By Brad Heath and Jason Lange
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Democrats won a remarkable midterm election rout, decisively taking control of the US Congress, scoring victories in places that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago and fracturing President Donald Trump’s political coalition.
The full scale of Democrats’ victories became clear on Wednesday morning as more ballots were counted and more races decided. Here are seven numbers that show how extraordinary the Democratic landslide was:
99
The Democratic wave covered huge swaths of the country. Republicans lost ground in 99% of the roughly 2,100 counties where most votes had been counted by Wednesday morning, according to tallies compiled by Reuters and USA Today, which are partnering this year to collect live election results. The party lost votes in rich and poor areas, in cities and in suburbs.
The losses in most places were dramatic: Republicans’ share of the vote in those counties dropped 9 percentage points compared to Trump’s share in 2024.
94
Kansas voters elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in 94 years. That race, and others in states where Democrats also had not won statewide races in a generation, showed how decisively the party swept through Republican bastions. The results were not especially close. Democrat Adam Hamilton was leading in Kansas by about 5 percentage points. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico was ahead of Trump’s handpicked candidate, Ken Paxton, by about 12 percentage points.
64
Every majority-Hispanic county that had nearly finished counting swung heavily in Democrats’ direction. Among the 64 such counties with Senate contests, the Republican share of the vote was 14 points less than Trump won in 2024, a considerably larger swing than in the rest of the country.
In Hidalgo County, Texas, along the southern US border with Mexico, the Republican share of the vote shrank by about 25 percentage points. In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, which Trump won in 2024, the Republican share of the vote dropped by 10 percentage points.
11
So far, Republicans have not won a House of Representatives seat in a district that Trump carried by less than 11 percentage points two years ago. That meant the Democratic wave was deep enough to sweep away Republican lawmakers who might normally have sailed to reelection.
Beyond that, Democrats have won four seats that Trump carried by more than 15 percentage points. Among them was a district in Indiana in which Democratic challenger J.D. Ford easily defeated incumbent Victoria Spartz in a district Trump carried by about 17 percentage points.
The two Senate races that remained undecided on Wednesday were in Alaska and Mississippi, states Trump carried by double-digit margins two years ago.
NINE
Republicans had hoped to cement their House majority by redrawing district boundaries in a handful of states to make them more favorable to the party’s lawmakers. That effort has so far fallen short. Of the 15 Democratic-held seats Republicans had targeted, none has so far changed hands. Democrats won nine of the seats and six others remained undecided on Wednesday morning.
THREE
In Florida, Democratic socialist Angie Nixon came within 3 percentage points of winning a Senate seat in Trump’s adopted home state and a key source of his electoral power. Trump won Florida by 13 percentage points when he was reelected two years ago. Still, on a night when Democrats dominated in one Republican-controlled state after another, the shift in Florida’s votes toward Democrats was half of what it was in Texas, South Carolina and Kansas.
ZERO
Republicans have not won any of the House or Senate races that were widely seen as competitive before voting began on Tuesday. Democrats have won more than two dozen competitive House races, plus a handful that were thought to have favored Republicans.
(Editing by Rod Nickel)
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