Democrats have seized control of the Senate in a sweeping repudiation of President Donald Trump just two years after his triumphant return to Washington.

Propelled by concerns over affordability and broad dissatisfaction with the president, the Democrats flipped at least seven Senate seats on Tuesday in a map that was daunting for the party, according to results tallied as of Wednesday afternoon.

Most of the seats had not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. For Kansas, it has been almost a century.

The resurgence penetrated states long thought of as bedrocks of conservatism, with Democrats pulling off unexpected upsets in Kansas and South Carolina, and clinching Texas, which until Tuesday had been the nation’s most populous conservative state and a symbolic center for the Republican Party.

Among the most significant takeaways from the midterm elections was just how much has changed in two years. In this divided era, only a sliver of the electorate had appeared open in recent elections to crossing party lines. On Tuesday, that presumption was largely shattered. Five states that voted for Trump by more than 10 percentage points in 2024 instead opted for Democrats.

Republicans lost key blocs of the voters that brought Trump back to power two years ago. In the seven states that flipped, the voters that moved significantly toward Democrats included Hispanics, voters under 30 and working-class whites without college degrees, according to a Times Voter Trends analysis.

While the transfer of power comes down to seismic swings in the electorate, there is one outlier: Maine, a state that has long preferred Democrats statewide. Sen. Susan Collins, the sole Republican representing New England in Congress, had been the exception. Her loss is more of a referendum on her relationship with Trump than a shift toward Democrats. The president lost the state in 2024 by seven points.

The Democrats have not had a Senate majority of this size since 2014, when the party controlled 55 seats.

The victory offers a significant vehicle to check Trump’s power, from which the Democrats are expected to swiftly begin investigations into allegations of corruption, excessive immigration enforcement tactics and presidential pardons.

Democrats will also have veto power over Trump’s judicial and administration nominees, and will occupy leadership of the committees that have the authority to subpoena administration officials and others.

Elections in Mississippi and Alaska were still too close to call as of Wednesday afternoon, and it could be days before the results are known. In Mississippi, fewer than 100 votes separated the candidates, and the state will continue to count late-arriving mail ballots for several days. In Alaska, neither candidate appeared likely to pass the 50% threshold of votes needed to bypass ranked-choice voting. If Democrats win in those two states, their advantage would grow to 12 seats.

The historic night answered how Americans feel about the president and the Republican Party, but it has created a new set of questions about what comes next. For the Democrats: how to govern. For the Republicans: how to rebuild a coalition that can outlast Trump.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Albert Sun, Minho Kim, Marco Hernandez and Emily Davies/Haiyun Jiang
c. 2026 The New York Times Company