🎙 Democrats take the Senate; Texas flips for the first time since 1988 | The Receipts - Dataspheres AI

Democrats take the Senate; Texas flips for the first time since 1988 (9 min), with captions The story Democrats won control of the Senate and the House in ...

Democrats take the Senate; Texas flips for the first time since 1988 (9 min), with captions The story Democrats won control of the Senate and the House in this year's midterm elections, according to calls by the Associated Press. The AP called the Senate for Democrats just before midnight Eastern. Republicans entered the night holding 53 Senate seats; by 1:45 a.m., the tracker had Democrats at 53 seats and Republicans at 43, with four races still counting. Democrats flipped seven Republican-held Senate seats: North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa and Maine. Among the called races, Democrats did not lose any seat of their own. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico, a state representative and former teacher, defeated Republican Ken Paxton 55 percent to 43.2 percent when the AP called the race. It is the first Democratic Senate win in Texas since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 and the first Democratic statewide win there since 1994. Paxton, the state attorney general, conceded at about 10:20 Eastern and said he would pray for the winner. Paxton had defeated Senator John Cornyn in the primary in a state Republicans had won statewide for 32 years. The House also flipped. The AP called it for Democrats early Wednesday after NBC, CNN and CBS had projected it. By 1:30 a.m., the AP counted 16 Republican House seats flipped and no Democratic seats lost; at 1:45 a.m., the tracker had Democrats at 226 seats, past the 218 needed for a majority, and Republicans at 136. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who leads House Democrats, is poised to become the first Black speaker in the House's history. The vote for speaker comes when the new Congress meets on January 3. Exit polls pointed to several drivers of the shift. In the NBC exit poll, only 38 percent approved of the president and 62 percent disapproved. The economy was the top issue at 39 percent; 65 percent said tariffs hurt the economy, and 63 percent said attacking Iran was the wrong decision. Voters under 30 moved 36 points toward Democrats compared with 2024, while Latino and suburban voters each moved 22 points. The only group that moved toward Republicans was voters 65 and older, by 2 points. Each flip had its own local story. In Iowa, farmers were hit by tariffs and by diesel prices tied to the Iran war, and Josh Turek ran on Medicaid cuts. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown, who lost his seat in 2024, defeated Jon Husted 49 to 46.2, after Axios reported Republicans spent upward of 200 million dollars on ads there. Roy Cooper won North Carolina's open seat with 58.7 percent, the state's first Democratic Senate win since 2008, and in Maine Troy Jackson unseated Susan Collins, a senator since 1996, 53 to 46.9. Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since 1932. Democrats also flipped four governor's offices: Georgia, Texas, Ohio and Iowa. Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia becomes the first Black woman elected governor of any state, and in Texas Gina Hinojosa unseated Greg Abbott. In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers, leading 51.9 to 46.1 with 77 percent counted when NBC last updated; he will be the first Muslim American to serve in the Senate. NBC noted that not since 2006 had the minority party flipped both chambers on a single night. Several races remain unresolved. In Mississippi, Scott Colom leads Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by 28 votes. Alaska's mail ballots are due by November 18, and Nebraska is close. On ballot measures, Missouri voters rejected Amendment 3 and Virginia passed Question 1. President Trump, in a Fox News interview aired on Election Day, said the president's party almost always loses midterms, and overnight he told the AP he does not view the results as a hit on him; in the exit polls, 43 percent said opposing him was a reason for their vote. Highlights Highlight In pictures Listen The episode as audio