The Night File — The Desk’s Report
The Night File: Both Chambers Called Before the Small Hours
By 0400 the Senate and the House were both projected for the Democrats, Asia had sold the AI trade, Tehran had answered in two voices, and Europe’s morning papers were printing the word rout. What the wires carried while Washington slept.
The Night in Brief
The calls came in sequence, and all of them came before midnight in the East. The first polls closed at 1800 ET. At 2000 the first Senate flip was called: North Carolina, for former governor Roy Cooper. At about 2200 Georgia’s governor’s race flipped, South Carolina’s Senate seat was projected for Annie Andrews, and the House was projected for the Democrats. At about 2300 the Texas governor’s race was projected for Gina Hinojosa. At about 2330 the Senate followed. The Associated Press’s running tallies—the Senate file and the House file—carried the calls state by state, and Reuters’ lead states the whole of it in one sentence: “Democrats seized control of both the Senate and House on Tuesday, scoring sweeping victories in Republican strongholds for the first time in generations.”
Seven Senate seats changed hands: Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, and Maine. James Talarico won in Texas, which had not elected a Democrat to the Senate in more than three decades. Adam Hamilton defeated the incumbent, Roger Marshall, in Kansas, which had not elected a Democratic senator since 1932. Troy Jackson defeated Susan Collins in Maine, after nearly thirty years in the seat. Annie Andrews won in South Carolina, a state the president carried by nearly 18 points in 2024. Republicans entered the night holding the Senate 53 to 47; Democrats needed a net gain of four. With Alaska and Mississippi uncalled at 0400, the called races already gave them 54. In the House, the count ran ahead of the forecasters’ median of about 238 Democratic seats.
Why, on the night’s own evidence: the cost of living, and the war. Exit polls conducted by SSRS for a consortium including the Associated Press found half of voters nationwide saying they saw the midterms as an opportunity to rebuke the president, per Reuters. Reuters’ county tally, compiled with USA Today, recorded Republicans losing ground in all but a handful of the roughly 1,700 counties counted during the night.
The Races the Night Left Open
Alaska. The last polls closed at midnight ET. In the first count reported by CBS News, the incumbent Republican, Dan Sullivan, led the Democrat, Mary Peltola, 48.5 percent to 47.7 percent. A second tally put the margin at 1,677 votes, 100,751 to 99,074, with about 72 percent of precincts reporting. A candidate named Daniel Sullivan, who is not the incumbent, drew more votes than either margin. Alaska counts mail ballots for days and runs a ranked-choice tabulation if no candidate clears a majority of first choices; the race was uncalled at 0400.
Mississippi. The margin between the Democrat, Scott Colom, and the incumbent Republican, Cindy Hyde-Smith, was reported in the night at 28 votes by the CBS count carried on the BBC’s live file, and at 43 votes in the Associated Press count. The desk prints both: the race was uncalled, affidavit ballots remained to be verified, and a Senate seat in Mississippi was separated, at 0400, by a number of votes that would fit in one room.
Michigan, and a disagreement about a call. Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and former county health director, the son of Egyptian immigrants, led the Republican, Mike Rogers, for the open seat of the retiring Gary Peters. At 0156 ET, USA Today’s live file reported projections by Fox News and Decision Desk HQ that El-Sayed would win, which would make him the first Muslim elected to the Senate. The New York Post reported an Associated Press call at 0227 ET. The BBC’s live file, at the same hour, still listed the race as too close to project, with El-Sayed ahead and claiming victory, and CBS rating it likely Democrat. The lead was not in dispute at 0400; the call was.
The President in the Night
The president watched the count at the White House. For the first three hours of returns he posted nothing. His first reaction is timed by the Seoul Economic Daily at about 2230 ET and by Le Monde at just before 2300; the words are the same in both accounts: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” He posted against Fox News, which he said bore responsibility for the losses. At about 2240 he told the New York Times he was “absolutely willing to accept” the results. At about 2340 he posted a photograph of a red cap bearing one word: “VETO.” Later, by telephone with Fox News, he congratulated the Democrats—Reuters records the acceptance and the congratulations in that interview—and said the candidates had not inspired voters to turn out. On the war, he told Fox News that Iran was a part of the result: voters had not been ready for the short-term consequence of paying more for gasoline. He said he would have made the same decision again. The two facts stand side by side in the night file: the president accepted the count, and the president posted the word veto before midnight.
The Markets While Washington Slept
The first market verdict was rendered in Asia, in the American night, and it was a verdict on the AI trade. Reuters’ Singapore file, first published at 0108 GMT and updated through the night, reported global stocks down and the dollar softer as the sweep came in, on concern that the result could disrupt the data-center buildout that has powered the AI trade. S&P 500 futures slid 0.6 percent and Nasdaq futures fell more than 2 percent before cutting the loss to 0.8 percent. The ten-year Treasury yield fell 6 basis points to 4.906 percent. The euro rose 0.5 percent to $1.1249; the dollar index stood 0.37 percent lower at 101.34. In Asia the selling sat in the chip names: Samsung, SK Hynix, and TSMC slid, and SoftBank led the Nikkei 3 percent lower. European futures were down 1.4 percent. A rates strategist in Singapore, quoted in the same file, put the reasoning in one line: tighter regulatory scrutiny of technology and AI companies, and the higher likelihood of political gridlock, beckon with a Democratic sweep. Bonds were the night’s winner. Reuters’ later futures file, timed at 0313 ET, recorded the American futures off their lows: Dow futures up 237 points, S&P 500 futures up 11.25 points, Nasdaq 100 futures up 72.75 points. The order matters: Asia sold the result first, and the American futures steadied before the open. What the cash market did with the day belongs to a later watch.
Tehran Answers in Two Voices
In Tehran, Wednesday was already under way while Washington counted. The parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has led Iran’s negotiating delegation with Washington, posted: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.” He added that if the American government betrayed that public will, it would learn that Iran’s no “comes with a Nightmare.” The supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, answered in the opposite direction: anyone expecting a change in American hostility because of a partisan shift in Washington was “seriously mistaken,” and if the war resumed its scope would become “much wider.” The Times’ account of the two statements is filed below, and AnewZ’s report adds the third bearing: Qatar was pressing its mediation through the night, and a senior Iranian official had said on Tuesday that the two sides remained a considerable distance from a deal. The war began on February 28, with American and Israeli strikes on Iran; it is eight months old; fuel prices ran about 40 percent above the year before on election day, per The Times. The election does not end it. What the night established is narrower: the incoming congressional majority campaigned against the war, the president’s own account of the loss names the war as a part of it, and Tehran’s two senior voices read the same result and drew opposite conclusions.
The World’s Morning Papers
Europe read the returns over breakfast, and the morning papers did not hedge the headline. Le Monde’s editorial is titled “Donald Trump’s rout in the midterms” and argues that in twenty months the president squandered the capital of his reelection—on tariffs that reignited inflation, on a war the paper calls unwinnable, and on the data-center projects voters were voting against the same night. Its news analysis calls the win spectacular and warns that anti-Trump sentiment is not a program: the result is a pendulum swing and a rejection, not a blank check, and the majority’s internal argument begins with the win. Libération called the result une vague bleue, a blue wave; the Daily Mail’s headline used the same words. Rossiyskaya Gazeta read the result as a blow to Ukraine. In Israel, one week after its own election left its government unformed, the headlines worked the question from the other side: what a Democratic Congress means for American support of Israel and for the war in Gaza. NPR’s roundup of the foreign front pages is filed below.
The governments answered in the same hours. Reuters’ roundup collects them. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, posted that Americans had voted “against policies that only serve to impoverish people. Against hatred. Against sexism. Against climate denial and against the privileges of the elites.” Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, told Reuters the result was “a powerful political signal about a change of course among American voters.” South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking as he cast his own ballot in South Africa’s municipal elections, said the results would “introduce a new era in world relations.” The vice president of the European Parliament, Christel Schaldemose, wrote that she was cautiously optimistic the result could mean greater support for Ukraine. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, quoted by RIA, said the Democratic leadership’s approach to relations with Russia is sharply negative and that there is nothing new in that.
The Down-Ballot Night: The Data Centers
Underneath the congressional count, the night produced a second result, counted in zoning language. Forty-one local measures on data-center construction stood on ballots across ten states. By the early hours of Wednesday, 33 measures restricting the facilities had passed, with another six projected to go the same way, per the tracker Data Centers on the Ballot as reported in the night. One municipality, Harwood, North Dakota, voted the other way. The measures that passed were outright bans, temporary moratoriums, limits on energy use, and public-approval requirements. Ohio, which holds 257 data centers by the count in the reporting, put the question on twenty ballots and the restrictive side won or was projected to win in every one. The two new governors whose races were called in the night had campaigned on the same issue in the same words: a moratorium in Texas, a pause in Georgia. An NBC exit poll in the same coverage put 56 percent of voters calling AI and data centers a crucial or major factor in their vote. The industry’s physical plant was on the ballot in ten states, and it lost nearly everywhere it stood.
The Cocked Hat
Three bearings never give a point; they give a small triangle, and this paper prints the triangle. First, Michigan: projected for El-Sayed by two callers at 0156 ET, called by a third at 0227 ET, and still listed as unprojected on the BBC’s live file at the same hour—the lead agreed, the call disputed. Second, Mississippi: 28 votes on one tally, 43 on another, with affidavit ballots still out—the closeness agreed, the number not settled. Third, the smaller instruments disagreed in the ordinary way: the president’s first post is timed 2230 in one account and just before 2300 in another, and the House totals differed by tracker because the trackers were counting at different speeds. On the load-bearing facts—both chambers to the Democrats, seven Senate flips, Texas and Kansas electing Democratic senators for the first time in a generation and in ninety-four years, the president accepting the count—every bearing on the shelf points to the same place. The new Congress convenes on January 3, 2027. Until then the counting continues in Alaska and Mississippi, and the night file closes where the night left it: at 0400, with the result known and its margins still being counted.