US midterms: Democrats flip North Carolina Senate seat, hold Georgia and New Hampshire as counting goes on

Democrats picked up an early Senate seat in the US midterm elections on Tuesday. Former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper beat Republican Michael Whatley in the race for the seat left open by retiring Republican Thom Tillis, according to projections by the Associated Press and CBS News. Votes were still being counted across the country, and as of early Wednesday India time no major outlet had projected which party would control either chamber of Congress.

The North Carolina result was the first seat to change hands on the night. The state had not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, and Donald Trump won it by about three points in 2024. Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman who had never run for office before, had Trump's backing. Cooper campaigned mostly on living costs.

Early calls in the Senate

Democrats also held two seats they were defending. Senator Jon Ossoff won a second term in Georgia, beating Republican congressman Mike Collins, in a race called by AP and other networks. In New Hampshire, Representative Chris Pappas defeated former senator John Sununu for the seat being vacated by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, US networks projected. Senator Mark Warner was re-elected in Virginia.

Republicans kept Florida, where Senator Ashley Moody, appointed last year to fill Marco Rubio's old seat, beat Democrat Angie Nixon in a special election, according to CBS News projections. Before the vote Republicans held 53 Senate seats to the Democrats' 47, including two independents who vote with the Democrats. That means Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control, since Vice President JD Vance would break a 50-50 tie.

Several of the closest races, including Ohio, Texas, Maine, Michigan, Iowa and Alaska, had not been called by about 07:15 IST, when this report was filed.

Governors and the House

In the governors' races, AP projected that Republican congressman Byron Donalds will succeed Ron DeSantis in Florida, making him the state's first Black governor.

Results for the House, where all 435 seats were on the ballot, were coming in more slowly. Republicans went into the election holding 218 seats to the Democrats' 214, so Democrats need a net gain of only a few seats to win a majority. Most Western states were still voting when the first results came in, and full counts in some close districts could take days.

The vote has been widely treated as a test of Trump's second term. Pre-election coverage pointed to the unpopular war with Iran and high fuel prices as weak spots for Republicans. Trump said before the results that the sitting president's party usually loses midterms, but that Republicans had given it a 'very strong shot'.

For India, control of Congress will shape how far Washington's trade, tariff and immigration policies can change over the next two years, as well as its approach to the Iran war, which has pushed up crude prices.