WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, the Senate map turned in seven states, where Republican seats went to Democrats. Those are the Associated Press results. That was enough, by itself, for Democrats to take control of the Senate in the 2026 midterms.
The seven were North Carolina and Texas, Maine and Kansas, South Carolina, Ohio and Iowa. According to the AP, Democrats lost no seat to Republicans. Going in, the Senate stood 53 to 47 in Republicans’ favor. Four more seats, net, would have done it for Democrats. They got seven, putting them ahead 54 to 44 in the AP count, with two races still uncalled.
The widest margin of the seven came in North Carolina. Cooper, the former governor and a Democrat, ended up with 2,467,963 votes. Whatley, a Republican, ended up with 1,643,088. That breaks down to 58.7 percent for Cooper and 39.1 percent for Whatley. The seat had come open with the retirement of Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. Cooper breaks a drought for North Carolina Democrats that stretches back to 2008.
Texas, meanwhile, produced the biggest vote total of the seven. Talarico’s total — he is a Democrat in the state House — came to 5,445,121 votes. Paxton finished on 4,249,752 votes; he is the Republican attorney general. 55.1 percent to 43.0 percent was how it looked in percentage terms. A Democrat had not reached the Senate from Texas since 1988. Since 1994, no Democrat had won statewide office in Texas. Talarico is the first since then.
The seven Senate flips, state by state
In Kansas, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Democrat, defeated Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, 559,853 votes to 504,950. The percentages were 50.9 percent to 46.1 percent. No Democrat had won a Kansas Senate seat since 1932. In the AP count, Libertarian David Graham had 33,117 votes.
In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek beat Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, 686,487 votes to 630,615, or 50.5 percent to 46.4 percent. The seat opened when Republican Sen. Joni Ernst left it. Turek, a Paralympian and state legislator, won by 4.1 points in a state Republicans had won by 6.6 points the last time the seat was on the ballot.
In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson unseated Republican Sen. Susan Collins, 368,429 votes to 320,926, or 53.8 percent to 46.1 percent. Collins had held the seat since 1997 and was seeking a sixth term. She conceded and called Jackson to congratulate him, the AP reported.
In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, beat Republican Sen. Darline Graham, 1,042,362 votes to 951,165, or 51.1 percent to 46.7 percent. Democrats last held a South Carolina Senate seat in 1998, according to the AP account of the race.
In Ohio, in a special election for the seat Vice President JD Vance left, Democrat Sherrod Brown beat Republican Sen. Jon Husted, 2,301,042 votes to 2,077,748, or 50.0 percent to 45.2 percent. Brown won back a Senate seat from Ohio two years after losing his own.
The House and governor flips widen the map
The Senate flips were part of a wider shift. Early Wednesday, the AP called House control for Democrats, once the party had passed 218 seats — the number needed for a majority in the 435-seat chamber. Nationally, in the AP House count, Democrats received 60,233,263 votes and Republicans 47,599,105. Other candidates received 1,605,926 votes. More than two dozen Republican-held House districts flipped to Democrats, the AP reported. Some were districts President Donald Trump had won by double digits in 2024.
Elaine Luria, a Democrat in Virginia, took back the 2nd District. She beat Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans 178,741 votes to 150,095, in the AP count. Kiggans had beaten Luria, a former congresswoman, for the same seat in an earlier rematch. It covers Virginia Beach and parts of Hampton Roads.
Democrats also took at least four governor’s offices held by Republicans: Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Texas. In Texas, Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat, defeated Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who was seeking a fourth term. She received 5,230,908 votes in the AP count. Hinojosa will be Texas’s first Latina governor. She will also be its first Democratic governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995.
What happened in 2024
The 2026 flips reversed the map of two years earlier. Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, 312 electoral votes to 226. For Harris, the total was 75,017,613 popular votes, or 48.3 percent. Trump had 77,302,580, or 49.8 percent, according to official Federal Election Commission totals compiled from state election offices.
Trump swept the seven main battleground states in 2024. Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Pennsylvania moved from the Democratic column of 2020 to Trump. He also held North Carolina and won Nevada in the broader sweep reported that year. Republicans also gained the Senate in 2024 and kept the House. That gave Trump unified Republican control of Washington when he returned to office in January 2025.
In 2024, Trump had won six of the seven states that flipped a Senate seat in 2026, most of them by wide margins. He carried South Carolina by 17.9 points, Kansas by 16.1, Texas by 13.7, Iowa by 13.2 and Ohio by 11.2. North Carolina, the closest of the six, went to Trump by 3.2 points — 50.9 percent to 47.6 percent.
Maine stood apart. In Maine in 2024, Harris won by 6.9 points, 52.4 percent to 45.5 percent over Trump. Among the group, Collins was the only incumbent who lost in a state that had already voted Democratic for president. She was also the only Republican senator seeking re-election this year in a state Harris had carried.
Against the last race for the same Senate seat, every flipped state swung by a large amount. The move toward Democrats was 21.7 points in Texas and 21.4 points in North Carolina. Maine and Kansas each moved 16.3 points. The shifts were 14.8 points in South Carolina, 11.0 in Ohio and 10.7 in Iowa. That comparison uses AP figures for 2026 and certified results for the earlier race.
Two Senate races still uncalled
When the AP counts were last updated, two Republican-held Senate seats remained uncalled. In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom was ahead of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 43 votes — 462,821 to 462,778. Each had 48.9 percent. In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola led Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by 626 votes, 102,701 to 102,075. Counters had tallied about three-quarters of the expected vote. A ranked-choice tabulation follows in Alaska if nobody reaches a majority.
Either way, Senate control is already settled. Winning both would still leave Republicans on 46 seats — short of a majority.
Until each state certifies its count, all 2026 results remain unofficial. Jan. 3, 2027, is when the new Congress is sworn in. From then, a Republican president will face Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate for the final two years of his term.
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