Democrats flip Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, South Carolina and Iowa as Trump credits them and points to his veto
Democrats won Senate seats in red states including Texas, Kansas, South Carolina and Iowa on Tuesday, all carried by President Donald Trump in 2024, as the party took control of both the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Trump, who had told supporters to pretend he was on the ballot, credited the other side in a phone interview with Fox News. “The Democrats did a good job. They fought hard,” he said, LiveNOW from FOX reported.
Two days earlier, Trump spent nearly two hours on stage in Dubuque, Iowa, warning voters against Democrats.
Red States Swing Toward Democrats
Democrats flipped seven Republican-held Senate seats, in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, according to NBC News, which also projects the party will hold at least 258 House seats.
The largest swing came in Texas, where state Rep. James Talarico beat Attorney General Ken Paxton 55.1% to 43.0%. NBC News calculates that the race moved 25.77 points toward Democrats compared with the 2024 presidential vote.
In South Carolina, pediatrician Annie Andrews defeated Sen. Darline Graham 51.1% to 46.7%, according to NBC News results, a 22.34-point shift. The state had not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1998.
In Kansas, which Trump won by 16 points in 2024, Adam Hamilton unseated Sen. Roger Marshall 50.9% to 46.1%, according to NBC News. Kansas had not elected a Democratic senator since the early 1930s.
In Iowa, state Rep. Josh Turek beat Rep. Ashley Hinson 50.5% to 46.4%, a 17.32-point swing toward Democrats, NBC reported.
Former Gov. Roy Cooper won North Carolina’s open seat with 58.7%, NBC reported. Sherrod Brown unseated Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, and Troy Jackson ousted Sen. Susan Collins in Maine.
Texas Republicans also suffered their first statewide loss in more than 30 years, as Gina Hinojosa defeated Gov. Greg Abbott to become the state’s first Hispanic governor.
Trump: ‘I Wasn’t on the Ballot’
As the results came in, Trump posted on his social media platform: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” ABC News reported that he told Fox News, “I thought we would do better.”
“They’ve been looking for this one for 11 years, and they finally got it,” Trump said, according to MassLive. “But I don’t view it as a hit on me.”
Speaking to Politico, he said voters “didn’t like the candidates in most cases.” He also put part of the blame on high gas prices from the war with Iran, ABC reported.
Trump singled out Abbott in a post: “If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost,” The Hollywood Reporter reported. In another, he wrote that “FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses.”
How Latino and Black Voters Shifted
The NBC News Exit Poll found 62% of Latino voters backed Democratic House candidates, up from 51% who backed Kamala Harris two years ago. Republicans won 35%, down from 46% for Trump.
The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 voters, found about 6 in 10 Hispanic voters chose the Democrat in their House race and about one-third the Republican. Roughly 4 in 10 had voted for Trump in 2024. In Texas, roughly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters backed Talarico, the AP found.
The AP poll also found about 9 in 10 Black voters supported Democratic House candidates, up from roughly 8 in 10 for Harris. About 1 in 10 Black men voted Republican, down from roughly a quarter who backed Trump in 2024.
At his Dubuque rally, Trump had said “we did extremely well with the African Americans,” according to a Factba.se transcript of the speech.
The NBC and AP poll reports did not break out how Asian American voters voted. They made up 4% of the electorate, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. Both surveys are early and may change.
El-Sayed Wins Michigan After Trump’s Attacks
In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former Wayne County health director, defeated Republican Mike Rogers 52.5% to 45.5% for the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, according to NBC News results.
Trump had singled him out in Dubuque, telling the crowd “we don’t need the communists, the jihadists, the Muslim Brotherhood.” He added, “We don’t wanna have a jihadist.”
The next day, in an election-eve speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Trump falsely said some Democratic candidates were jihadists or members of the Muslim Brotherhood, NBC News reported. NBC’s assessment concerned that Nov. 2 speech.
“We need action,” El-Sayed said Wednesday, NBC News reported.
Two Hours in Dubuque Before the Vote
The Nov. 1 rally at Dubuque’s Five Flags Center ran nearly two hours. The Daily Beast timed it at one hour, 59 minutes and 41 seconds. It came near the end of a 28-rally swing in the final weeks before the midterms, NBC reported.
“So a vote for any Democrat anywhere in the country is a vote to put a deranged group of extremists into power and it could really hurt us,” Trump said, according to the transcript.
He urged the crowd to “pretend I’m on the ballot because, essentially, I am on the ballot.” He blamed the other party for costs: “The Democrats caused the high prices.”
At one point he said, “This isn’t rambling. This isn’t rambling. This is genius if you wanna know.”
At the Reflecting Pool the next day, he acknowledged the historical pattern, saying the sitting president “doesn’t win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot.”
Veto Threat and Talk of Deals
Trump told The New York Times he was “absolutely willing to accept” the results, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out,” he said.
He also posted an image of his red cap reading VETO. Democrats are “in control, but they’re really not in control because they can send over, you know, 50 different great bills that they’re all excited about, and I send them back with a nice stamp veto,” he told Fox News, ABC reported.
With Democrats winning back the House and the Senate, Trump will need Democratic cooperation to move legislation and appointments in his final two years, NBC reported.
“We’re going to work with the Democrats to make sure things go well for our country,” he told Politico, according to MassLive.
Featured image from: Daniel Torok, Public domain, and Conlan Houston, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped and combined