Democrats have won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the US midterm elections, stripping President Donald Trump's Republican Party of its grip on Congress, bdnews24.com reports. The party also claimed victory in several high-profile governor races, results that together mark a sharp rebuke of the president's second term.
The outcome, reported on Wednesday, went further than pre-election polling had suggested. According to bdnews24.com, many analysts had expected a good night for the Democrats but did not anticipate gains on this scale.
Why it matters
Midterm elections fall at the midpoint of a president's four-year term. No national leader is chosen; instead, every House seat, part of the Senate, and a range of governorships and state and local posts are decided. The vote is widely read as a verdict on the sitting president and his administration.
That conventional pattern usually costs the president's party seats. This year's result is harder to file away as routine, because Trump made the contest a personal referendum. He put his own political standing at the centre of the campaign, so the Republican losses now raise questions about his authority as well as his party's numbers on Capitol Hill.
A rejection of MAGA, analysts say
The Guardian, in an analysis cited by bdnews24.com, attributed the Democratic sweep to the party as a whole rather than to any single faction within it. The victory was so broad, the paper argued, that internal divisions cannot explain it. Its summary of the Democrats' strongest asset this year: they were not Republicans.
According to that analysis, Trump handed the opposition several political gifts before polling day. These included an unpopular war with Iran that pushed up prices, a chaotic tariff policy that hurt small businesses, farmers and international allies, cuts to health care, a feared deportation plan, and endless controversy over self-enrichment, corruption and a reflecting pool renovation.
As the president's popularity slid, Democrats moved aggressively against him. The Guardian's reading, as reported by bdnews24.com, is that voters were not simply venting ordinary frustration with the party in power but rejecting Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement outright.
Rachel Leingang, a Guardian analyst, observed that winners this year spanned the party's moderate, progressive, populist and democratic socialist wings. Her assessment, per bdnews24.com, is that many voters were not endorsing every Democratic policy; taking a stand against the administration's conduct mattered more to them.
The Associated Press, also cited in the report, said Democratic wins in states that usually lean Republican — among them Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and Georgia — signalled a substantial rejection of the second-term agenda.
Cost of living and the Iran war dominate
Pocketbook issues were always expected to drive the vote: inflation, grocery prices, energy costs and the overall expense of living. Reuters' analysis of the election found that nine in ten voters treated the cost of living as an important factor, according to bdnews24.com.
Many of those voters blamed Trump's policies for rising prices, and broader discontent with the country's direction weighed on their decisions. High tariffs on imported goods were pitched as a way to boost domestic production and jobs, but concerns about their effect on business costs, supply chains and consumer prices featured heavily in the campaign, particularly the pressure on small businesses and farmers.
The war with Iran added to the discontent. Under Trump's second term, the United States and Israel went to war with Iran, unsettling energy markets. The Guardian's analysis identified higher fuel prices and thin public support for the war as a heavy political burden for Republicans.
On Wednesday, the day after the vote, Trump acknowledged the war's role in his party's defeat. In an interview with Fox News he said, "I think part of it was Iran," and he told The Wall Street Journal that Iran was among the reasons. He accepted the electoral blow but gave no sign of stepping back from the decision to go to war.
That is a pointed reversal for a president whose campaign promises included keeping America out of new foreign conflicts. Once the Iran war became administration policy, the economic and political costs followed — spending, fuel prices and international instability all fed into voters' daily lives.
Historic firsts in Republican territory
Perhaps the most striking feature of the night was where Democrats won. Their success was not confined to the usual battlegrounds. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton for a Senate seat — the first Democratic senator elected from the state since 1988, according to Reuters data cited by bdnews24.com. In South Carolina, Annie Andrews' Senate win was the state's first for a Democrat this century.
Those results carry weight beyond the two seats. They suggest the Democratic tide reached into Republican heartland, reinforcing the picture of a national shift rather than a series of local upsets.
What to watch
The victory opens new levers of power for Democrats in Washington and in statehouses, but it also raises expectations among the voters who delivered it. How the party uses its congressional majority — and whether Trump adjusts course or digs in over the final two years of his term — will define the next phase of the fight.
