US President Donald Trump spent the run-up to the midterm elections telling Americans they should vote as though his own name was on the ballot. Americans on Tuesday delivered a damning verdict on the first two years of Trump’s second term in the White House, voting to give the Democratic Party control over both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Democratic candidates campaigning relentlessly on bringing down the cost of living wrested House and Senate seats from Republicans across the map, including in conservative states that haven’t put a Democrat in the upper house in decades.
Democratic victories in Texas, Kansas and South Carolina in particular are likely to send shockwaves through the Republican Party as the full force of the blue wave makes itself felt. Joseph Ura, the chair of Clemson University’s Department of Political Science, said that the night had been a historic victory for the Democrats. Read moreKey US Senate results: Democrats win upper chamber with victories in Texas and Iowa The increasingly unaffordable cost of fuel and food triggered by Trump’s war against Iran appears to have done a great deal to turn voters against the Republican president.
An survey of some 80,000 voters across all 50 states pointed to widespread frustration with the rising cost of living as a worry that working families were unable to ignore. Three-quarters of respondents described the state of the US economy as “not so good” or “poor”, with four out of five saying that inflation had caused a “moderate” or “severe” level of hardship for their own household. While Trump would not be the first leader to be punished for soaring prices, his imperial approach to the presidency has made it easy for Democratic challengers to lay the responsibility squarely at his feet.
Trump’s decision to launch the US-Israeli war on Iran in February directly drove up global energy prices as Tehran effectively closed off the strategic Strait of Hormuz, severely restricting the movement of oil and liquefied natural gas through the narrow waterway. Trump’s tough talk on trade that set the tone for his first year in office has also failed to bring the prosperity he promised. The president’s often-incoherent efforts to make US businesses pay tariffs on foreign imports and his on-again-off-again trade war with China placed the president front and centre in debates around the country’s economic health.
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Andrew Gawthorpe, a lecturer on US history and politics at Leiden University, said that anger around rising energy prices seemed to have helped the Democrats make inroads into rural communities that have until now been a bedrock of right-wing Republican support. I think gas prices are a huge part of this because in the US, people who live in more rural areas have to rely on a car, and they’re very, very sensitive to the price of gasoline.” Ura said that Democratic candidates had been largely successful in hammering home the price of Trump’s war against Iran in parts of the US that in 2024 voted for a candidate promising a more isolationist approach to foreign affairs. And a place where I think maybe people were particularly disappointed in President Trump breaking his promise not to get involved in more foreign wars.” Sophia Umbreit watches election returns before Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed arrives at a Michigan Democratic Party election night event, Tuesday, November 3, 2026, in Detroit. © Julia Demaree Nikhinson, AP The tens of millions of Americans who voted for Democrats on Tuesday also pointed to allegations of rampant government corruption as a motivating factor.
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