Voters delivered a sweeping rebuke to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, handing Democrats control of both the House and the Senate and leaving the president with an opposition-controlled Congress for the final two years of his term. CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC News all projected Democratic majorities in both chambers as results poured in overnight.
The scale of the defeat reached well beyond the usual battlegrounds. Democrats flipped at least seven Republican-held Senate seats, according to MS NOW, wiping out the GOP's 53-47 majority, and the network estimated that Democrats had won at least 245 of the 435 House seats. In Indiana, Democrat J.D. Ford ousted Rep. Victoria Spartz in a district Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.
"I thought they'd do better"
Trump, who watched the returns at the White House, called into Fox News' election-night coverage as the size of the losses became clear. Asked about Republican candidates, he offered a rare admission: "I'm a little bit surprised. I thought they'd do better."
In the same call, he suggested that the people tallying ballots mattered more than the people on them. "People that count the votes are much more important than the candidates," Trump said, without pointing to any specific irregularity.
As the map turned against his party, the president also returned to Greenland, one of the signature ambitions of his second term. "Greenland is three times the size of Texas, and we got it," he told Fox viewers.
Blaming Fox News, posting "VETO"
Hours later, Trump turned on the very network he had called into. On Truth Social he asked why Fox News had former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on air "ranting and raving like a Lunatic," and wrote that "FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse." He also promised to become "a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost."
Then came a post with no words at all, just an image of a red cap emblazoned with "VETO" — a preview of how he intends to greet legislation from a Democratic Congress. On Election Day, he had told CBS News that he would use his veto and his "tremendous powers" if Democrats won.
His tone was softer in an interview with The New York Times as the results came in. "I am absolutely willing to accept those results," Trump said, adding, "We'll work with the Democrats." He blamed the losses on not being on the ballot himself and said he had no regrets about endorsing Darline Graham in South Carolina or Ken Paxton in Texas, both of whom were defeated. "I see that Darline lost," he said.
A map that turned blue
A New York Times analysis of county-level returns showed how broad the swing was. In counties with nearly complete counts, the vote shifted toward Democrats by an average of 16 percentage points, compared with a five-point shift toward Republicans in 2024. Even in states Democrats lost, Tennessee and Kentucky each swung 18 points toward the party.
Among the night's biggest results:
- Texas: State Rep. James Talarico defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton for the Senate, ending a Democratic statewide losing streak dating to 1994, and Gina Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott to become the state's first Latina governor.
- Ohio: Sherrod Brown returned to the Senate by defeating Sen. Jon Husted, and Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy for governor.
- Maine: Troy Jackson unseated Sen. Susan Collins.
- Kansas: Adam Hamilton defeated Sen. Roger Marshall.
- South Carolina: Pediatrician Annie Andrews defeated Darline Graham.
- North Carolina and Iowa: Former Gov. Roy Cooper and Josh Turek captured Republican-held Senate seats.
- Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed beat Mike Rogers and is set to become the first Muslim American senator.
- Florida: Republicans held the Senate seat, and Byron Donalds was elected governor.
"How did we get here?"
Inside Trump's orbit, the recriminations started before the polls closed. According to CNN interviews with more than a dozen aides, advisers and GOP operatives, Trump privately asked a close associate at an October rally, "How did we get here?" Insiders blamed his decision to launch the war with Iran in February, which upended months of election planning and drove up fuel prices, along with his dismissal of affordability concerns, weak candidates and late campaign spending. "Honestly, there's just one person to blame," one Republican strategist told the network.
Voters appeared to agree that the president was on the ballot after all. Exit polling by SSRS for a consortium of U.S. media outlets found that 70% of voters wanted Congress to impose more checks on the president, and half saw the election as a chance to rebuke him.
Two years of checks
The new Congress convenes in January. With the House, Democrats can block legislation and open investigations into the Iran war, immigration enforcement and corruption allegations; with the Senate, they can stall judicial nominees and senior appointments. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries declared that Trump's MAGA movement was "on the run from sea to shining sea," while Rep. Robert Garcia, expected to lead the House Oversight Committee, posted a two-word warning: "LAWYER UP."
Even Elon Musk, who led Trump's DOGE cost-cutting effort in 2025, could not resist a wry comment as the results came in: "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now."
Videos: Fox News via social media. Images: Truth Social, The New York Times, Reuters
