President Donald Trump spent weeks telling voters to treat the midterms as if he were on the ballot. Now that Democrats have won the Senate, he says he “wasn’t on the Ballot” and blames Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for losing his own race, in a lengthy election night interview with Fox News. Democrats have also won House majority.
Trump had told rally crowds in red states to “pretend I’m on the ballot,” trying to turn the midterms into a test of his own standing. He repeated the appeal Sunday in Iowa, where he urged the crowd to vote as if he were on it. On Monday he lowered expectations. “For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” he said. Early exit polls put his approval at 38%, and about six in 10 voters called him a factor in their House vote.
Republicans entered the election with a 53-47 Senate majority, so Democrats needed a net gain of four seats. Democrats flipped six Republican-held seats, in Texas, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, and South Carolina. A seventh fell in Maine, where Sen. Susan Collins conceded to Democrat Troy Jackson.
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Democrats also held Georgia, and likely Michigan, with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leading 52% to Mike Rogers’ 46%. Mississippi was too close to call early Wednesday, with Democrat Scott Colom ahead of incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by just 28 votes as of this writing.
In the House, Republicans held 218 seats plus one independent who caucuses with them, against 214 for Democrats, before the vote. As of this writing, Democrats have secured majority with 220 seats.
The biggest upsets came in states Trump carried comfortably in 2024. In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton, the first Democratic Senate win in the state in nearly four decades. Trump endorsed Paxton before the May runoff against Sen. John Cornyn and campaigned in Texas repeatedly. Abbott, whom Trump endorsed for reelection in February, lost the governor’s race to Democrat Gina Hinojosa.
In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek, a state representative and former Paralympian, beat Rep. Ashley Hinson in a state Trump won by 13 points in 2024. In Kansas, which Trump carried by about 16 points and where he rallied Sunday, Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor who founded one of the country’s largest churches, unseated Sen. Roger Marshall. Democrats had not won that seat in nearly a century, according to a pre-election report. “I had to come here to make sure Roger got elected,” Trump told the Kansas crowd. Trump also backed Jon Husted in Ohio and Michael Whatley in North Carolina, who both lost.
After the results, Trump argued the vote was never about him. He wrote on Truth Social on election night that Republicans would have won in a landslide had he been on the ballot, and he called Abbott a “RINO.”
In his Fox News interview, he praised Democrats’ campaigns and blamed Republican candidates for the losses. He posted a photo of a red cap embroidered with “VETO” and signaled he will use his veto pen against Democratic bills.
Pushing this narrative, a White House official told a cable news reporter that Trump voters turn out when he is on the ballot and that “candidate quality matters.” Fox News panelists criticized a Trump-endorsed Senate nominee in South Carolina.
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Trump made the same argument after Republicans lost the House in 2018, when he said his name was not on the ballot. This time Democrats also hold the Senate, and the wire report said they plan to use it to investigate his administration and block nominees.
