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It’s all over but the crying, as the old saying goes – and after the events of Election Day 2026, there will be plenty of Republicans crying. The votes are still being counted, and many races remain too close to call. But it didn’t take long to become clear that Democrats had flipped both the House and the Senate and, perhaps even more shockingly, that they had taken the majority of governorships for the first time in 16 years.
House Turns a Deeper Shade of Blue
One thing that seemed evident early on in the night – and it was far from unexpected leading up to the election – was that Democrats would flip the House. And did they ever. The current count as of 7 a.m. Eastern, Wednesday morning, is 228 Democrats to 139 Republicans. There are still a massive 68 races to be called, many of which will remain or even turn blue, but Democrats already hold ten more seats than they require for the majority.
Of the seats already called, Democrats managed to flip 25. Republicans, however, have taken absolutely no blue seats as of yet, and quite likely won’t. As Liberty Nation News Senior Political Analyst Tim Donner pointed out throughout the live election night coverage, several of these races were expected to be tight yet ended in blowouts. And that’s the only real surprise here: just how quickly Democrats left Republicans eating their dust at the polls.
GOP Slaughtered in the Senate
While much of America expected the House to flip, the possibility of Democrats taking the Senate as well seemed far less likely – until the ballot tallies started coming in, that is. Not only have Democrats held on to every Senate seat in this election, but they also managed to snatch more than half a dozen from the GOP.
Troy Jackson, the Democrat in Maine who took over for disgraced candidate Graham Platner, dethroned incumbent Republican Susan Collins almost 54% to 46%. That’s a massive upset many political analysts wouldn’t have predicted despite his slight lead in the polls before Election Day, given Collins’ history of winning handily after being led by a Democratic challenger.
Democrat Roy Cooper flipped North Carolina’s previously red Senate seat, and Annie Andrews beat out Darline Graham, the incumbent Republican appointed to take over after her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, passed away. Democrat Sherrod Brown successfully ousted incumbent Republican Jon Husted in Ohio, beating him by just shy of five percentage points, and Adam Hamilton did the same to incumbent Roger Marshall in Kansas, with almost the same margin. There was no incumbent in Iowa, where Democrat Josh Turek defeated Republican Ashley Hinson, though that still counts as a flip.
Perhaps the biggest news of the night in the US Senate, however, came out of Texas. James Talarico, a Democrat who’s far from moderate, defeated Trump-backed Ken Paxton by more than a million votes.
At present, only two Senate races have yet to be called, and it looks like one could be yet another Democratic pickup. Scott Colom is neck-and-neck with GOP incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith with 96% of the vote counted. He held a more impressive lead throughout the night, but now it seems it could go either way. In Alaska, it seems Democrat Mary Peltola’s alleged ploy to have double Dans on the ballot and play them off each other has failed, as Dan S. Sullivan – the incumbent GOP senator, not the new guy from the remote village – is leading by about 1% with 72% of precincts reporting.
When it’s all said and done, Democrats will walk away with 54 or 55 seats in the Senate – or perhaps even 56, should the final 28% of Alaska’s votes push Peltola over the line.
Election Shock Strikes the States, Too
For days – possibly weeks – the big national headlines will be that Democrats ran away with both the House and the Senate. And that’s not insignificant. But with Trump in the White House, it won’t mean nearly as much as the left hopes. The real news, actually, is what happened at the state level.
Just as they did with Congress, Democrats ran away with the governorships. When 2026 began, there were 26 Republican governors to 24 Democrats. Now, there will be no less than 28 Democratic governors – and the only two states left to be called, Alaska and Kansas, are both GOP-led states currently leaning blue.
So far, Democrats have flipped five red states – Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, and, again, perhaps the biggest news of them all, Texas. In fact, incumbent Republican Greg Abbott was positively slaughtered by far-left progressive Democrat Gina Hinojosa.
And if Republicans don’t pull ahead at the last moment in Kansas and Alaska, Democrats will have flipped seven.
What Happened?
There seem to be two big reasons Democrats swept the election yesterday, and history takes a backseat to them both. Whether it was righteous or not – or necessary or not – the war in Iran has left a bad taste in many conservative mouths, especially after Trump promised no new wars. But perhaps more damning is the high cost of living because of it.
But there’s more. As LNN’s Joe Schaeffer explained both in our live coverage with Tim Donner and in a recent article, both parties put forth some flat-out terrible candidates.
Did Annie Andrews win in South Carolina because she’s a great option beloved in her state? Or because Donald Trump made sure Darline Graham would be on the ballot? Rep. Ralph Norman, the Republican who lost to her in the primary after Trump’s endorsement, certainly thinks it’s the latter. “No surprise!!” he wrote. “SC is not going to be FORCED to vote for a PROPPED UP CANDIDATE and the result was a TOTAL REJECTION!! I EXPECTED TO RUN AGAINST THE DEMOCRAT CANDIDATE; NOT THE SITTING US REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT!! Ronald Reagan would have NEVER gotten involved in this race!”
James Talarico doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would win the Senate seat in Texas, either. But who was his competition? Ken Paxton has been plagued by scandal after scandal. Many believe incumbent John Cornyn would have defeated him handily – but Trump-backed Paxton beat him out in the primary, seemingly handing the seat over to Democrats.
As bad an option as Paxton was, though, this blue sweep in the Lone Star State may have been inevitable. The foreign-born population of Texas has skyrocketed, and a closer look at Texas shows Democrats dominated across the state, not just the US Senate and governor’s race. At the state level, Democrats took governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, railroad commissioner, land commissioner, and agriculture commissioner – every statewide office on the ballot. And while Republicans still have a majority in Texas’ US House delegation, albeit a reduced one, they may have lost the Texas House, as Democrats lead 68-56 with 26 left to call. Even the four state supreme court election races flipped from red to blue. Life in Texas may soon change quite drastically.
President Trump posted on social media last night while watching the results: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” But given the war on Iran and the number of Trump-backed Republicans who successfully primaried the established competition only to lose in the general yesterday, Trump’s comment may demonstrate that he, in fact, hasn’t been paying attention to this matter.
And it may be good luck for him that he wasn’t on the ballot, after all.
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