Democrats win both houses of Congress: Trump wasn't on the ballot, but the defeat still carries his name

The Democrats won the midterm elections halfway through Trump's term - and not narrowly. According to projections by US media, the Democratic Party is comfortably taking the House of Representatives from the Republicans, and in the Senate it is winning in states that for decades were considered safe Republican territory.

The maths is simple. All 435 members of the House and 35 of the 100 senators were up for election. A majority in the lower house takes 218 seats - projections give the Democrats at least that many, and the Republicans at least 160. The voters' message is even clearer: it is a verdict on Trump's policies, on the rising cost of living, on the erosion of democratic standards and on the unpopular war he started with Iran.

Texas, where 168 million dollars wasn't enough

The biggest loser of the night may not be Trump but Elon Musk. The world's richest man funded a 168-million-dollar ad campaign against Democrat James Talarico in Texas. Talarico won the Senate seat anyway, ending almost three decades of Republican dominance in a state Trump carried comfortably three times.

His opponent was Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and a close Trump ally. A man the Texas House voted to impeach in 2023 before the state Senate later acquitted him. Trump endorsed him in May against incumbent senator John Cornyn, and in October went to Texas three times to rescue his campaign. It didn't work. Talarico, a member of the Texas legislature and a theology student, ran on the message that American politics isn't a clash between left and right but between those at the top and those at the bottom.

The data shows record turnout in many counties, and Latino voters, who swung behind Trump in 2024, came back to the Democrats. Would anyone in the Balkans believe that a 168-million-dollar campaign could lose to a theology student?

Kansas after 87 years

If Texas is a symbol, Kansas is history. Democrat Adam Hamilton beat Republican senator Roger Marshall and broke the longest unbroken party streak in the history of the US Senate. Democrats hadn't had a senator from Kansas since January 3, 1939. Hamilton enters politics with no political experience whatsoever - for the past 35 years he has been building one of the largest Methodist churches in the US.

Notice the pattern: two Democrats who invoke Christian values took away the Republicans' firmest strongholds. The party that carried faith as its banner for years lost precisely on that ground.

The list goes on. Jon Ossoff held his seat in Georgia, a state Trump won by just two percentage points in 2024. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire became the first openly gay man in the US Senate. Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor of a US state, also in Georgia. In Ohio, billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy lost the governor's race to Democrat Amy Acton.

"A bloodbath"

Among Republicans the mood is funereal. Two senior party strategists admitted panic is growing. "It looks like a disaster of biblical proportions," said one. "Man, this is a bloodbath," added the other. From the White House, meanwhile, came defiance: the president, they say, wasn't on the ballot, and his voters turn out when he is the candidate. "Buckle up," one official said.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, didn't mince words. Republicans, he said, followed Trump "right off a cliff" and turned their famous "red wall" into "a pile of bricks". "Americans voted for change, and now it is up to Democrats to deliver it," Schumer said.

What this means for Trump

Without a majority in the House, Republicans can no longer pass laws without the Democrats. The Democrats, for their part, gain the power to open investigations into members of the administration and to compel them to testify and hand over documents. They can also revive impeachment proceedings against Trump, although that requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate. With the Senate in hand they will also be able to block or delay his nominations - to the Supreme Court, to the cabinet, to the top of the FBI or the CIA.

Two years after his win, American voters punished those in power through the ballot box. How often in the Balkans do the people in power lose precisely where they thought they were untouchable?