By Indianara Goz
Democrats dealt Donald Trump a heavy defeat in the US midterm elections, according to results confirmed on the morning of Wednesday, November 4. The opposition party reached 54 seats in the Senate, won a majority in the House of Representatives and took governorships in states that had been Republican strongholds, including Texas and Ohio. Trump is the Republican president of the United States.
Senate: seven Republican seats flip
Before the vote, Republicans held 53 Senate seats. After Democrats were confirmed as winners in Michigan, the opposition reached 54, according to the count published by The Boston Globe. Democrats took seven seats from Trump's party:
- Texas: James Talarico, the first Democrat elected senator from the state since 1988.
- North Carolina: Roy Cooper.
- South Carolina: Annie Andrews.
- Ohio: Sherrod Brown.
- Kansas: Adam Hamilton, the first Democratic senator from the state since 1932.
- Iowa: Josh Turek.
- Maine: Troy Jackson, who defeated veteran Republican Susan Collins.
Democrats also held Georgia (Jon Ossoff), New Hampshire (Chris Pappas), Minnesota (Peggy Flanagan), Virginia (Mark Warner) and Michigan (Abdul El-Sayed). Alaska, Mississippi, Montana and Nebraska had no result yet. In Florida, Republican Ashley Moody won.
House and governors: Democrats take control
Democrats won a majority in the House, flipping more than two dozen districts according to the partial count. Well-known Republicans such as Mike Lawler of New York and Tom Kean of New Jersey lost. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become Speaker of the House.
In the governor races, Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Texas had elected only Republican governors since 1994. In Ohio, Democrat Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy. In Georgia, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected.
Voter ID: a win for conservatives on the ballot
On one issue, the conservative agenda came out ahead. Voters in Ohio and North Carolina approved a requirement to show photo ID in order to vote, which will now be written into the state constitutions. In North Carolina, the measure received about 60% of the vote. Similar measures in Arizona and Nevada were still being counted.
In California, a 5% tax on billionaires was losing 57% to 43% in the partial count.
What changes for Trump
From January, Democrats will control the agenda of both chambers of Congress, the investigative committees and the budget. Nominations to the Supreme Court, federal courts and government posts will depend on an opposition-led Senate.
Trump keeps his veto power, and Democrats do not have the two-thirds majority needed to override it. In practice, new laws will only pass through negotiation, and the administration is expected to use executive orders and foreign policy as its main fields of action.
Trump reacted by saying that, had he been on the ballot, his party would have won "in a landslide." He then congratulated the Democrats in a call to Fox News.
Background: why the midterms matter
US midterm elections are held halfway through a president's four-year term. They renew the entire House of Representatives and a third of the 100-seat Senate, and they are widely read as a verdict on the sitting president. Control of Congress determines whether a president can pass laws and confirm judges and officials.
VDD Analysis
There is no way to soften it: this was a Democratic wave, and Trump's party lost seats even in states that seemed out of reach, such as Texas and Kansas. Persistent inflation, the war with Iran and the natural wear of those in power weighed on the vote.
But American history shows that a midterm defeat is not a death sentence. Clinton lost Congress in 1994 and was re-elected two years later. Obama lost the House in 2010 and was also re-elected. Trump himself lost the House in 2018 and returned to the White House. The right has two years until 2028 to regroup. And the photo ID victories in Ohio and North Carolina show that conservative causes are still alive among voters.
For Brazil, the lesson is clear: mobilization is everything, and nobody wins an election at the last minute.
