Four States Elect Democrats to Senate After Decades of GOP Wins

Four states with long histories of electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate chose Democrats on November 3, delivering a striking part of the party’s midterm gains. Kansas, Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina each ended a different electoral drought, with some gaps stretching back nearly a century. Together, their outcomes helped Democrats gain control of the Senate in an election that also reshaped the House.

Kansas produced the longest historical break. Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton defeated Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, according to election reporting from NPR and the Associated Press. Kansas had not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932. Marshall, who took office in 2021, was among the Republican incumbents defeated as Democrats won seats beyond the conventional battleground map.

The Texas result carried a different kind of weight. State Rep. James Talarico defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton for an open U.S. Senate seat. A Democrat had not won a Texas Senate election since 1988, a 38-year gap. Texas had also gone without a Democratic statewide election victory since 1994, making the Senate outcome part of a broader break with the state’s recent political history.

In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews defeated Republican Sen. Darline Graham. Graham had taken the seat after the death of her brother, longtime Sen. Lindsey Graham, according to NPR’s election coverage. The state last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1998. The result came in a state President Donald Trump had won decisively in 2024, marking a reversal from its recent Senate election outcomes.

North Carolina completed the four-state sequence. Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper defeated Republican Michael Whatley for a Republican-held seat. North Carolina’s previous Democratic Senate victory came in 2008. Cooper’s campaign brought an unusually familiar statewide figure into a federal race, while the other contests featured candidates with different backgrounds and routes into politics.

The victories formed a wider Senate shift

The four results did not occur in isolation. Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek won an open seat in Iowa, former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown defeated Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, and Democrats also retained seats they already held. In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson unseated longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins, according to national election coverage.

The wins came through very different candidates: a Kansas pastor, a Texas state lawmaker, a South Carolina physician and a former North Carolina governor. Their victories gave the same national election four distinct local histories, each with its own decades-long point of comparison.

For Kansas, Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina, the immediate outcome is already historic: voters elected senators from a party that had not won such a race in their states since 1932, 1988, 1998 and 2008, respectively. The new senators will arrive in Washington as part of a majority assembled through victories in states that Republicans had considered fundamental to their national map.

References: Democrats win big in midterm elections | U.S. Senate election results 2026