President Donald Trump told voters to pretend he was on the ballot in this year’s midterm elections.They did.And they resoundingly rejected both his policies and his Republican Party.
Democrats have captured full control of Congress, NBC News projects, with voters delivering a forceful repudiation of Trump’s agenda, coupled with a clear-cut message that Congress has not done enough to provide checks on his administration and needs to do more to address affordability and corruption.Democrats’ victory in the Senate comes after a swift and decisive win in the House, where Democrats are set to have what could be its largest majority in nearly two decades.Democrats flipped five Republican-held seats in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas — a state they’ve long dreamed of turning blue.
In a number of those states, Trump hand-picked the nominees, sometimes over the objections of members of his own party who were concerned that they would be weak in the general election.Forty-three percent of midterm voters surveyed in the NBC News Exit Poll said one of the reasons they voted the way they did was to express opposition to Trump, whose job approval rating is lower than that of any president on Election Day in nearly two decades.Seventy-one percent of voters — including 41% of Republicans — also said there is not enough congressional oversight of Trump.
Corruption, affordability, immigration and the war in Iran were all key issues as well.The results were so bleak that Trump quickly ran away from them on Tuesday evening.In a social media post, Trump said that, in fact, he was not on the ballot, and that’s why Republicans lost: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”The Democratic takeover will reverberate widely.
With majorities in both chambers, the Trump administration will now have to contend with checks and investigations it avoided with a compliant Congress in Republican hands.The electio...