WASHINGTON — A blue tsunami delivered Democrats the House of Representatives and the Senate Tuesday night, sweeping away once-safe Republican seats and unleashing immediate finger-pointing and preparations for fights with Congress.
Follow for live updates on the 2026 Midterm Elections
A historic series of defeats, including Democrats flipping Senate seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas — with equally staggering results in House races — positioning New Yorkers Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to lead the Senate and House.
“America is back,” Jeffries said. Schumer added that the Dems had won “against all odds” and that “relief was on the way.”
President Trump, who had urged voters to act as if he were on the ballot, was repudiated with an Associated Press exit poll showing that 62% of voters blamed his policies for higher prices and 71% saying Congress must do more to check the president.
“The Democrats did a good job,” he told Fox News in a post-election phone call, pledging to work across the aisle during the lame-duck term and beyond. “They fought hard.”
“I think a part of it was Iran,” he said, placing more responsibility on the conflict’s downstream effects on energy prices than the decision to launch the war in the first place.
“People agree with what I’m doing on Iran, but they really probably weren’t willing to do the short-term consequence of paying more for gasoline. I understand that. I don’t agree with it,” Trump also said.
More coverage of the 2026 midterm elections:
Trump also insisted that he wouldn’t be letting any more members of his administration go. “It had nothing to do with my Cabinet,” he added.
The outcome will mire Trump in investigations for his final two years in office, ensure his legislative agenda is blocked and make it incredibly difficult to confirm new Cabinet secretaries and judges, including to the Supreme Court.
Many of the president’s allies blamed the Iran war, which caused higher energy prices, inflation and interest rates, while the White House blamed “candidate quality,” even though many Republican candidates were hand-picked by Trump.
It’s the first midterm election since 2006 that a party out of power has won back both chambers.
The final scale of the wipeout was not immediately clear due to slow vote-counting, including in the Alaska Senate race, which has ranked-choice voting.
Tuesday’s sweep also realized dreams Democrats have held for decades, including turning Senate seats in deep-red Texas and Kansas blue, as well as ending Republican governorships in Ohio and Texas, where three-term Gov. Greg Abbott’s loss was one of the most shocking of the night.
Trump was quick to take to Truth Social to note that he hadn’t been top of mind for voters this cycle.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he posted late Tuesday — despite telling Republicans in Iowa at a rally less than two weeks ago to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”
But several of his favored candidates like South Carolina Senate hopeful Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, currently serving as the state’s attorney general, were both on the ballot.
“I had no choice,” Trump also told Fox News, adding that Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) “kissed my ass” when it was “fashionable” to do so as well.
The president had prefaced the midterm results by telling The Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast that he was ready to become “Mr. Veto” if needed after 2026.
“They’ll be sending stuff up. You veto it,” he explained.
“And eventually, after a month or two of getting all vetoed, they’re just wasting [time], they come over, and you make a deal. I think that probably would happen, but hopefully we don’t have to worry about that.”
But the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee had a two-word response to the GOP and Trump allies reeling from Tuesday’s losses: “LAWYER UP.”
The warning came as people close to Trump have been doing just that in preparation for planned investigations into alleged corruption and business dealings seen as favorable to the first family.
Trump entered the midterms with historically low approval ratings, fueled by cost-of-living concerns such as rising gas and food prices. Much of Americans’ frustration has been driven by perceptions of the Iran war.
The Middle East conflict also drove Republican infighting on Tuesday night, as party leaders looked for someone to blame for the Democratic drubbing.
“We got destroyed because of Iran,” said one top Republican strategist. “Iran is what caused gas prices and diesel prices to skyrocket — not tariffs.”
“Too many people sat silently, or even worse, misled the president into a war without a realistic exit,” added a Trump political adviser.
Others blamed the poor quality of candidates that had been recruited.
“Tbh most Republican candidates this cycle were uninspiring, lazy, and thoroughly ineffective communicators. I’m not all that surprised by some of these outcomes,” posted Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz on X.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who acknowledged the historic headwinds his party was facing before Nov. 3, told reporters as voting results came in Tuesday that “there’s a lot of reasons” for the Democratic victory with the GOP trifecta in place.
“From the first day of this election, we knew that to keep the House and sustain our majority, we would have to defy more than a century of midterm history,” Johnson said.
“It’s only happened twice in 90 years that a sitting president has picked up or held seats for his party in that first two-year cycle,” he added. “It’s very, very difficult to overcome, and it looks like history will be kept.”
