Hindsight Media
Subscribe

Edition 7 · Counting the Cost

Voters hand Congress to the Democrats, and the war and the bills get the blame

Democrats won the Senate and the House on Tuesday, Republicans' own leaders said the Iran war had cost them, and two days later fears about data centres wiped 4.4% off the S&P 500. On Friday Donald Trump replaced his chief of staff with Stephen Miller.

At dusk, a voter walks into the lit side door of the small City Hall in Remer, Minnesota, across a rain-wet car park with painted footprints leading to it.
A voter arrives at City Hall in Remer, Minnesota, on Election Day, 3 November 2026. Photo: Lorie Shaull, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0 · Source

5 min read

Americans voted on Tuesday 3rd November for every seat in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate and 36 state governors. Going in, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. By the early hours of Wednesday, the Associated Press had called both for the Democrats: the Senate at 11.46pm Eastern time, the House at 1.31am.1

To win the Senate, Democrats needed a net gain of four seats.2 They took seven from the Republicans, in North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Maine, Iowa and South Carolina.2 They lost none of their own. By Sunday they held 54 seats to the Republicans' 44, with Alaska and Mississippi still too close to call; Democrats led narrowly in both. In the House, which needs 218 seats for a majority, they had won 254 to the Republicans' 162, with 19 races still being counted.3

Map of the United States showing the 35 Senate races of 3 November 2026: seven states gained by Democrats (Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas), 13 held by Democrats, 13 held by Republicans, none gained by Republicans, and Alaska and Mississippi not yet called.
Document. Visual 007 — Seven Senate seats change hands. Results as called by the Associated Press, as of Sunday 8 November. Boundaries: US Census Bureau. Map: Hindsight Media. Results: Associated Press; boundaries: US Census Bureau · © Hindsight Media · Source

A list of firsts

In Texas, James Talarico won a Senate seat, the first time a Democrat has won a statewide office there since 1994.1 Keisha Lance Bottoms became governor of Georgia, the first Black woman elected governor of any American state.1 In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the Senate.4 Democrats also won the governorships of Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada.4

The billionaire Elon Musk spent heavily against them. The Associated Press counted $158m spent opposing Talarico alone.1 CNBC put Musk's total across the midterms at $474m, and found that the candidates his group backed or opposed had lost 29 of their races by Wednesday, and won three.4 "Texas is not for sale," Talarico said.5

What voters said moved them

Exit polls ask people how they voted, and why, as they leave the polling station. NBC News's poll of more than 79,000 voters found that 63% thought the American military action against Iran had been the wrong decision, and that only 38% approved of Trump's job as president.6 Prices weighed as heavily: 86% were concerned about their utility bills and 88% about the cost of groceries.7

The two worries met in one place: data centres, the warehouses of computer chips that run Artificial Intelligence, which use so much electricity that some regions' power bills have risen to pay for new grid capacity. In NBC's poll, 76% said they would oppose one being built in their own community,7 and 56% said AI and data centres were a crucial or major factor in how they voted.8 Texas's new Democratic governor, Gina Hinojosa, has promised a moratorium on new ones as soon as she takes office.9

Trump's own side drew the same conclusion about the war. Vice-President JD Vance said: "The reason we lost is the war."9 Trump told reporters on Wednesday that this was "largely true", that he would "do it again", and that what had hurt was "not the war, the price".4 On election night he had written: "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!"1

The market's verdict

Investors first welcomed the result: on Wednesday the Dow Jones index of 30 large companies rose 3%.10 On Thursday they turned on the companies building AI. The S&P 500, the index of 500 large American companies, fell 4.4%, its worst day since Trump's tariff announcement of April 2025. The technology-heavy Nasdaq fell 5.5%; Nvidia, the leading maker of AI chips, fell 9.3%.11 NBC News calculated that about $2.8tn was wiped off the value of S&P 500 companies in a day.12

Line chart of the S&P 500 at each day's close from Friday 30 October to Friday 6 November 2026: 7,580.07, 7,541.40, 7,568.92 on election day, 7,688.62 on Wednesday, then a fall of 4.4% to 7,353.73 on Thursday, and 7,376.86 on Friday.
Document. Visual 001 — The day after the day after. The S&P 500 at each day's close in the week of the US midterms. Data: Associated Press. Chart: Hindsight Media. Data: Associated Press · © Hindsight Media · Source

The Associated Press linked the fall to the chance that state and local governments run by Democrats could force pauses in the building of data centres.11 It followed a week in which, as Hindsight reported last Sunday, investors had already begun to ask when the vast spending on AI would pay. "I don't think this is an AI bubble bursting," said Ed Yardeni, an investment strategist; he called it "the cold shower that I anticipated might occur after a blue-wave situation".12 On Friday the S&P 500 recovered 0.3%, ending the week 2.7% lower.13

A new chief of staff

On Friday afternoon Trump announced that Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, would become White House chief of staff from Monday 9th November. Susie Wiles, the first woman to hold the job, moves to Trump's political operation; Trump said she had "done a great job".14 "Sometimes in life you have to make moves," he told reporters.15

Democrats in Congress reacted with hostility. Hakeem Jeffries, their leader in the House, called Miller "a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist", and Chuck Schumer, their leader in the Senate, said: "Trump couldn't have made a worse choice."15

What it means for Trump

Trump's power shrinks wherever he needs Congress, and much less where he doesn't. Nothing changes at once: the new Congress meets at noon on 3rd January, and until then the Republican majorities remain.16 They must first agree how to keep the government funded beyond 11th December, when the current stopgap law runs out.17

Bar chart of seats in Congress. Senate: 47 Democrats and 53 Republicans before the election; 54 Democrats, 44 Republicans and 2 not yet called now; a majority is 51. House: 214 Democrats, 219 Republicans and 2 vacant before; 254 Democrats, 162 Republicans and 19 not yet called now; a majority is 218.
Document. Visual 008 — Both houses change hands. Seats before the election and as called by the Associated Press on Sunday 8 November; independents who vote with the Democrats are counted with them. Chart: Hindsight Media. Data: Associated Press; Al Jazeera · © Hindsight Media · Source

From January, Democrats can stop what Trump needs Congress for. Every law and every dollar of federal spending must pass both houses,16 so the Pentagon's requests for $67bn to pay for the Iran war and $350bn more for defence, neither yet approved, will depend on Democratic votes.18 Democrats will chair the committees that investigate the government and issue subpoenas, and a simple majority of the Senate, which they now hold, can confirm or reject his nominees for the cabinet, the courts and embassies.1619 In September the Senate rejected a resolution telling Trump to withdraw American forces from the war with Iran by one vote, 50 to 49;20 the new Senate has the numbers to pass one, though lawyers have long disputed whether such a resolution binds a president, and Congress's surer lever is money.21

What Democrats cannot do is make law over his objection. Overturning a veto takes two-thirds of each house: 290 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate when every member votes. Democrats have won 254 and 54 so far, so they would need dozens of Republicans.163 "I have the ultimate power — it's called 'veto,'" Trump said.5 Most bills also need 60 votes to get through the Senate.19 He remains commander-in-chief, keeps the power to pardon, and keeps his tariffs under trade laws that the Supreme Court left untouched in February.1622 That is why some analysts doubt he has become a "lame duck".23

"We are going to work hard to drive costs down, with the president or without him," said Chuck Schumer, the Democrats' leader in the Senate.24 His Republican counterpart, John Thune, said his party would "not stand idly by" as Democrats tried to "unwind everything we've done".25 The Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi, and the size of the House majority, are still being counted.3