,” Jackson said. “You are sending somebody to Washington who knows exactly what that feels like.”
North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, and, of course, Texas, where James Talarico became the first Texas Democrat to win a statewide election in 32 years. He wasn’t alone. My colleague Tim Murphy covered the stunning win of incoming Texas Gov. Gina Hinojosa, the state’s first Democratic governor since 1996—and its first governor of color ever.
In 2024, Ted Cruz, up for re-election to the Senate that year, cruised to victory by eight points. Donald Trump won the state that year by almost 14 points. And in 2022, now-defeated Gov. Greg Abbott won a third term by a more than 10 percent margin. On Tuesday, Talarico defeated the scandal-plagued Ken Paxton by Trumpian margins—55 to 43—with Hinojosa outperforming Abbott by well over half a million votes.
Democrats won the Texas attorney general’s office, the lieutenant governorship, and the state House Texas’ state comptroller, agriculture commissioner, and land commissioner will be Democrats. So will the state’s railroad commissioner—Rhodesia enthusiast Bo French, made famous by a notoriously racist tweet about South Asian students at a University of Texas, Austin, football game, lost by more than half a million votes.
In Georgia, governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected to lead any state, ending the Republican stranglehold on the governor’s office and joining Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who won re-election by nearly 20 points. My colleagues David Corn and Garrison Hayes discussed Bottoms’ win—which built on voting rights champion and former state Rep. Stacey Abrams’ 2018 and 2022 candidacies—on the latest episode of Stress Test.
As of Wednesday morning, some key races in Mississippi, Alaska, and California still had not been decided. But the results would not markedly change what is the unprecedented Democratic wave.
Tuesday might be remembered, above all, as a referendum on tech oligarchs and crypto barons, Flock cameras and data centers, AI grifters, finance bros, and other GOP megadonors—notably Elon Musk, who spent close to half a billion dollars on the election.
Musk focused on Texas, where his ass was handed to him, sinking almost $200 million into Paxton’s Senate bid. In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy’s failed gubernatorial candidacy was backed with $10 million from Republican billionaire Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, who dropped north of $100 million GOP candidates across the country. Other billionaires financed the party to the tune of tens of millions each, hoping to preserve Republican control of the Senate.
They all lost.