Democrats Projected To Take Senate, Two More Seats Flip Blue

BREAKING: Democrats will retake control of both the House and Senate, CNN projects, winning significant power to check the White House for the final two years of Donald Trump's presidency. Follow live updates. https://t.co/34g5qFVpVu pic.twitter.com/qA2r4vW3gz

— CNN (@CNN) November 4, 2026

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An early warning sign that it’d be a tough night for Republicans came when South Carolina — a state even many Democrats thought was out of reach — fell early. Democrats made incursions deep into the heart of MAGA country, with gains far beyond what they were able to achieve in the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term.

Forty-three percent of midterm voters surveyed in the NBC News Exit Poll said one of the reasons they voted the way they did was to express opposition to Trump, whose job approval rating is lower than that of any president on Election Day in nearly two decades.

Seventy-one percent of voters — including 41% of Republicans — also said there is not enough congressional oversight of Trump. Corruption, affordability, immigration and the war in Iran were all key issues as well.

The results were so bleak that Trump quickly ran away from them on Tuesday evening. In a social media post, Trump said that, in fact, he was not on the ballot, and that’s why Republicans lost: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”

The Democratic takeover will reverberate widely. With majorities in both chambers, the Trump administration will now have to contend with checks and investigations it avoided with a compliant Congress in Republican hands. The election results could potentially influence the makeup of the Supreme Court, the arc of the 2028 presidential race and the fate of Trump’s legislative plans in the back half of his term.

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Decision Desk HQ projects Josh Turek wins the IA US Senate General Election#DecisionMade: 11:16 PM EST

Follow live results here: https://t.co/itEu2w1KB6 pic.twitter.com/WftezBYPUV

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) November 4, 2026

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Turek is a two-time gold medalist playing basketball in the Paralympics. He uses a wheelchair due to spina bifida, a condition he says is due to his father’s exposure to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. He was a relatively unknown state lawmaker who beat Zach Wahls, the former state Senate minority leader, to get the Democratic nomination in June.

Turek, who calls himself a “prairie populist,” campaigned hard on healthcare reform, attacking Hinson for her support of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which reduces Medicaid spending nationwide by nearly $1 trillion, and claims that Hinson’s personal wealth has increased significantly during her time in Washington.

Both Hinson and Turek emphasized their ability as bipartisan lawmakers to try to sway the state’s large number of uncommitted voters, but increased their attacks against their opponents, especially as polling data started to indicate a close race.

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Decision Desk HQ projects Adam Hamilton wins the KS US Senate General Election#DecisionMade: 10:48 PM EST

Follow live results here: https://t.co/VWaAGZyKPo pic.twitter.com/VuE75cUkl0

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) November 4, 2026

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He will be the first Democratic senator from the Sunflower State since 1939.

DDHQ projected that Hamilton beat Marshall by almost 9 percentage points with 87 percent of votes cast as of 10:48 p.m. EST.

It’s another massive victory for Democratic Senate candidates in a cycle in which the party has already been projected as winning seats in Texas and South Carolina.

Kansas had seemed like a long shot, but the party had one of its strongest candidates in Hamilton, 62, a Methodist pastor who gathered a surge of fundraising and energy around him after winning the August primary.

Hamilton leaned into his experience as founding pastor of the largest Methodist church in the country. He picked up endorsements from prominent Republicans in the state, including two former governors.

Hamilton also benefitted from missteps by Marshall, who earlier this fall defended the economy as strong.

Marshall also struggled after a New York Times story said he had sued a number of patients over minor medical debts, some of who ended up being arrested.

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