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Democrats are projected to win back control of the US House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections, ending Republican control of the chamber and reshaping the final stretch of Donald Trump's second term. Decision Desk HQ projected the Democratic takeover at 9:11 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and CNN and MS NOW made the same projection, according to reporting by TheWrap and USA Today. The final size of the Democratic majority was still unclear as counting continued.
How the House call was made
Projection desks call a chamber when the outstanding vote can no longer plausibly overturn the projected winner. Several early signals pointed the same way: Democrats flipped a bellwether Kentucky seat that Trump had won by 15 percentage points in 2024, and won in districts the president had carried by double-digit margins.
A projection is not a certified result. Individual races can still narrow and recounts can follow, and the exact majority — how many seats Democrats can afford to lose on a difficult vote — will only emerge as the count finishes. What the projection settles, barring an extraordinary reversal, is which party organises the House when the new Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027.
The Senate is still open
The Senate, by contrast, was still undecided. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to erase the Republicans' 53-47 advantage. They banked striking wins without yet closing that gap: former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper flipped a Republican-held seat, beating Trump-backed Michael Whatley — the first Democrat elected to the Senate from North Carolina since 2008. In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews defeated incumbent Republican senator Darline Graham; a Democrat had not won a Senate race there since 1998.
Democrats also held the seats they most needed to defend — Jon Ossoff in Georgia and Chris Pappas in New Hampshire — while Republicans retained Florida's Senate seat. Tight battlegrounds in Kansas, Texas, Ohio and Michigan were still running as the House call landed, and those races will decide whether Democrats control both chambers or must govern through a divided Congress.
What a Democratic House can — and cannot — do
Control of the House gives Democrats immediate power. The majority party sets the legislative agenda, decides which bills reach the floor, and runs the committees that can summon officials, demand documents and hold hearings. Trump and his allies have said they fear Democrats will spend the next two years convening hearings on the actions of the president's Cabinet; a Democratic House can do exactly that, and can block parts of the president's agenda outright, since no bill becomes law without passing the House.
What it cannot do on its own is govern. Laws still need the Senate and the president's signature, or a veto-proof majority that neither party holds. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who cruised to re-election in his Brooklyn district, is in line to become speaker if Democrats organise the chamber — which would make him the first Black speaker in American history — but he would lead a caucus spanning moderate swing-district winners and new progressive members, and holding that coalition together on tight votes will be its own test.
What happens next
As the remaining House races are called and the Senate picture resolves, both parties will begin leadership elections and committee assignments ahead of the January handover. If Democrats also take the Senate, the president faces two years of a Congress controlled by his opponents; if Republicans hold the Senate, Washington enters split government, in which the House can investigate and obstruct but cannot legislate alone.
The midterm verdict is not yet complete — the Senate still has to be decided — but its first, largest consequence is clear: the House has flipped, and the second half of Trump's presidency will be fought under a Democratic gavel. Related reading: Spain's Transport Minister Quits After Two Train Crashes Killed 115 People in Less Than a Year and Schools That Reject AI Will Lose Google Search Too, Google Says.