The 2026 United States midterm elections unfolded as a landmark, history-defying outcome for the Democratic Party, whose performance far outstripped even the most optimistic internal campaign forecasts, according to verified projections from CBS News, the BBC’s longstanding U.S. election partner. By 03:00 GMT on Wednesday (22:00 EST Tuesday), CBS official election analysts confirmed the Democrats had secured a majority in the U.S. Senate, with a formal projection that the party would also flip control of the House of Representatives, granting the party full sway over both chambers of Congress for the next two years. The Senate results defied every pre-election conventional wisdom: while North Carolina had been widely flagged as a plausible Democratic pickup, victories in long-time Republican strongholds shattered decades of voting precedent. Kansas, a state that had not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932, swung blue, alongside deep-red Texas, Iowa and Ohio. South Carolina delivered the single biggest shock of the night: the state, which had not seated a Democratic senator since 1998 and was categorized as leaning Republican in nearly all pre-election polling, fell to Democratic challengers. As of early Wednesday, two remaining toss-up seats in Alaska and Maine remained uncalled, and even the deeply conservative state of Mississippi was locked in a razor-thin margin too close to declare, per CBS election data. The Democratic wave also erased carefully laid Republican redistricting plans in Florida, where state GOP legislators had redrawn three House districts to shift voter majorities from 2024 Kamala Harris supporters to clear pro-Donald Trump electorates. Despite the partisan gerrymandering, Democrats retained both Florida’s 14th and 25th congressional seats, and flipped the newly redrawn 22nd district that had been explicitly engineered to deliver a safe Republican win. Exit polling data of Florida voters identified Hispanic electoral support as a critical pillar of the Democratic upset, with 55% of the state’s Hispanic electorate backing Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon over her Republican rival Angie Moody, who secured just 44% of the demographic. The mark represents a dramatic reversal from 2024 election estimates that showed Donald Trump carrying 55% of Florida’s Hispanic voters. National exit polling data further revealed that economic conditions ranked as the top priority for U.S. midterm voters across all demographics, followed closely by concerns over the health of American democratic institutions. More than two-thirds of surveyed voters stated that former President Donald Trump’s past policy frameworks had actively worsened national economic conditions, a public sentiment that appears to have driven widespread rejection of Republican congressional candidates on election night. The historic results leave Democrats positioned not just to secure the bare minimum of congressional control, but to potentially expand their majority margins beyond initial projections as remaining mail-in and provisional ballots are counted in the coming days.