Republicans expanded their control of the US Senate during Tuesday’s midterms, flipping previously Democratic-controlled seats in states handily won by President Trump in 2016.
The party turned red formerly blue seats in Missouri, Indiana and North Dakota and walked away with a likely 54-46 majority — a potential net gain of three.
Trump crowed about the victories on Twitter early Wednesday.
“ ‘There’s only been 5 times in the last 105 years that an incumbent President has won seats in the Senate in the off year election,’ ” he tweeted, quoting political commentator Ben Stein. “ ‘Mr. Trump has magic about him. This guy has magic coming out of his ears.’ ”
A contest in Florida leaned Republican but remained too close to call early Wednesday.
And results were not immediately available early Wednesday in Nevada, where the GOP sought to defend a seat.
The stars aligned for the GOP in Tuesday’s Senate contests, where battles were largely waged over Democratic-controlled seats in traditionally red states.
Democrats were defending 27 of the 35 seats in play. Republicans controlled 42 of the seats not in contention, while Democrats had just 23.
Still, Senate Republicans fell short of the 60-seat super-majority they need to end debates over legislation. Inability to reach the magic 60 have stymied Republicans’ repeated attempts at unraveling the Affordable Care Act.
For that reason, senators had to rely on a obscure provision called Budget Reconciliation to push through the GOP’s signature tax-reform bill with fewer than 60 votes last year.
Even presidential appointments — which require only a simple majority — have proved tough battles for Republicans.
Senate Republicans squeaked Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh through the confirmation process by just 50-48, with two Republicans not voting and one Democrat supporting Kavanaugh.
In key local and national races:
- Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand sailed to victory over GOP challenger Chele Farley, earning a second full term after she was appointed to the Senate in 2009 to fill a seat left vacant when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state.
- New Jersey voters re-elected ethically challenged Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez to a third term. Menendez, who was tried for corruption in 2017 but never convicted following a hung jury, managed a slim win over Trump-backing pharma exec Bob Hugin.
- Republicans managed to flip the battleground state of Indiana, where GOP challenger Mike Braun smoked one-term incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly, leading by 10.6 points with 86 percent of the votes counted early Wednesday. Donnelly was the favorite over the summer, but his withdrawal of support for Kavanaugh cost him. Donnelly lost votes among right-leaning independents, for whom Donnelly’s support of Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch in 2017 must have been a distant memory. The state delivered Trump a 19-point victory over Clinton in 2016.
- Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz scraped by in his bitterly contested battle against charismatic Congressman Beto O’Rourke. Cruz was ahead by 3.5 points with 99 percent of the vote counted early Wednesday. O’Rourke had conceded earlier.
- Trump-backed Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn won in Tennessee against Phil Bredesen, maintaining GOP control in the Volunteer State after Republican Sen. Bob Corker declined to seek re-election. The traditionally red state — which Trump won by more than 25 points in 2016 — emerged as an unlikely battleground in the midterms. “A vote for Marsha is really a vote for me and everything that we stand for,” Trump said during an Oct. 1 campaign rally in Johnson City. Early voting surged 663 percent among young voters in Tennessee, where 97,826 voters ages 18 to 29 cast ballots early compared to 12,812 in the same age group during the 2014 midterms. The seismic shift has been attributed in part to pop star Taylor Swift, who took to Instagram on Oct. 7 to urge young people to vote for Bredesen. When the dust had settled, though, Blackburn had won by nearly 11 points — West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin defeated GOP challenger Patrick Morrissey, 49.7 percent to 46.2 percent. Manchin’s win bucked a trend in West Virginia, which Trump — who backed Morrissey — won by 42 points in 2016. Manchin was the lone Senate Democrat to vote for Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. Trump had a MAGA rally with Morrissey on Friday and another event Monday with Donald Trump Jr. as part of his “Stand with Trump” tour.
- North Dakota flipped for Republicans with Democratic incumbent Heidi Heitkamp suffering a bruising, 9.4-point defeat at the hands of Republican challenger Kevin Cramer. Heitkamp was forced onto the defensive with just days to go in the race after inadvertently outing several victims of sexual assault without their consent in a mid-October newspaper ad targeting Cramer with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
- The GOP’s 2012 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, easily dispatched Democratic rival Jenny Wilson in Utah, winning the seat being vacated by the retiring Orrin Hatch. Romney could “wind up running the United States” in his role as the rare Republican not beholden to President Trump, according to Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution.
- In the battleground state of Missouri, GOP challenger Josh Hawley bested Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill by 6.7 points. On the eve of the election, Trump traveled to Missouri to stump for Hawley, who was neck-and-neck with McCaskill heading into Tuesday.
- In the Arizona race to fill the vacancy left by departing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, GOP hopeful Martha McSally held a 0.7-point edge over Democratic candidate Krysten Sinema with one-third of precincts reporting. The winner will be the state’s first female senator.
- And the Florida contest between three-term Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson and outgoing Gov. Rick Scott was too close to call with 99 percent of the votes tallied.
Scott led by just 0.6 points as the last ballots were being counted — despite multiple polls showing Nelson in the lead.
The split decision in Congress established some history. It marked the first time a party has taken control of the House without gaining Senate seats since the nation began directly electing its senators in 1914, according to USA Today.
Additional reporting by Bob Fredericks and Nikki Schwab, with Wires