UPDATE – Nov 4, 10:16 AM PKT: Further called races since publication, including Minnesota and Oregon among the latest, take Democrats to 52 seats on called races alone – 34 seats not up for election plus 18 won, including the two independents who caucus with Democrats – a Senate majority regardless of the races still uncalled, including Michigan, Maine, Alaska and others. Results remain unofficial until states certify. Tally: Decision Desk HQ / Poliwave.
Three more Republican-held Senate seats changed hands late on Tuesday night in the United States, as the Associated Press and the major decision desks called races in Ohio, Kansas and Iowa for Democratic candidates — extending a midterm night that had already seen Democrats take the House of Representatives and flip seats in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.
The calls landed within a few hours of each other as counting continued into Wednesday morning in Pakistan, and they leave the final balance of the Senate still to be confirmed, with several races — including Michigan, Maine and Alaska — uncalled. Results remain unofficial until states complete their canvasses and certifications.
Democrats went into election night holding 47 of the Senate’s 100 seats against 53 for Republicans, and needing a net gain of four to take control, since a 50-50 split would leave Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote for Republicans. The three new flips add to the seats Democrats had already taken in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.
Ohio: Brown’s comeback, two years after losing his seat
The latest of the three calls came just after 11 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, when the Associated Press declared former Senator Sherrod Brown the winner of Ohio’s special Senate election over the incumbent, Jon Husted. With about 87% of the expected vote counted, Brown led 48.6% to 46.5%.
The result completes a strikingly fast comeback. Brown, 73, lost his Senate seat in 2024 to Republican Bernie Moreno, ending an 18-year run in the chamber. Husted, 59, was appointed to the Senate in January 2025 by Republican Governor Mike DeWine to fill the seat vacated by Vance when he became vice president. The term Brown has now won runs only to January 2029, the remainder of Vance’s original term, so he will face voters again in the 2028 presidential election — and will serve as Ohio’s junior senator, behind Moreno.
Brown, a populist Democrat who built his career on workers’ rights and opposition to free-trade deals, campaigned heavily on affordability, on data centres that have become a flashpoint in Ohio, and against the war in Iran, which he has described as unnecessary and expensive. At a rally in Cleveland in late October, he ticked off the wealthy figures he said had spent millions to defeat him: “Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Donald Trump.”
The race was the second-most expensive Senate contest of the cycle, behind only Texas, with the two campaigns and outside groups spending roughly $500 million on advertising combined, according to published tallies.
Ohio delivered Democrats a double win on the night: voters also elected Amy Acton as governor, the first woman elected to that office in the state, ending two decades of Republican governors.
Kansas: first Democrat since 1932
In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton defeated the Republican incumbent, Roger Marshall, according to the Associated Press, CNN and Decision Desk HQ. With about 90% of precincts reporting, Hamilton led with roughly 52% of the vote to Marshall’s 45%.
Hamilton, 62, is a Methodist pastor who founded the Church of the Resurrection in the Kansas City suburbs, the largest United Methodist congregation in the country, and has written more than 30 books on Christianity and theology. He becomes the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas since 1932 — a 94-year drought that was the longest active losing streak for either party in any state.
The scale of the upset is hard to overstate. President Donald Trump carried Kansas by more than 16 percentage points in 2024, and the race had long been rated safely Republican before it tightened sharply in the final weeks. Marshall, an obstetrician from Great Bend in western Kansas who entered the House in 2016 and the Senate in 2020, had the backing of Trump. Hamilton campaigned as an “independent-minded Democrat” focused on affordability and bipartisanship, and rejected Republican attempts to portray him as far to the left.
Iowa: Turek takes the open seat
In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek defeated Republican Ashley Hinson for the state’s open Senate seat, the Associated Press called the race on Tuesday evening, with Decision Desk HQ and NBC News reaching the same conclusion. With about 90% of precincts reporting, Turek led Hinson by roughly 643,000 votes to 583,000.
Turek, a state representative and former Paralympian, is the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Iowa since Tom Harkin in 2008. The seat was open because the Republican incumbent, Joni Ernst, chose not to seek re-election. The contest was one of the most expensive in Iowa’s history, with candidates and outside groups spending close to $200 million combined, according to the analytics firm AdImpact.
Why this matters
For readers outside the United States, the Senate is where much of American power is actually exercised: it confirms cabinet secretaries, ambassadors and lifetime federal judges, and it can restrain a president’s war powers — a live question in a year when the war in Iran, rising prices and tariffs dominated the campaign in race after race. A Senate in Democratic hands would give the party a veto over Trump’s appointments and a platform to force votes on the war and on affordability for the remaining two years of his presidency.
That is why the uncalled races now matter so much. Michigan’s open seat, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers, is the Democrats’ most exposed seat on the map: losing it would eat into the night’s gains. Maine, where Republican Senator Susan Collins is seeking re-election, and Alaska, with its ranked-choice count, are also still to be decided. Until those races are called, the story of this election night is a Democratic wave that has broken over Republican seats — but a Senate majority that is not yet formally theirs.
This is a developing story based on partial results. It will be updated as further Senate races are called. See our midterms guide for how the night was expected to unfold.
