Democrats have officially won control of the U.S. House of Representatives, NBC News is reporting. It ends two years of Republicans ruling both congressional chambers, the White House and a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
This is the first opportunity for President Donald Trump to face a major electoral rebuke in his second term. With 218 seats needed for a majority, Democrats have crossed the threshold after flipping a series of Republican-held districts, powered by a national environment that favored anyone opposing the GOP.
There was already a narrow majority for Republicans, which led to a fractured caucus and many defectors on major issues like the release of the files for the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. So, Democrats needed a net gain of just three seats, and Republicans fought tooth and nail to stack the deck in their favor.
In an odd twist, Trump ordered red states to redraw their congressional lines using the 2024 election maps. It assumed that the broad coalition of voters that supported him in the general election would continue to support him. It was a massive miscalculation. Not only did he lost much of his coalition, but he also began losing support among his loyal MAGA base. It put GOP seats that were once seen as safe in jeopardy.
Independents and moderates broke heavily against the GOP, which has acted as a protector for the president rather than a check and balance on a rogue government.
Democrats campaigned heavily on affordability, health care and corruption. Meanwhile, Trump spent the first six to eight months of the year claiming there was no such thing as "affordability" and claimed that those he knew were making tons of money. In the final week of the race, Trump even said the oil industry was booming and making record profits, even if it meant his own supporters had to pay a little more at the pump.
The U.S. oil-and-gas industry was “making hundreds of billions of dollars," Trump told a rally crowd in Perry, Georgia on Oct. 24. "I don’t give a damn. I’m gonna say it: We’re making a freaking fortune." He later repeated a similar line in Arizona.
Trump claimed that his advisers had told him not to mention the oil profits because Americans were suffering so much at the pump. He predicted the “fake headlines” would say he was “bragging about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump," but then said, “I don’t give a damn.” He said it was "a small price to pay."
Nearly a month before the election, it became clear that Republicans would lose the majority it was unclear by how much, though.
Exit polls and pre-election surveys showed voters broadly dissatisfied with the economy, with Democrats holding an eight- to nine-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot heading into Election Day.
Early voting numbers were also astronomical. It broke records from the 2022 election, particularly among Latino voters, who have been furious with the brutality of Trump's government kidnapping immigrants who were in the U.S. legally and waiting for their asylum proceedings or citizenship hearings.
By Oct. 28, TargetSmart counted about 3.8 million Hispanic/Latino early voters nationwide, up from 2.35 million at the same point in 2022, the Washington Post reported. In 94 percent of counties, Latino voters made up a larger share of the early electorate than they had four years earlier.
The Texas Tribune revealed that more than 7.7 million Texans voted early in the 2026 election, surpassing 2018 record, which was the last time Texas saw such a huge surge. The 2022 election only saw about 31 percent turnout in early voting.
“We’re not going to hit presidential levels, but this is definitely high turnout,” said political science Professor Mark Jones, at Rice University. “The question though, that is still out there is, and this happens every time that we try to interpret early voting numbers: How many votes are actually still out there?”
As of Sunday evening, 50.7 million votes had already been cast, according to On Point Politics.