Texas turned blue on Tuesday with the election of a Democrat to represent the Lone Star State in the Senate for the first time since 1988 and Republicans facing a nationwide collapse in longtime GOP strongholds.
Texas state House member James Talarico defeated his Republican opponent Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, with nearly 60% of the vote and more than 70% of votes counted. The Associated Press called the race for Talarico about two hours after polls closed.
Democrats also won the Texas governor’s mansion for the first time in decades, with state representative Gina Hinojosa leading Gov. Greg Abbott by about 1 million votes at press time.
The race to replace Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who lost his primary to Paxton after falling out of favor with U.S. President Donald Trump, was the most expensive Senate race in American history with more than $500 million spent by the two campaigns.
With its 40 electoral votes in presidential elections, Texas will likely be the crowning achievement for Democrats in an election that is shaping up to be an historic disaster for Republicans.
In addition to Texas, Democrats successfully flipped Republican-held Senate seats in Ohio, Kansas, Iowa and South Carolina.
In Mississippi, Democratic nominee Scott Colom, a district attorney, leads Sen. Cindy Hyde‑Smith (R-Miss.) by 28 votes with 97% of votes counted.
Trump won all of those states in 2024 by double-digit margins. Kansas last sent a Democrat to Washington as senator in 1932.
Those victories, along with the defeat of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), guarantee that Democrats will control at least a 53 seat majority in the upper chamber. One of the most closely-watched Senate races, Michigan, remains too close to call.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also declared victory late on Tuesday as he is poised to become the first black speaker of the House.
“We understand that this election, a dramatic change election, means that the American people are crying out for transformational change,” Jeffries told supporters. “We hear you, we see you, we feel you and House Democrats are committed to making life better for you.”
A larger House majority for Jeffries may have the unintuitive effect of moderating House Democrats on some issues.
Brian Romick, president of Democratic Majority for Israel, told JNS that Jeffries was likely to have a large enough caucus that he won’t be reliant on radical, anti-Israel figures associated with the Democratic Socialists of America.
“It’s going to be a very big night for Democrats, and a big night for Democrats in the House means that the half-a-dozen or so new DSA new members aren’t going to have much influence, because we’re going to blow it out,” Romick said. “They can’t derail anything Jeffries wants to do.”
While pro-Israel Democrats like Jeffries will dominate the Democratic caucus, the number of anti-Israel figures both with and without DSA ties will expand substantially in the new Congress.
Those include several new members of the New York delegation like Darializa Avila Chevalier, who was part of the “Gaza solidarity encampment” protest at Columbia University in 2024, and Pennsylvania representative-elect Chris Rabb, whom the Philadelphia chapter of the Anti-Defamation League said on Tuesday had a “history of invoking antisemitic tropes” and of “aligning with figures who promote antisemitism.”
Many of those candidates ran in deep blue House seats, whereas Republicans struggled with candidate quality in critical Senate races as Trump’s approval ratings hovered under 40%.
Trump blamed those candidates for the midterm defeat on Tuesday.
“I wasn’t on the ballot and if I was, we would have won in a landslide,” Trump stated. “I’m going to become a political pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these candidates won and lost.”
With Trump term-limited and Republicans losing control of both Houses of Congress, he will be entering an extended lame duck period.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) signalled Democratic intentions towards the Trump administration on Tuesday as the scale of the electoral landslide became clear.
“Lawyer up,” Garcia wrote.
Trump had a similarly terse response for Democrats, posting an image of his signature red baseball cap with the word “veto” in all-caps.
