Democrats secure Senate and are projected to win House in US midterms

Democrats have won control of the US Senate and are projected to capture the House of Representatives, according to BBC partner CBS News, after a midterm election night that brought gains across the country. The Senate results exceeded Democratic expectations, with victories in states where Republicans had long held seats.

North Carolina had been considered a likely Democratic gain, but the party's success in South Carolina was a major surprise. Kansas also elected a Democratic senator, something it had not done since 1932. Together, those results highlighted the extent of the shift as Democrats secured control of the chamber.

Senate seats in Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Maine also switched to the Democrats. The picture remained unsettled elsewhere, with a toss-up seat still to be decided in Alaska and the Mississippi contest extremely close, according to CBS News. Those outstanding races followed a series of Democratic gains already recorded across the country.

South Carolina had been rated as leaning Republican in polling before the election and had last elected a Democratic senator in 1998. Texas provided another measure of the change in support: recent vote share figures showed a nine-point movement towards the Democrats compared with the state's 2024 Senate contest.

In the House, CBS News projected a Democratic victory shortly after 03:00 GMT on Wednesday, November 4. Democrats were gaining the seats needed to take control while pursuing a wider margin of victory. Their results in several Florida districts were particularly significant because Republicans had redrawn the boundaries to improve their electoral prospects.

Democrats retained Florida's 14th and 25th districts despite changes that shifted both from areas where most voters had backed Kamala Harris in 2024 to areas where most had supported Donald Trump. The party also won Florida's 22nd district, which had similarly been redrawn to favour Republicans.

Polling suggested Hispanic voters were an important part of the Florida results. They supported Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon by 55% to 44% over Republican Ashley Moody, according to the poll. That represented a reversal from 2024, when an estimated 55% of Hispanic voters backed Trump.

Nationally, the poll identified the economy as voters' leading concern, followed by the state of democracy. Asked about the effect of Trump's policies on economic conditions, more than two-thirds of voters said they believed those policies had made conditions worse.