Voters were deciding on Tuesday whether to drastically shift power in Washington, with midterm elections that could flip control of Congress and reshape the rest of Donald Trump’s second term. Republicans were bracing to lose the U.S. House and were still fighting to hang onto the U.S. Senate.
The search for voting results was already intense because more than 57 million people had cast ballots by Monday, and turnout had surpassed the early vote from four years ago in many closely watched states. Democrats needed a net gain of four seats in the Senate to take the majority and three seats in the House, a steep climb in a contest that had become a referendum on Trump’s presidency.
Trump spent the closing stretch trying to turn the election into a personal test of strength. On Sunday evening in Salina, Kansas, he told supporters, “I really want you to pretend I’m on the ballot,” after holding several dozen rallies across the final weeks of the campaign. His schedule took him to Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas, while his administration filed lawsuits in Alaska and California.
That effort came with a political problem Republicans could not solve with money alone. They had the advantage in fundraising, but the party was still preparing for the possibility that Democrats would take the House and maybe threaten the Senate too. A president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms, and Trump’s side had struggled when he was not on the ballot to pull out the low-propensity voters who powered his victories.
If Democrats do win even one chamber, the shift would immediately open the door to investigations and possible impeachments, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk among the names that could come under scrutiny. A stronger-than-expected Democratic showing would also lift the profile of Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker and Pete Buttigieg, while complicating the path for JD Vance and other Republicans. The votes were cast on Tuesday, but the real fight is over what the numbers will mean in Washington when the counting is done.
