Trump Accepts Midterm Results After Democrats Win Congress

President Donald Trump said he will accept the midterm results and work with Democrats, after voters handed the party control of both chambers of Congress in Tuesday's election. Trump congratulated Democrats in an interview with Fox News, according to a Reuters report, and told The New York Times he was "absolutely willing" to accept the outcome. He also said he would work with Democrats on issues such as immigration, while warning he would veto bills he described as "insane".

The result ends Republican control of Congress and sets up divided government in Washington for the remainder of Trump's term. Democrats are expected to use their new majorities to investigate the administration and to demand concessions on major legislation once the new Congress is seated in January. The Democratic Senate can also block presidential nominees, including any Supreme Court nominee should a vacancy arise. Trump, who is barred by the Constitution from seeking a third term, retains the veto, so legislation will need his signature or a veto-proof majority to become law.

Until January, the current Congress remains in place, with Republicans still holding both chambers. That gap matters for readers trying to follow what changes and when: the election decides who takes power next, but the transfer happens at the start of the new session, not on election night. States must still count remaining ballots and certify their results, and a handful of individual races were still uncalled on Wednesday morning.

What voters said about the cost of living

Exit polls conducted by SSRS for a consortium of media outlets including the Associated Press found that half of voters nationwide saw Tuesday's vote as an opportunity to rebuke the president, and 70% said they wanted Congress to provide more checks and balances on the president. Democrats focused their campaign on corruption and affordability, blaming tariff policy and the war with Iran for driving up costs, according to the Reuters report. Republicans, led by Trump, attacked Democrats over culture war issues and portrayed their opponents as radical, but poll after poll showed voters were far more concerned with household costs.

The scale of the shift showed up in county-level tallies. Republicans lost ground in all but a handful of about 1,700 counties where most votes had been counted on Tuesday night, according to tallies compiled by Reuters and USA Today. Democratic gains were particularly sharp in heavily Latino counties, including border counties in Texas that had shifted toward Trump in the previous presidential election and agricultural towns on the Kansas prairie. In Seward County, Kansas, home to a large beef processing plant, Democrat Adam Hamilton led incumbent Republican senator Roger Marshall by 13 points, after Trump had carried the county comfortably in the previous presidential election.

Several Republican-held Senate seats changed hands. In Kansas, voters elected their first Democratic senator since the Great Depression. In South Carolina, a state Trump carried by 18 points in 2024, Democrats turned aside his hand-picked Senate candidate. In Texas, Democrats won a Senate seat and ousted Governor Greg Abbott, who had served three terms. In Maine, Republican incumbent Susan Collins saw her 30-year Senate career end, despite emphasising her willingness to break with the president during the campaign. A related GenZ NewZ report examined how the Iran war debate split Republicans after the loss.

Historic firsts and what comes next

The night included several historic firsts. In Georgia, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor of any US state. Byron Donalds won Florida's gubernatorial race to become the first Black Republican governor in the country. Democrat Gina Hinojosa will become the first Latina governor in Texas, and Democrat Xavier Becerra will be California's first Latino governor. Those results sit alongside the congressional shift, and they show how broad the Democratic gains were beyond Washington.

"There is now a generational remake of the Senate map that is going to change America," said Chuck Schumer, the party's Senate minority leader. "Americans voted for change, and now Democrats must deliver." In Georgia, incumbent Democratic senator Jon Ossoff told supporters at a victory party: "In sweeping and decisive victories, the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption and incompetence of the man named President Donald J Trump." The remarks capture the mood among Democrats on election night, but the governing test comes later, when the new majorities must turn campaign promises about affordability into legislation that can pass the Senate and survive a presidential veto.

Trump had campaigned heavily in the final weeks, holding dozens of rallies and urging supporters to treat the vote as though he were on the ballot. He also intervened in several primaries to ensure his preferred candidates reached the ballot, despite concerns from some Republicans that his choices carried significant liabilities. In Texas, he backed Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, over incumbent senator John Cornyn. In South Carolina, he backed Darline Graham after her brother, senator Lindsey Graham, died earlier this year. Both candidates lost, and Trump later told the Times he had no regrets about those endorsements, according to reports of the interview.

Competitive Senate races in Mississippi and Alaska had yet to be called early on Wednesday, and counts in other districts were still being completed. That means the final seat margins remain unsettled even though control of both chambers has been decided. An earlier GenZ NewZ report tracked record early voting as the midterms entered their final days. For voters, the practical sequence now runs through certification, the seating of the new Congress in January, and the first legislative tests of divided government, including spending bills, nominations, and oversight hearings. Those tests will show whether the president's stated willingness to work with Democrats produces agreements, or whether the veto becomes the defining tool of the rest of his term.