Washington: Two years after returning Donald Trump to the White House, American voters have handed both chambers of Congress to the Democrats. Projections on Wednesday put the party at 54 Senate seats against 44 for the Republicans, having picked up the net seats it needed, and the House has been called for the Democrats as well.
The Senate map broke in places the Republicans had counted on keeping. Democrats scored upsets in Texas, South Carolina and Kansas, flipped Maine, Iowa, Ohio and North Carolina, and held Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown won the Senate race, and Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy in the governor's contest.
The Alaska and Mississippi Senate races were still rated toss-ups as counting continued, and the change of control in both chambers has recast the politics of a two-year term that now ends in opposition.
The campaign was fought, by most accounts, on the cost of living and on fuel prices that climbed during the US-Israel war against Iran. Trump's own party went into polling day defending an economy that voters said did not feel better, whatever the headline numbers said.
For India, the reading in Mumbai and Delhi is narrower than the headline. Emkay Research said Democratic control of Congress may increase scrutiny of tariffs and immigration but is unlikely to change those frictions materially, and that the bigger risk is a re-escalation of the Iran conflict after the midterms, which would weigh on India's balance of payments and currency. ICICI Global Markets said a split Congress raises the chance of a government shutdown, since Democratic and Republican budget priorities rarely meet.
A Democratic Congress cannot undo a tariff by itself, and a president retains wide latitude on foreign policy. What changes is the volume of investigation and the difficulty of passing anything, including spending bills.
The results were still being counted in a handful of races when this was written. Majorities in both chambers are projections, not final tallies.