President Donald Trump told voters to pretend he was on the ballot in this year’s midterm elections.
They did. And they resoundingly rejected both his policies and his Republican Party.
Democrats have captured full control of Congress, NBC News projects, with voters delivering a forceful repudiation of Trump’s agenda, coupled with a clear-cut message that Congress has not done enough to provide checks on his administration and needs to do more to address affordability and corruption.
Democrats’ victory in the Senate comes after a swift and decisive win in the House, where Democrats are set to have what could be their largest majority in nearly two decades.
Democrats flipped five Republican-held seats in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas — a state they’ve long dreamed of turning blue. In a number of those states, Trump handpicked the nominees, sometimes over the objections of members of his own party who were concerned that they would be weak in the general election.
An early warning sign that it would be a tough night for Republicans came when South Carolina — a state even many Democrats thought was out of reach — fell early. Democrats made incursions deep into the heart of MAGA country, with gains far beyond what they were able to achieve in the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term.
Forty-three percent of midterm voters surveyed in the NBC News Exit Poll said one of the reasons they voted the way they did was to express opposition to Trump, whose job approval rating is lower than that of any president on Election Day in nearly two decades.
Seventy-one percent of voters — including 41% of Republicans — also said there is not enough congressional oversight of Trump. Corruption, affordability, immigration and the war in Iran were all key issues, as well.
The results were so bleak that Trump quickly ran away from them Tuesday evening. Trump said on social media that, in fact, he was not on the ballot, and that’s why Republicans lost: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”
The Democratic takeover will reverberate widely. With majorities in both chambers, the Trump administration will now have to contend with checks and investigations it avoided with a compliant Congress in Republican hands.
The election results could influence the makeup of the Supreme Court, the arc of the 2028 presidential race and the fate of Trump’s legislative plans in the back half of his term.
Source: CBS News
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