Democrats take Senate seats as Republicans underperform in midterms - Semafor
Democrats have taken the House and flipped four Republican-held Senate seats, racking up victories across the country in districts and states President Donald Trump won decisively two years ago.
Democrats only need to hang onto their remaining seats to take the Senate.
In Texas, James Talarico defeated Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the state since 1988. Democrat Gina Hinojosa toppled incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, the first Democrat to serve in the governor’s mansion since 1990 when Ann Richards was elected.
In Ohio, Sherrod Brown unseated Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio.
Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina flipped a Senate seat. Annie Andrews defeated Darline Graham in South Carolina, taking the seat formerly held by Lindsey Graham.
Sen. Jon Ossoff held on in Georgia. Chris Pappas held a Democratic seat in New Hampshire.
Democrats will need to flip two more seats to take control of the upper chamber. Maine, Texas, and Kansas are still too close to call. Polls don’t close in Alaska until 1 am EST.
Republicans held onto a Senate seat in Florida. Trump, reportedly watching returns from the White House, criticized Fox News coverage before most polls had closed.
Keisha Lance Bottoms won the gubernatorial race in Georgia, a first for a Democrat in 28 years — a positive sign for Ossoff if he decides to pursue a 2028 presidential bid, since she would appoint his successor.
Democrat Amy Acton defeated Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, endorsed by Trump, to become the next governor of Ohio. Ramaswamy aired a late attack ad against Acton featuring her estranged mother, who backed her husband when Acton accused him of rape as a child.
Ossoff, who Republicans had hoped to unseat this year, easily blew past GOP rival Rep. Mike Collins to win re-election. Pappas prevailed over former GOP Sen. John Sununu in another race that Republicans had initially hoped to contest. In North Carolina, Cooper scored the party’s first pickup of the night.
House Republicans are also faltering in Florida, where three seats drawn to elect Republicans have so far gone to Democrats — re-elections for Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Kathy Castor, plus a victory for Rep.-elect Pia Dandiya. The GOP initially redistricted to try to gain four new House seats.
All three of the Florida districts that Democrats have won so far on Tuesday night backed Trump in 2024. Urged to embark on mid-decade redistricting by Trump, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has warned that his party was losing some of its advantages, driven by voter anger about the war in Iran.
Democrats were feeling giddy early Tuesday night, and I can’t blame them. The night looks like the repudiation of Trump that their party wanted, and didn’t get, in 2020, when a surge of Election Day voters helped Republicans trim their Senate losses.
That’s an easy story to tell in Georgia. Republicans were hoping to turn Ossoff into an accidental senator, benefiting from the president’s obsession with overturning the election, which depressed their vote.
But the state is clearly shifting left, and the rural Republican vote is sagging everywhere — Florida, South Carolina, Ohio, places where the GOP had begun to believe in a possible permanent red shift of working-class voters.
Republican turnout this year was never going to match what happened when Trump was on the ballot. But so far, the president’s dismal popularity is clearly depressing his base in red states.
