In recent years, it has been not out of the ordinary for the U.S. Congressional midterm elections to result in setbacks for the majority party, but the 2026 results are truly historic.

In the 2024 elections, in which Donald Trump was elected President for a second time, the Republican Party retained a majority in both houses of Congress and, in fact, increased the amount of those majorities. Heading into the midterm elections of Trump's second term as President, his party had 218 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 53 seats in the Senate. That majority in the House was as slim as it could be (because the total of 218 was exactly one more than half of the 435 available); the Senate majority was slightly more comfortable in that the total number of Senators is 100 and so a majority requires at least 51.

Members of the House serve two-year terms and so are up for re-election every election, presidential or midterm. Members of the Senate serve six-year terms and are up for re-election on a rotation, so every two years only one-third of the existing Senators face an electoral challenge.

The majority in both houses has now switched, with many historic details attached to those switches.

Democrats are projected to have a comfortable majority in the House, winning seats in districts around the country that had long seen a strong Republican majority. Among that new Democratic majority are expected to be more than 100 women, for the first time ever.

In a small handful of states, Democratic candidates prevailed despite stringent efforts to dampen enthusiasm and viability. Notably in Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas, GOP-led state legislatures crafted severely gerrymandered maps designed to boost GOP representation in the House; President Trump championed such efforts, and the U.S. Supreme Court declared those redistricting efforts constitutional. The voters, in the end, had the last word. (In California and Illinois, notably, the Democrat-led legislatures had done much the same thing, but Democrats won those seats, as expected.)

As well, it is all but certain that the Democratic Party will have a majority in the Senate, as there too voters over and again chose to repudiate Republican candidates, even in states that were considered comfortable for the GOP.

In one of the most well-publicized contests, Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed won election to the Senate, defeating former Rep. Mike Rogers. In doing so, El-Sayed will become the first Muslim to serve in the Senate.

Kansas voters elected Adam Hamilton to the Senate, defeating the incumbent, Republican Roger Marshall. It was the first time that the state had voted to send a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, when a post-Depression Democratic wave propelled Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency, along with a very strong Democratic majority in both houses.

In Texas, James Talarico, a Democrat, defeated Ken Paxton; it had been more than three decades since Texans had elected a Democrat to the Senate.

The Democratic wave extended to Maine, in which longtime state senator Troy Jackson ousted Republican Senator Susan Collins, who was first elected in 1996 and was the longest-serving woman in the Senate.

Iowa voters embraced the Democratic candidate, Josh Turek, propelling him to victory over Republican Ashley Hinson (who was currently representing Iowa in the U.S. House). They both had striven to replace the current holder of the seat, Republican Joni Ernst, who did not run for re-election.

The results were a stark reminder that voters expect the people they elect to keep their promises and work for the good of the country. Many voters expressed frustration with Trump in particular and the GOP as a whole for enabling many unpopular policies and initiatives. Front and center in the list of complaints was the Iran war, which the president essentially began on his own despite campaigning in 2024 on a promise of not starting another war in the Middle East, and a series of tariffs put on imports from many other countries (including some of the country's longtime and strongest allies) that ended up hurting Americans more than those other countries.

Votes are still being counted, and the final tallies are not yet in. What is clear, though, is that the next Congress will look remarkably different from the current one.