2026 midterm elections live updates: Democrats regain control of the Senate with Iowa flip

The National Republican Senatorial Committee filed on Tuesday to establish a recount fund for Alaska’s Senate race, the latest development in the state’s Senate battle controversy in which two Dan Sullivans are featured on the ballot.

The NRSC’s filing with the Federal Election Commission comes just a week after a New York Times report revealed Democrats worked to recruit spoiler challengers against Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), including a candidate who shares his name. Republicans have argued that the effort will cause voters confusion at the ballot box, possibly siphoning enough votes from the incumbent that he loses the election.

Sullivan is facing Democratic challenger Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman, in the Senate race. The FEC filing only lists Sullivan’s super PAC, Alaskans for Dan Sullivan, as a joint fund participant.

“The NRSC is committed to ensuring every vote is counted fairly and accurately in each and every state, and we will be ready for all contingencies, including recounts, should they be necessary,” NRSC Communications Director Joanna Rodriguez said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Penny Flanagan beat former sports broadcaster Michelle Tafoya on Tuesday in the race to succeed Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

The Associated Press called the race for Flanagan just after midnight, with Flanagan earning 54% support against Tafoya’s 43.3%. About 75% of the votes were counted.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), won the state in the 2024 general election by more than four points against President Donald Trump.

Flanagan led Tafoya in every poll up until Election Day but never by more than five points. That lead had shrunk to just three in surveys published in mid-October when the Cook Political Report moved the race in the Republican Party’s favor. Prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket both still gave Flanagan a nearly 90% chance of winning at the end of October.

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Trump gave the members of his Cabinet a vote of confidence early Wednesday morning, despite the blue wave that handed Democrats majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

The president called Fox News for an interview just after midnight, where host Bret Baier asked the president point blank if he was “going to make changes” to the Cabinet.

“No, I don’t think so. It had nothing to do with my Cabinet. It was just a point — honestly, look. I’ve been doing a lot of great things for a long time, and it’s just a point in time,” he answered.

TRUMP SPENDS NEARLY HALF OF HIS MIDTERM CLOSING PITCH TALKING ABOUT THE REFLECTING POOL RENOVATIONS

Some White House aides told the Washington Examiner after the elections that they believed War Secretary Pete Hegseth would be in the crosshairs regarding his counsel to the president regarding the war in Iran.

Donald Trump claimed to already be working the phones Wednesday morning after Democrats took control of both congressional majorities in the 2026 midterm elections.

The president did a live phone interview with Fox News just after midnight, where he claimed to be “friends” with several members of the opposing party and would “work together” on several unspecified issues.

“Believe it or not, I’ve already spoken to some of them,” he stated. “Two senators and three congressmen, actually. So it’s a total of five, and I have three waiting to call me.”

“They obviously want to talk, but I have the power of veto, and the power of veto is, as you know, it’s impervious,” Trump concluded.

Cape May’s Democratic Mayor Zack Mullock has flipped New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District blue after Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) called Mullock to concede.

Van Drew has served four terms in the House, representing the South Jersey district. His seat was ranked as a likely Republican seat by the Cook Political Report, with Trump winning the district by over 12 points in 2024. The result leaves just one Republican seat in the Garden State, held by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) in the 4th District.

Mullock has 51.05% of the vote, according to the Associated Press as of midnight, while Van Drew has 47.9%. The outlet has not called the race yet, with 85.8% of the vote reported.

What the Democrats have pulled off in tonight’s elections, especially for Senate, shouldn’t have been possible based on the available map.

In 2018, the blue wave midterm election of President Donald Trump’s first term, Republicans actually gained red-state Senate seats despite the anti-GOP national environment. On Tuesday night, they lost six such seats and are trailing in two or three more (Mississippi — Mississippi! — has been going back and forth). Democrats hadn’t elected a senator in South Carolina since 1998, Texas since 1988, or Kansas since 1932. All happened tonight.

Many of these races weren’t even close. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) defeated Republican Mike Collins 58.9% to 41.1%. Former Gov. Roy Cooper is on track to hold former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley to under 40% of the vote. State Rep. James Talarico, with all his woke baggage, is beating GOP state Attorney General Ken Paxton by 12 points. Trump won all of these states just two years ago.

The sky is the limit in the House, as attention shifts to the West Coast. The collapse of the red firewall in the Senate suggests no House seat will be safe either, though some Republicans will paradoxically be spared because they attracted less money and attention than the upper-chamber contests. Republicans didn’t lose a single House seat in 2018 in a district Trump had carried by at least 20 points two years earlier. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) fell in a Trump +18 district before 11 p.m.

In 2018, Republicans were defending 25 House seats in districts won by Hillary Clinton. This year, they were just eight GOP-held seats carried by Kamala Harris. It was only three before this year’s redistricting wars. The low-hanging fruit has been picked. Republicans are losing in places where all that is necessary is turning out Republican voters.

Some political analysts thought that because of gerrymandering, political polarization, migration trends, and past wave elections benefiting both parties back to 1994 that new wave elections were no longer even possible. Democrats may yet fall short of the 41 House seats they gained in 2018 or the 63 Republicans picked up in the Tea Party wave of 2010, though nothing would surprise at this point. But this is an epic collapse in Republican strongholds that shouldn’t have been possible given the House and Senate maps.

President Donald Trump pointed the finger at Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) for his loss after his Democratic opponent Gina Hinojosa became the first governor-elect since 1990.

“If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost. He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!” Trump wrote in Truth Social.

Abbott, once considered a potential presidential prospect, conceded to Hinojosa after Hinojosa won 57% of the vote to the incumbent’s 42%, with 70% of the vote counted.

Abbott’s campaign, in part, was dogged by cost of living concerns, with energy prices exacerbated in the Lone Star State thanks to the construction of more data centers.

The conservative movement is split into two camps tonight, each blaming the other’s pet policies for the blue tsunami that just crashed on America. The NatCons slam the decision to go to war, while the traditional conservatives blame the “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Missing in the exchange is a frank discussion about the lasting negative effect of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation regime. NBC News’s exit polls found that 49% of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement is handling its job, while another 11% “somewhat disapprove”. In all, the country disapproved of ICE’s performance in Trump’s second term at a 60-40 clip. This result tracks with most public opinion polls on the subject.

Trump clearly misread his mandate in a variety of ways following his 2024 victory. And while he correctly identified securing the border as a top priority for the nation, he incorrectly read the public’s demand for order as a license for masked agents to sweep up longtime residents with no criminal records. The mass deportation programs were chaotic and ugly, and because of that, Trump lost the public on the issue.

Republicans who were uncomfortable with these tactics were largely afraid to speak up before the midterm elections. It will be interesting to see how this debate evolves as we enter presidential primary season.

Trump said he will dive into the reasons why Republican candidates lost the midterm elections so badly.

“I’m going to become a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost!” he wrote in one of his late-night Truth Social posts.

The president was publicly reflecting on the results as they came in on Tuesday. So far, Democrats are significantly outpacing Republicans in the House and Senate.

In a prior post, Trump complained that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) lost his gubernatorial race because he had become a Republican In Name Only, or RINO, “in the last six months of his Political Life.”

Polls in Hawaii have closed at midnight Eastern on Wednesday as results across the country have begun rolling in, showing significant wins for Democrats.

Hawaii’s two House districts, governorship, and other state and local seats are on the ballot this election cycle.

The state is not considered a major battleground in the national fight for control of Congress, but voters are deciding both of Hawaii’s House seats, along with state and local contests. Both of the Aloha State’s congressional seats are considered safe for Democrats.

Hawaii does not have a Senate contest this cycle. The state’s congressional and local results will add to the nationwide tally as election officials continue reporting returns and major wins for the Democratic Party from across the country.

Democratic candidates have flipped the Senate blue in the 2026 midterm elections, with Democrat Josh Turek’s win in Iowa against Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) dealing the final blow.

The Democrats have won 51 seats in the Senate, according to the Associated Press as of 11:39 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday. Democrats have won four of the six Senate seats listed as toss-ups by Cook Political Report, with the results of Maine, Michigan, and Alaska still outstanding.

Democrats pulled off wins in typically red states such as South Carolina, Texas, and Kansas to flip the upper chamber.

Democrat Gina Hinojosa has defeated Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) in a stunning upset, ending the incumbent’s decadelong hold on the Texas governor’s office and breaking a three-decade Republican winning streak.

The Associated Press called the race at 11:17 p.m. Tuesday, with Hinojosa capturing 57% of the vote to Abbott’s 41.8%.
Hinojosa’s victory makes her the first woman to serve as Texas governor since Democrat Ann Richards left office in 1995. She will also become the first Latina to hold the state’s highest office.

Abbott, who has served as governor since 2015, had President Donald Trump’s endorsement heading into the election. Texas had not elected a Democratic governor since 1994, making Hinojosa’s win one of the night’s most consequential upsets.

Her victory follows another major Democratic breakthrough in Texas, where James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton in the closely watched Senate race. Talarico will become the first Democrat elected to represent Texas in the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen won reelection in 1988.

Republican candidate Michael Alfonso, the son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, is set to become the youngest member of Congress at age 26 after he won his House race in Wisconsin.

Alfonso, who ran for Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, beat his Democratic opponent by just over 12 points late Tuesday. The Associated Press called the race at 11:02 p.m.

Trump said Republicans are not performing well in the midterm elections because he wasn’t on the ballot this year.

“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he posted on Truth Social.

In the months leading up to the election, the president told Republican voters to pretend he was on the ballot in an effort to boost turnout at polling locations.

So far, the election results aren’t boding well for Republicans as Democrats gain more seats in the House and Senate races. It remains to be seen if Republicans will lose both chambers of Congress.

Polls have closed in California and Washington state.

In California, polls closed at 11 p.m. Eastern. The governor’s race has attracted national attention, with Republican Steve Hilton — who has received Trump’s endorsement — facing Democrat Xavier Becerra. All 52 of California’s House seats are also on the ballot, making the state a major factor in the national fight for control of the chamber. Democrats are seeking to defend their advantage.

In Washington, voters are deciding congressional races and a slate of statewide and local contests. The state’s 10 House seats are part of the nationwide battle for control of the chamber, with Democrats looking to defend their advantage in a state that has consistently favored the party in federal elections. Republicans are seeking opportunities in more competitive districts, particularly outside the Seattle metropolitan area.

Washington does not have a Senate contest this cycle, leaving congressional races and state-level offices as the primary focus for election watchers.