A year ago the idea that Democrats might seize the Senate was laughable. Donald Trump was riding high after winning both houses of Congress and the White House in 2024, and money from his tech allies was flooding into Republican campaigns. To take the chamber, Democrats needed to hold every seat they had and wrest four from Republicans, including two states Trump had carried by double digits. When the win came, it was not only emphatic but historic.
In Texas, James Talarico, a 37-year-old former school teacher who studied education at Harvard and theology at a Presbyterian seminary, won a Senate seat in a state that last sent a Democrat to Washington before he was born. He campaigned against inequality and for cheaper pharmaceuticals, and built a reputation as a devout Christian campaigner against rising Christian nationalism. His victory, alongside Gina Hinojosa becoming the first Latina governor in Texas, suggests Democrats may now be competitive in the deep-red state in presidential races.
In South Carolina, Dr Annie Andrews, a professor of paediatric medicine drawn into activism by the 2018 Parkland school shooting, defeated Darline Graham, who had been installed by Trump to finish the term of her brother Lindsey Graham after he died suddenly in July. The move fractured the state's Republican Party, and Andrews' victory curtailed Trump's influence over the politics of the South.
Adam Hamilton, a fifth-generation Kansan, and his wife founded the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in 1990 with four people. Over three decades, it grew into the largest United Methodist congregation in the US, with up to 25,000 members. A lifelong Republican who came to believe the government was using its power to harm rather than help, he ran a centrist campaign on healthcare, cost of living and corruption in a state that had not elected a Democratic senator in 94 years.
Josh Turek of Iowa, who was born with club feet, without a hip socket, with scoliosis and massive back problems, and twice represented his country as a Paralympian, ran as what he called a prairie populist after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which, when fully implemented, will strip about $US1 trillion from healthcare and a further $US1 trillion from welfare programs to fund tax cuts for high-income earners.
Abdul El-Sayed won in Michigan, the son of Egyptian immigrants and the first Muslim elected to the US Senate. His defeated primary opponent, Haley Stevens, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers in a last-minute twist. Trump launched a racist campaign against El-Sayed, labelling him a jihadist and communist. El-Sayed opened his victory speech with his full name and said those attacking him were also targeting the very idea of America. He is a strident critic of the Israeli government and its prosecution of the war in Gaza, saying money should not be sent to do apartheid, genocide or war, a position that prompted the non-partisan American Jewish Committee to condemn his candidacy.
Elsewhere, former logger Troy Jackson flipped Maine, toppling five-term incumbent Susan Collins, lawyer Roy Cooper became the first Democrat to win a Senate race in North Carolina since 2008, and former senator Sherrod Brown returned Ohio to Democratic hands two years after losing his re-election bid.
Behind the candidates was Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who is set to become majority leader. Progressives have long viewed him as too establishment, but Tuesday's result should quiet some of those critics. He reopened funding lines from a $US350 million war chest gathered by the Senate Majority PAC. Veteran adviser Rebecca Katz called the co-operation between Schumer's establishment and the progressive grassroots a shotgun marriage where both sides understood the assignment, and Senator Richard Blumenthal described Schumer as the principal architect of the victory. Schumer put the win down to listening, saying the American people reduced the red brick wall to a pile of bricks.