Midterm Elections Live Updates: Democrats Clear 250 House Seats in Decisive Power Shift

Democrats' midterm victories may raise the chances that enough states sign onto a mechanism that, in theory, could elect the next president effectively by popular vote instead of through the typical rules of the Electoral College.

The party's surge in Tuesday's elections included gaining a hold on the governor's office and both statehouse chambers in at least four states, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those states could join an agreement called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which promises that participants would give all their electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the national popular vote.

But the agreement, which has been more popular among Democrats, takes effect only once signed by states representing a majority of the Electoral College, or at least 270 electoral votes, the amount needed to win the presidency. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted the compact so far, representing 222 electoral votes.

If all four of the states that just won total Democratic control were to join the agreement, it would tip the group over the 270-vote threshold. Arizona, which is allotted 11 electoral votes, was also projected to have a blue trifecta, though not all of its races had been called by Thursday evening.

Lawmakers in key states said on Thursday that they had already begun having conversations this week about introducing legislation to join the agreement in the next session, and were hopeful that they would succeed ahead of 2028. But broadening the compact could present a mighty political lift.

"The time is right," Carrie Rheingans, a Democrat in the Michigan House of Representatives, said in an interview. "This blue tsunami is really going to help push this forward across the whole nation."

Still, Democratic lawmakers "can be apprehensive" with a new majority, said Mattie Daughtry, the Democratic president of Maine's State Senate. She worked on the compact issue for over a decade before her state joined in 2024.

"The biggest roadblock is convincing them to use these majorities to do big things," Ms. Daughtry said.

In 2019, Nevada's Democratic governor vetoed a bill to join the agreement, saying it could diminish smaller states' influence in presidential elections.

Now, it is unclear whether lawmakers will prioritize passing the compact after running campaigns dominated by other concerns, like easing high costs and imposing guardrails on the Trump administration.

"Time will tell," said Clinton Anderson, a Democratic state assemblyman in Wisconsin, adding that he planned to reintroduce a compact bill. "I want to make it a priority, but it's not the thing I heard on the doors I knocked."

Kelda Roys, another Democratic lawmaker in Wisconsin, said that her initial attempt to get her state to join the compact in 2009 had been met with hesitancy among people who were unsure exactly what it was. Now, she said, there is a broader public understanding of what problems the Electoral College could present.

"National popular vote will be something that we'll prioritize early in the session," Ms. Roys said.

The idea for a compact among states to bypass the Electoral College gained traction among legal scholars and supporters after 2000, when George W. Bush won the presidency while losing the national popular vote. Momentum grew in 2016 after a second Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, won despite losing the popular vote.

Supporters of the compact said they view the Electoral College as a less democratic mechanism than the popular vote. A YouGov poll conducted in June showed that 56 percent of American adults supported choosing the president via popular vote.

The compact is also more practical than amending the Constitution and popular among voters, supporters said.

Opponents and legal experts said the compact would face a slew of court challenges. One obstacle is that compacts traditionally require the approval of Congress and the president, said Derek Muller, an election law expert at Notre Dame Law School who has written about the agreement.

"It's a very real possibility that enough states join this compact," he said. "There will be a lot of challenges."

Analysis From Our Reporters

1. By Caroline Soler, Laura Bult, Christina Shaman, June Kim and Stephanie Swart
2. By Peter Baker, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Nikolay Nikolov, Thomas Vollkommer, Rafaela Balster, James Surdam, Edward Vega and Rachel Buigas-Lopez
3. By Nate Cohn, Laura Bult, Nour Idriss, June Kim and Edward Vega
4. By Shane Goldmacher, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Thomas Vollkommer and James Surdam
5. By Christine Zhang, Sutton Raphael, Brian Oh, Edward Vega and Stephanie Swart
6. By Shane Goldmacher, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Jon Miller, Edward Vega and James Surdam
7. By Christine Zhang, Sutton Raphael, Brian Oh, Stephanie Swart and Edward Vega
8. By Evan Reynolds, Laura Bult, Nour Idriss, June Kim and Edward Vega
9. By Shane Goldmacher, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Thomas Vollkommer, James Surdam and Edward Vega
10. By Christine Zhang, Sutton Raphael, Brian Oh and Stephanie Swart
11. By Evan Reynolds, Laura Bult, Nour Idriss, June Kim and Edward Vega

Nov. 5, 2026, 9:11 p.m. ET

Washington State voters allowed a tax on millionaires to stand, rejecting a ballot initiative that would have repealed a 9.9 percent tax on income over $1 million, according to The Associated Press. The vote isn't the final hurdle, however. A lawsuit is pending that seeks to block the tax before it takes effect in 2028.

Nov. 5, 2026, 8:02 p.m. ET

In a virtual call with her supporters on Thursday night, Angie Nixon, the Democrat who narrowly lost the Senate race in Florida, announced that she was starting a new political group called Never Scared PAC. The group will try to harness the thousands of volunteers that powered Nixon's grass-roots campaign to keep them engaged in the state.

The first issue it will take on is the implementation of a ballot measure known as Amendment 3, which passed on Tuesday. It would dramatically cut property taxes on primary homes and is expected to cost local governments billions of dollars in revenue and lead to sharp reductions in public services or to new local fees or taxes. Nixon said her group would organize to press state legislators and local leaders to limit the measure's impact to their communities.

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Nov. 5, 2026, 7:33 p.m. ET

President Trump decried the news that stocks, after surging on Wednesday, had their worst day in nearly two years on Thursday, which came amid investors' concerns about the prospect of tighter regulation in the A.I. industry after Democratic midterm victories.

In a series of social media posts, Trump sought to deflect blame from his role in the sweep of Republican defeats across the country, where his party faced challenging races — including his hand-picked candidates— because of his unpopularity, his handling of the economy and his decision to start a war in Iran.

"The Stock Market crashed today because the Dumocrats had a big Tuesday — So sad to see, you only have yourselves to blame!" Trump wrote in one post. In another, he reiterated his claim that the outcome would have been different if he had run (even though he pleaded with his base to pretend that he was). "I JUST WASN'T ON THE BALLOT," Trump wrote. "IF I WERE, WE WOULD HAVE WON IN A LANDSLIDE!"

Nov. 5, 2026, 6:54 p.m. ET

Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City, Nithya Raman, the new mayor of Los Angeles, Mayor Katie Wilson of Seattle.The New York Times

Nithya Raman won the mayoral race in Los Angeles on Thursday, joining the ranks of democratic socialists who have been elected to lead major American cities over the past year.

Once she takes office, the mayors in the two most-populous American cities and the nation's capital will be members of the Democratic Socialists of America, a political group of dues-paying members organized around a broad policy platform.

A strong emphasis on expanding public services, such as housing, health care, child care, public transportation and infrastructure, and heavily taxing corporations and wealthy individuals ties together their positions.

Here's what to know:

Democratic socialists have been elected mayor in several cities.

In New York City, Zohran Mamdani's election last year made him perhaps the most prominent mayor who is a member of the D.S.A. As part of his progressive agenda, he has pushed through a "rent freeze" for nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments, fought to tax high-end second homes and expanded a free child care program for 2-year-olds in partnership with Gov. Kathy Hochul.

In Los Angeles, where the mayor's race is nonpartisan, Ms. Raman, a city councilwoman, is a member of the D.S.A. An urban planner by training, she promoted an aggressive expansion of the housing supply, advocated zoning changes and called for prioritizing public transit improvements, among other proposals. She will unseat Karen Bass, a more moderate Democrat who has served as mayor since 2022.

In Seattle, Mayor Katie Wilson, who was elected last year, has described herself as a democratic socialist but is not a D.S.A. member. In office, she has accelerated homeless shelter openings, led the passage of a major transit service expansion and rolled out new investments in preschool programs.

In Washington, D.C., Janeese Lewis George, a district councilwoman who is a member of the D.S.A., was elected mayor on Tuesday. She has called for enacting universal child care, building social housing owned by the city, strengthening tenant protections and lowering rental costs for small businesses. She is set to replace Muriel Bowser, a Democrat who is more moderate and did not seek a fourth term.

In Providence, R.I., David Morales, a state lawmaker and former professional wrestler who is also a D.S.A. member, was elected mayor on Tuesday. He easily defeated his Republican opponent, David Talan, after running a campaign focused on capping rent hikes, building affordable homes in vacant buildings and on empty lots and demanding that corporations contribute more to funding city services and public schools.

President Trump responded.

After Ms. Raman's race was called on Thursday, President Trump was asked about the election of democratic socialists. He predicted that people would be unhappy with their policies and said, "It's going to be a disaster."

"Unfortunately, usually that happens so late that you'll never be able to bring back a city, or a country or a state, when it goes too far," Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Nov. 5, 2026, 6:50 p.m. ET

In Mississippi, the secretary of state, Michael Watson, said roughly 3,300 absentee-by-mail ballots were still outstanding in the Senate race between Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican, and Scott Colom, the Democrat. Those have to be received within five business days of Election Day. He also said that 6,936 affidavit ballots have now been processed and roughly 80 percent have been accepted, though it is unclear how many are outstanding.

Nov. 5, 2026, 6:26 p.m. ET

On Thursday, officials reviewed absentee ballot envelopes in Anchorage as election observers in yellow vests watched. The officials, members of the Absentee Review Board, checked voter information, including addresses that may have changed. Ballots will undergo further review for issues that could affect scanning before being counted.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Nov. 5, 2026, 6:17 p.m. ET

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Cait Conley, an Army veteran and former national security official in the Biden administration, beat Representative Mike Lawler in a suburban New York swing district, according to The Associated Press, flipping a seat that Democrats had identified as a top target on their path to recapture the House majority.

Ms. Conley rode a wave of voter dissatisfaction with the policies of President Trump, whose tariffs and war in Iran have contributed to higher prices on gasoline, groceries and other essentials.

"We started this because we knew that America, the land of promise and opportunity, was on the wrong path — but we knew, if we came together, if we brought people together, that we could fix it," Ms. Conley said late Tuesday at her election night watch party in Pleasantville. "And tonight we show that this fight wasn't a partisan fight. This was a patriotic fight."

The race was not called until Thursday afternoon, partly because of issues with the processing of ballots in Westchester County, which delayed the counting of tens of thousands of votes.

But long before the results were official, Ms. Conley's strong performance in Mr. Lawler's home base in Rockland County led the congressman to concede.

Speaking at a banquet hall in a Hilton hotel in Pearl River on Tuesday night, Mr. Lawler said that he had called Ms. Conley to congratulate her and that "when all the votes are counted tomorrow in Westchester, it will be pretty clear."

The daughter of a postal worker, Ms. Conley grew up just over the border of the district, New York's 17th, which includes the affluent suburbs north of New York City and narrowly favored former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Ms. Conley moved back to run for Congress and talked up her years of military service on the campaign trail, beating two more liberal primary opponents in June.

Still, her work in the private sector after leaving government became the subject of attacks from Mr. Lawler and outside groups supporting him. They bankrolled television advertisements that portrayed Ms. Conley, a former U.S. Army special operations leader, as a corporate puppet beholden to her former employers.

Ms. Conley made $328,000 in nearly two years of private-sector work, according to financial disclosure reports, but declined to divulge the specifics of what she did for Hidden Level, an anti-drone-systems company, and for Primer AI, the firm where she consulted, citing nondisclosure agreements.

The two campaigns and outside groups backing them spent more than $60 million inundating voters with advertising over the course of the campaign, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. About half of that money went to supporting Ms. Conley, with much of it spent on ads attacking Mr. Lawler as a rubber stamp for Mr. Trump. "Mike Lawler votes with Trump 100 percent of the time," a narrator states in one of the Conley campaign ads. (An analysis by Congressional Quarterly found that in 2025, Mr. Lawler voted yes on bills Mr. Trump approved of 94 percent of the time.)

A former state legislator, Mr. Lawler shot to fame when he unexpectedly defeated Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the House Democrats' campaign arm, in 2022. That victory, and his re-election two years later, distinguished Mr. Lawler as a Republican who could win in a resoundingly Democratic state.

The congressman, who flirted with a run for governor last year, went to great lengths to emphasize his independence. He was a lone Republican voice during negotiations over Mr. Trump's signature domestic spending bill, conditioning his support for the legislation on raising the cap on the state and local tax, or SALT, deduction. (Ms. Conley had argued that there should be no cap on the deduction, and criticized the fact that the legislation that lowered taxes also cut funding for Medicaid.)

Mr. Lawler also characterized Ms. Conley as aligned with Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both democratic socialists.

One exchange during the first debate of the campaign summed up the race's fault lines. Mr. Lawler called on Ms. Conley to denounce Mr. Mamdani, whom he claimed was encouraging antisemitism.

"I absolutely call out my party when I believe that it's wrong," she said.

"But you don't denounce Zohran Mamdani," Mr. Lawler replied.

"Have you denounced Donald Trump and the harm that he has caused to our families here in the Hudson Valley?" Ms. Conley said in response.

The voting problems in Westchester County were the product of human error, officials said, but they nonetheless unsettled voters and poll workers on Tuesday. It turned out that the county had updated its ballots and the software for its ballot-reading machines to add an omitted race in Ardsley, N.Y. — but the software change had been made only in Ardsley, meaning the machines in the rest of the county were unable to read the updated ballots.

Ballots across the county were deposited into orange bags and delivered to a county Board of Elections facility in Ardsley, where a count, under the supervision of lawyers, began late Wednesday morning.

At the facility on Wednesday afternoon, a Democratic elections commissioner, Tajian Nelson, declined to give an estimate when reporters asked when the counting would be finished.

"We're not even able to begin with the E.T.A.," she said.

But she added that, by law, the election results must be certified within 25 days. "So based on that, we have to be certified before we have turkey at the end of the month."

Kristi Berner and Wesley Parnell contributed reporting from Westchester County.

Nov. 5, 2026, 6:15 p.m. ET

Colorado voters have approved a ballot measure restricting transgender girls from participating in girls' sports, The Associated Press reported. The measure has been widely viewed as a test for efforts to enact such bans beyond the 27 Republican-led states where they are already in place.

Nov. 5, 2026, 6:12 p.m. ET

In Alaska, where tens of thousands of votes are yet to be tallied, a New York Times analysis suggests that Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate for Senate, is on a path to victory. Her campaign manager just released a statement arguing the same: "The numbers are clear: when every vote is counted, Mary Peltola will be elected as Alaska's next United States Senator." We may not get a race call until next week or later, and the campaign of Senator Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, released a memo on Wednesday arguing that he was the one who was favored to win.

Nov. 5, 2026, 6:00 p.m. ET

Around 1,000 more votes were just reported from eight counties in Mississippi, increasing the lead of Scott Colom, the Democratic candidate for Senate, to just over 1,800 votes. Colom's lead over Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican, has generally grown throughout the day, but it's not clear how many votes remain to be counted, the breakdown of absentee and provisional ballots, or which parts of the state they'll come from.

Nov. 5, 2026, 5:26 p.m. ET

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday dismissed reports that he was planning to leave the Trump administration and declined to answer questions about his political future.

Working for President Trump until the end of his term has "always been my plan," he said in an interview with The New York Times.

Responding to the news reports that he was mulling an exit, Mr. Rubio said, "I don't know where these things come from, to be honest with you."

"I love the work I'm doing," he continued. "And plus I always laugh when they say he's going to leave his job. I go, 'Which one?'"

Mr. Rubio, who is also Mr. Trump's national security adviser, declined to answer questions about whether he was considering running for president in 2028.

"I literally will not talk about 2028 anymore," he said in the interview, in his White House office. "I just won't do it."

Mr. Rubio has said that he would support Vice President JD Vance if he ran for president.

"JD is a very good friend of mine," he told NBC News in May. "If JD runs for president, I think he'd be a phenomenal candidate. I've said publicly, and I'll say it again, I'll be the first person to sign up and support him."

Mr. Vance offered a striking critique in his post-election analysis on Wednesday in a lengthy post on social media, commentary that distanced himself from Mr. Trump. The vice president blamed the war with Iran for Republicans' disastrous election results and said Republicans had turned against the administration's policy on Israel and its messaging on the economy. The president has closely aligned himself with Israel and dismissed affordability concerns as a "hoax."

Mr. Rubio initially deflected when asked whether he agreed with Mr. Vance's assessment, saying he was not "really involved in domestic politics."

But Mr. Trump brought Mr. Rubio onstage at his political rally on Sunday in Kansas and lavished praise on him, joking that he might have to fire him because he had become "too popular." Mr. Rubio spoke briefly, praising Mr. Trump for keeping Americans safe.

Mr. Rubio explained why he was there, as the designated national security official traveling with the president, and then acknowledged that Mr. Trump had said the war was a factor in the elections.

"Higher prices at the gas pump, I acknowledge, is not like the kind of thing you campaign on and brag about," he said.

But Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump "deserves a tremendous amount of credit" for taking action that he thought was necessary even if it was not popular among voters.

"Ultimately, that is the price of leadership — is the willingness to do things that may not be politically popular or expedient but are necessary for your country and its long-term future," he said.

Nov. 5, 2026, 5:18 p.m. ET

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In the lower 48 states, Democrats are exulting about election wins and Republicans are licking their wounds. But in the Last Frontier, they're still counting the votes.

Alaska's Senate race remained uncalled on Thursday, a product of a tight margin between the two leading candidates and the state's 15-day grace period after Election Day to receive and count absentee ballots. Many of those ballots are arriving by mail from far-flung parts of the state. With 78 percent of the vote tallied, former Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat, led Senator Dan S. Sullivan, a Republican, by just over 600 votes.

President Trump on Thursday injected new drama into the race's final phase, which could stretch into next week or beyond if no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote. In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, the president took aim at the second Dan Sullivan on the ballot — a retired teacher from an Alaska fishing village whom The New York Times reported last month had been recruited into the race by allies of Ms. Peltola.

Votes for Dan J. Sullivan, as well as for Gerald Heikes, the fourth candidate on Alaska's ballot, "should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan, and the Election is over — He easily wins," Mr. Trump wrote. "There is no other fair solution!"

Mr. Trump's call to interfere with the results of Alaska's election stood in contrast to his relatively muted response to Democratic dominance in other elections this week. He told The Times that he was willing to accept the midterm results and was even looking forward to working with a Democratic-controlled Congress.

But in Alaska, Republicans have been furious for months over the presence of a second Mr. Sullivan on the ballot, an oddity that Democrats have repeatedly denied any involvement in. At Mr. Trump's behest, the Justice Department sued unsuccessfully ahead of the election, arguing that the result should not be certified if the Republican senator lost and votes for the other Mr. Sullivan would have been enough to boost him over Ms. Peltola. The administration has filed an appeal in that case.

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In Alaska's ranked-choice voting system, candidates are ranked by voters and then eliminated in successive rounds until a winner surpasses 50 percent, with the votes for eliminated candidates reapportioned to voters' subsequent choices. That means Republicans who mistakenly voted for the other Mr. Sullivan would still see their votes go to the incumbent once the other Mr. Sullivan was eliminated, as long as they ranked both candidates in some order.

But Republicans feared a scenario in which their voters ranked just a single candidate — the other Mr. Sullivan — and left the rest of their ballot blank, eliminating those votes once the challenger Mr. Sullivan was knocked out of contention. Data show that fewer Republicans than Democrats tend to choose second choices in ranked-choice voting.

A New York Times analysis of the available ranked-choice data from ballots tallied so far suggests that Ms. Peltola is on track to win. The remaining votes, about 60,000, are expected to favor Democrats. And the ranked-choice data suggests that the senator is unlikely to earn enough support from voters who ranked the other Mr. Sullivan or Mr. Heikes ahead of him.

In fact, voters who picked the other Mr. Sullivan as their first choice tended to select Ms. Peltola as their second choice rather than the senator, potentially undercutting the Republican argument that the other Mr. Sullivan's backers were mostly G.O.P. voters who were confused. Still, 36 percent of voters for the other Mr. Sullivan left the rest of their ballot blank, which could include some potential Republican voters for the senator.

The Republican incumbent's campaign expressed confidence in a memo analyzing the results on Wednesday, arguing that the senator was on track for a slim victory "despite the biggest election cheating scandal in the history of Alaska."

Nov. 5, 2026, 5:07 p.m. ET

In North Carolina and Texas, the Democratic Senate candidates received more early votes than their Republican opponents received in total. In North Carolina, Roy Cooper won 1.8 million votes cast before Election Day, which was more than Michael Whatley's 1.6 million across all voting methods. In Texas, James Talarico won more than 4.4 million early votes, nearly 150,000 more than Ken Paxton's roughly 4.2 million votes across all methods. Democrats had been expected to do well among early voters, but Talarico even eked out a narrow victory among votes cast on Election Day.

Nov. 5, 2026, 4:58 p.m. ET

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In the same election that brought strong showings for Democratic candidates around the country, voters in four states chose to bar transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams.

The results, including in two states where Democrats are dominant, suggested that many voters do not view accommodations for trans athletes as part of a broad Democratic agenda. The results also appeared likely to inspire similar campaigns in future elections on an issue that has rarely been tested at the ballot box.

Since 2020, lawmakers in Republican-led states across the country have enacted laws limiting how transgender people can participate in public life. But this election was the first time voters were asked to consider new restrictions through statewide ballot measures and they approved nearly all of them. The margins were large in Arizona and Nebraska, and narrower in Colorado and Washington, where Democrats dominate.

Sponsors of the initiatives said they hoped the sports issue would be put directly to voters in other Democrat-led states. The results could also mean that decisions around broader rights for transgender people will increasingly be put before voters, political strategists said.

"To every female athlete who wondered whether her voice mattered: tonight, Washington heard you,'' Brian Heywood, the Seattle-area hedge fund founder who financed the Washington initiative, said in a statement.

For supporters of the restrictions, the results felt like vindication.

Polls have shown that a solid majority of Americans, including roughly half of Democrats, think that transgender girls and women should not play on girls' and women's sports teams. Many believe that trans athletes hold a physical edge, and that their participation prevents others from having a fair chance to win, the polls indicate.

Over the past six years, 27 states enacted laws restricting the participation of transgender students in sports starting in kindergarten or middle school, extending in many cases to college. The Supreme Court upheld such bans last June.

But in nearly two dozen Democrat-led states, including Colorado and Washington, legislatures have taken no such action. That is why Erin Lee, executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, a parent advocacy group sponsoring the initiative, wanted to put the question on the ballot.

"My hope is that we can be the example of a blue state where your legislature is not following the will of the people," she said. "Where we, the people, can do it ourselves, and hopefully encourage others to follow suit."

Opponents of the restrictions said they viewed the election results as a major setback. Advocates for transgender rights have argued that it is important to defend trans athlete participation for reasons that extend beyond sports.

They say that treating trans girls as boys in the context of sports could set a precedent that might be applied to other areas, including access to bathrooms, identity documents and transgender health care. They also say the number of trans athletes is small, and that conservative groups have used the ballot measures as a wedge to either boost voter turnout or distract voters from more pressing economic issues.

"We know this is not over — Colorado is a testing ground," said Nadine Bridges, co-chair of Families Not Politics, a coalition that opposed the initiative in Colorado. "What I will say is, no matter what, we will keep fighting for a Colorado where transgender kids can grow up feeling valued."

In Washington, opponents of the initiative said its approval threatened to scapegoat a vulnerable population. A spokesman for No Hate in WA State said the new law was likely to be challenged in court.

"To all the trans kids, to all of the girls playing elementary, middle and high school sports, we care about you and there are people who will never stop fighting for you," said Adrianna Suluai, one of the group's leaders.

In the final weeks of the midterm election cycle, Republican campaigns and their supporters emphasized transgender issues to portray Democrats as radical and out of step. At the same time, several Democrats in close races distanced themselves from the party's traditional support of transgender issues as a civil rights battle.

Several Democratic Senate candidates who won upsets on Tuesday in traditionally conservative states, including Annie Andrews in South Carolina, James Talarico in Texas and Josh Turek in Iowa, voiced opposition to transgender female athletes participating in girls' and women's sports.

Still, transgender advocates on Wednesday said the election results showed that anti-transgender messaging by Republicans had been ineffective and that the sports measures were focused on one of the thorniest issues in the national debate over the recognition of transgender identities.

"I think this shows that voters do want to see rules, they want to see guidelines in sports," said Ari Drennan, a trans woman and founder of Pink and Blue Strategies, an L.G.B.T.Q. consulting firm. "But some of the margins on these are quite close."

There is no authoritative count of trans athletes in school sports. About 2.8 million people age 13 and older in the United States identify as transgender, according to an analysis of government data by the Williams Institute at U.C.L.A. That amounts to about 1 percent of the population in that age group.

Large majorities of Americans oppose discrimination against transgender people in areas like housing and employment, polls show. But many also believe that self-identified gender should not replace birth sex as an organizing principle for society when it comes to sports, locker rooms and identity documents, and that health professionals should be barred from prescribing gender-transition medication to adolescents.

The ballot measures come after years of intense political, legal and scientific debate over whether it is fair for trans girls to compete in girls' sports. Some student athletes in states that allow transgender athlete participation have staged protests, including recently in Washington State, where a group of high school girls walked off the field of a cross-country match.

The Washington initiative drew scrutiny because of its verification process, which supporters said was necessary because the state allows transgender people to change the gender marker on their birth certificate. The measure mandates that students in grades 6-12 seeking to compete in the girls' category submit documentation from their health care provider verifying the student's sex. That would happen in at least one of three ways: physical examination of reproductive anatomy, testing of genetic makeup or analysis of naturally produced testosterone levels.

Colorado's ballot measure bars transgender girls from participating in sports from kindergarten through college, but leaves verification to local authorities. The measure in Arizona extends an existing ban to include private schools, and requires students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their birth-sex at sporting events. The one in Nebraska adds an existing ban to the State Constitution.

In Missouri, voters rejected an amendment that would have written into the State Constitution a ban on gender-transition treatments and surgeries for people under the age of 18. That language was part of a measure that would have restored an abortion ban in the state.

In 2018, Massachusetts voters decided against repealing a state law prohibiting gender identity discrimination in public accommodations. But the measures this week were the first time American voters were asked to weigh in on whether to set new restrictions on transgender people. At least one group, Protect Girls Sports in Maine, has said it hopes to place a referendum on transgender student athletes on the 2027 ballot, after failing to qualify this year.

"Historically, sports bans have been a foot in the door," said Logan Casey, a political scientist who tracks state-level legislation for the Movement Advancement Project, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group. "Once a state passes one anti-trans law, it always goes on to pass more, and often that first one has been a sports ban."

Juliet Macur contributed reporting.

Nov. 5, 2026, 4:49 p.m. ET

President Trump summoned reporters into the Oval Office on Thursday for a question-and-answer session, but no major TV network is carrying his remarks live. That's because the White House had blocked CNN from serving as today's TV pool network, as part of a standoff between the channel and the administration. The other major networks that participate in the pool declined to send a substitute, so the president is not receiving the blanket coverage he might otherwise expect.

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Nov. 5, 2026, 4:33 p.m. ET

Tyler Pager and Anatoly Kurmanaev

Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed reports that he was planning to leave the Trump administration and declined to answer questions about 2028 and his political future in an interview. He said staying with the administration, where he is also the national security adviser, until the end had "always been my plan."

Nov. 5, 2026, 4:31 p.m. ET

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Senator Dan S. Sullivan is unlikely to make significant gains if the Alaska Senate race advances to ranked-choice tabulation, according to a New York Times analysis of the available ranked-choice data in the state. This holds true despite the fact that the reallocated ballots will come from voters who backed two candidates who ran as Republicans — including one also named Dan Sullivan.

The findings suggest that Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee, is on track to eventually prevail in the Alaska Senate race. Ms. Peltola currently leads by less than one percentage point, but she is expected to build a more substantial lead once about 60,000 more votes, mostly cast by mail, are counted in the days ahead.

If Ms. Peltola doesn't win the 50 percent needed to win outright and the race advances to ranked-choice tabulation on Nov. 18, the analysis suggests that Mr. Sullivan might not even claw back half of a point in ranked-choice tabulation, which would not be enough to overcome Ms. Peltola's expected advantage.

In a surprising twist, one reason Mr. Sullivan doesn't fare better is that more of the voters who backed the other Dan Sullivan — a candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., who was recruited by allies of Ms. Peltola to siphon votes from the incumbent — ranked Ms. Peltola as their second choice rather than Mr. Sullivan.

The analysis is based on the state's initial release of ballots from more than 200,000 voters, or nearly all the votes tabulated thus far. The data shows how every voter ranked the candidates in the Senate race, including whether they left their subsequent choices blank.

Mary Peltola-first ballots

Sen. Sullivan-first ballots

Gerald L. Heikes-first ballots

Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.-first ballots

About 4 percent of ballots counted so far ranked Gerald L. Heikes, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. or a write-in candidate first. According to the Times analysis, Dan S. Sullivan would gain only four-tenths of a percentage point in vote margin from ranked-choice tabulation among these ballots.

The role of Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. as a potential spoiler has loomed over the Alaska Senate race for most of the year, but it vaulted to the forefront after a New York Times investigation last week found that allies of Peltola had recruited him into the race. President Trump wrote on Truth Social that the ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. "should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan" and ordered the Justice Department to start an investigation into Ms. Peltola's campaign. (That would amount to fewer than 4,000 ballots as of Thursday.)

Two-thirds of Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.'s supporters ranked a second choice, with most of those voters supporting Ms. Peltola in subsequent rounds — an indication that they were not intending to vote for Dan S. Sullivan, as voters who chose the incumbent senator first rarely ranked Ms. Peltola second.

Even if all the voters who voted for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and did not rank a second choice at all had actually intended to vote for the incumbent, he would only gain about one percentage point in vote margin — an increase that would not offset Ms. Peltola's expected gains from uncounted mail vote.

Mary Peltola

Gerald L. Heikes

Sen. Dan S. Sullivan

With Mr. Heikes, a similar share of his first-choice voters chose to leave the rest of their ballot blank. On the ballots that did have a second choice, however, Dan S. Sullivan was by far the most common choice, which accounts for the small overall gain that the incumbent would be likely to receive if things advanced to ranked-choice tabulation.

Sen. Dan S. Sullivan

Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.

Mary Peltola

The state has published the full ranked-choice selections only for ballots that could be scanned electronically. About 10,000 hand-counted ballots, which come primarily from rural areas where Ms. Peltola has performed well, are therefore not included in the analysis.

Nov. 5, 2026, 4:20 p.m. ET

Senator Chuck Grassley's chief of staff, Jen Davis, posted on social media that Grassley, Iowa's Republican senior senator, is not resigning. The statement comes after speculation that Grassley, who is 93, could resign to allow Gov. Kim Reynolds to appoint a Republican like Ashley Hinson in his place, preventing the Democratic governor-elect, Rob Sand, from replacing Grassley with a Democrat if he were to die in office.

Grassley "remains committed to delivering for the people of Iowa, who overwhelmingly elected him to a six-year term in 2022," Davis said.

Grassley had said at a fundraiser in September that he was worried about the prospect of Republicans losing the governorship.

"I don't plan on dying in office," he said, as The Washington Post reported. "But if I did, I don't want a Democrat governor choosing my successor."

Nov. 5, 2026, 3:54 p.m. ET

Elon Musk, who spent over $200 million to try and defeat James Talarico in the Texas Senate race, appears to have extended a little olive branch to the senator-elect. After a social media post showed Talarico complimenting Musk's business acumen in an interview (Talarico said he was "a big fan" of SpaceX and Tesla, and called Musk "a great business leader and entrepreneur and innovator"), Musk posted: "Nice of him to say that." A thaw, maybe?

Nov. 5, 2026, 3:36 p.m. ET

At her first post-election news conference as governor-elect of Texas, Gina Hinojosa said that she would put together "a bipartisan transition" and "a bipartisan administration." Speaking at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, she said that Greg Abbott, the outgoing governor, had been "gracious" and committed to a good transition.

She also announced that Ernest Bailes, a Republican in the Texas House, would be part of her administration. She described him as committed to public education. Speaking briefly, Bailes said they would put partisanship aside. "I believe in Gina, and I believe we will be able to do good things for the state of Texas," he said.

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Nov. 5, 2026, 3:25 p.m. ET

"We are enthusiastic about these outstanding ballots because a number of these, a significant number of these, we believe, are in and remain in Republican-leaning districts, precincts and counties throughout the state," said Mike Hurst, the chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party. Scott Colom, the Democratic candidate for Senate, has a narrow lead.

Nov. 5, 2026, 3:24 p.m. ET

Mike Hurst, the chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, is speaking at a news conference in Jackson, Miss., as the Senate race remains uncalled and ballots continue to be counted. "This election is far from being over," he said, adding that the party has been coordinating closely with Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith's campaign and other national Republican outlets.

Hurst estimates 20,000 outstanding ballots are left to be counted in Mississippi, including mail-in ballots and affidavit ballots cast by voters listed as inactive or who forgot to bring a photo ID. State officials have estimated about 3,600 absentee-by-mail ballots and an unknown number of affidavit ballots.

Nov. 5, 2026, 3:23 p.m. ET

There's a full house for Gina Hinojosa's first post-election news conference in Austin, Texas. Hinojosa, who defeated Gov. Greg Abbott and will become the first Latina governor in Texas, is expected to talk about her next steps as Democrats celebrate their first statewide election wins in more than 30 years. Members of the news media and students are packed into the lobby at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Texas tunes like "Waltz Across Texas" being piped in through speakers are barely audible over the din.

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Nov. 5, 2026, 2:52 p.m. ET

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Nithya Raman, a 45-year-old democratic socialist who tapped into a widespread frustration with the quality of life in the nation's second-largest city, will become the new mayor of Los Angeles, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

Her victory over Karen Bass, the 73-year-old incumbent, is a sweeping success for a new generation of progressive leaders and the arrival of younger Angelenos as a political force in the sprawling metropolis.

A Harvard-educated policy expert who served six years on the City Council, Ms. Raman turned the page on a liberal bastion whose leaders had been consumed with big-picture battles with the Trump administration. Instead, she zoomed in on the nuts-and-bolts distress of young voters who increasingly found themselves priced out of the famously expensive city. Polls consistently showed her ahead by a wide margin with voters under 35.

The vote also revealed a broad appetite for change among the four million residents of the city — an echo of calls for a fresh perspective that on Tuesday night propelled a Democratic wave from Maine to California. In Los Angeles, which is already deep blue, it also suggested a widespread openness to the Democratic Socialists of America, the leftist movement that helped elect New York's mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

By Thursday, Ms. Raman was leading with 52 percent of the vote and D.S.A.-backed candidates had won races for city attorney and Congress. Members of the movement already hold three seats on the 15-member City Council. Ms. Bass called Ms. Raman, her one-time ally, to concede on Thursday morning as the ongoing vote count showed a widening lead for Ms. Raman.

"I have committed to ensuring a smooth and seamless transition," the mayor said in a statement. "Moving this city forward is what Los Angeles needs from all of us."

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On Thursday evening, Ms. Raman, who until recently was little known outside of progressive political circles, spoke to reporters at a farmers market in the Fairfax District, surrounded by throngs of news cameras, supporters and onlooking shoppers. She wore a blood-orange leather jacket and seemed to pause in front of the microphones, as if taking in her first moments before the public as mayor-elect.

"The key priorities that we've heard across this entire city are homelessness, housing costs and public safety," Ms. Raman said, adding, "These will have to be the priorities that I take on in the city."

She sought to reassure those who voted for her opponent or opted to not participate in the election. "I think that's a sign of the deep distrust and cynicism that has taken hold here in the city of Los Angeles," she said. "My goal is to earn your trust."

Ms. Raman, an immigrant from India with a screenwriter husband and two children, said her story of becoming mayor was emblematic of the opportunity the city represented to the rest of the world. "This city has opened its arms to people to come and build their dreams here," she said. "And the idea that Angelenos voted for an immigrant to be their next mayor, at this moment in American history, is so deeply moving to me."

Preliminary election results showed that Ms. Raman had amassed support on the city's gentrifying Eastside and in neighborhoods dense with young people, newcomers and renters. Ms. Bass drew from homeowners on the city's Westside and in the San Fernando Valley and historically Black neighborhoods in South Los Angeles.

In one largely Latino neighborhood — Boyle Heights — where a cold storage warehouse fire burned for days in June, filling the air with the stench of rotten meat and seafood, voters who had backed Ms. Bass during the primary election flipped and supported Ms. Raman by large margins in the general election vote.

In interviews this week, voters said they welcomed Ms. Raman's return to basics. Anthony Nabea, 36, said that he liked her focus on city services and potholes. Marisol Medina, 52, disapproved of the money Ms. Bass had spent on the police, whose union was among her primary supporters.

Zanisha Butler, 33, said she was simply ready for a new face in the mayor's office. "I feel like Karen Bass has run her course to be honest," Ms. Butler said.

Others expressed concern over the loss by Ms. Bass, whom they viewed as a steady hand compared to the relatively untested Ms. Raman. Daquan Houston, 42, a truck driver in the South Los Angeles of Vermont Square, said the mayor deserved a chance to finish the work she had started.

"If you get someone new," he said, "then they're going to be starting from scratch."

Overall, however, Zev Yaroslavsky, the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a longtime civic leader, said Ms. Raman's victory was "a reflection of an electorate that feels the city is on the wrong track."

An annual survey conducted early this year by the Luskin School of Public Affairs at U.C.L.A., found that residents across the county were less satisfied with their quality of life than at any point in more than a decade.

Few members of the civic establishment publicly backed Ms. Raman. But those who did cited pragmatic motives.

George Kieffer, a former chair of the University of California board of regents and a principal coauthor of the Los Angeles City Charter, said that at 78, he had decided that only a major political shake-up would wake the city bureaucracy out of its lethargy.

"My party's establishment is caught in its own bubble," he said. "Nithya sees it. When she jumped, I did."

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A physician assistant and native Angeleno who organized in South Los Angeles against the crack epidemic in the 1980s, Ms. Bass rose politically as a progressive outside the city's establishment circles. When she was elected mayor in 2022 , as the city strained to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, she defeated Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer and civic leader who spent $100 million of his own money on the campaign.

But her fortunes turned in January 2025. Traveling to Africa at the behest of the Biden administration, she was out of the country when devastating wildfires erupted.

The disaster all but leveled the star-studded Los Angeles enclave of Pacific Palisades, and many survivors never forgave her for being absent during a time of crisis. Her campaign for re-election was an uphill battle from then on.

Six months after the fire, a violent crackdown on immigrants in Los Angeles by the Trump administration set off protests that the White House then seized upon to deploy some 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines into Southern California. Throughout the occupation, which lasted until the end of the year, the Republican president and his allies clashed with Ms. Bass.

The partisan tension shored up her support, but not enough to fend off a serious challenge. After Austin Beutner, a civic leader from Pacific Palisades, entered the race and then withdrew in the wake of a family tragedy, Ms. Raman jumped in.

Ms. Raman, a specialist in urban planning who had been elected to the City Council in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement, channeled both Mr. Mamdani and San Francisco's more centrist mayor, Daniel Lurie. Los Angeles was "broken," she charged, and Mayor Bass had fallen short on ensuring a basic quality of life.

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Although Ms. Raman at times stumbled on camera, and had to scramble to clarify her missteps, her campaign also shrewdly deployed social media videos designed to reach younger voters. Following in the footsteps of Mr. Mamdani, she gamely appeared in spoofs of microdramas made by real Hollywood production crews and election-themed skits with D.S.A.-aligned actors and influencers. In one video, she talked about creating more shade in the urban sprawl of Los Angeles, while pretending to be burned by hot surfaces — a car door, a picnic bench.

She also distanced herself in some ways from the D.S.A., supporting changes to a local "mansion tax," for instance, that would have benefited one of the D.S.A.'s usual targets: apartment owners. But she pledged to replace the police chief, whose aggressive crowd-control tactics during immigration protests were denounced by the D.S.A. The group also accused the Police Department of protecting federal agents.

Ms. Bass seized on Ms. Raman's promise, calling it reckless with the Olympics coming to Los Angeles in 2028, and charged that her challenger was "untested" and "not ready for prime time." Ms. Bass's 2022 opponent, Mr. Caruso, came to her aid, urging voters to reject Ms. Raman and the D.S.A. Every member of the City Council expressed support of Ms. Bass, except for Ms. Raman.

None of it was enough. After a hedge fund manager and advocate for increased bicycle use in the car-crazy city, backed Ms. Raman, becoming the race's largest donor, Ms. Raman began airing ads on Dodger games and national news shows.

As her victory became clear, lobbyists, unions, downtown businesses, nonprofits and other entrenched civic interests were already preparing for a realignment. The pressure will be on the mayor-elect, according to Mr. Yaroslavsky at U.C.L.A.

Ms. Raman, he said, "now must face the challenge of erecting a new administration and beginning to fulfill her promise to fix the city she will lead in six short weeks."

Vik Jolly contributed reporting.

Nov. 5, 2026, 2:45 p.m. ET

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JoAnna Mendoza, a Democrat and retired Marine, ousted Representative Juan Ciscomani, a two-term Republican, in a competitive southeastern Arizona district, according to The Associated Press on Thursday, handing her party a crucial seat to expand its House majority.

Mr. Ciscomani, elected to Congress in 2022, had been one of House Republicans' top recruits. He highlighted a personal narrative grounded in a belief in the American dream, recalling how he and his father, who immigrated from Mexico, used to wash expensive cars to help make ends meet.

But Mr. Ciscomani was ultimately unable to overcome a brutal national landscape of voter discontent with rising prices driven by President Trump's policies, including the war with Iran and tariffs. And Ms. Mendoza hammered him relentlessly for his vote for Republicans' marquee tax and spending cut legislation that included slashing Medicaid and a nutrition assistance program for low-income people.

In the closing days of the campaign, Mr. Ciscomani had insisted in a direct-to-camera advertisement that he was "not a rubber stamp for anyone." But he had done little to distance himself from Mr. Trump, repeatedly voting against efforts to end the war in Iran or cancel tariffs against Canada and Mexico, and supporting the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill.

Republicans had hoped that voters would reward them for enacting that measure, which limited taxes on tips and overtime. But with costs soaring, even those benefits had appeared to fall flat with some voters who said they still had trouble making ends meet.

Mr. Ciscomani's pitch that Ms. Mendoza would raise taxes, citing her work as the executive director of a group advocating a more progressive tax policy in Arizona, failed to win over voters amid broader concerns about the price of gasoline and food.

Ms. Mendoza, in turn, weaponized Mr. Ciscomani's voting record against him. She also leaned heavily into her own unique biography: Ms. Mendoza is a single mother who grew up in rural poverty and relied on food stamps, served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, survived two sexual assaults and struggled with substance abuse.

"We can start lowering costs by actually reversing all of the tax cuts to billionaires that my opponent voted for," Ms. Mendoza said during a debate in September. "We reinstate programs like SNAP, programs that I used as a young child growing up."

Democrats had targeted Mr. Ciscomani's seat ever since he won it in 2022, flipping a seat that had been vacated by a Democrat. He won re-election in 2024 in a rematch by just three points.

Nov. 5, 2026, 2:44 p.m. ET

Republicans have successfully flipped the Ninth Congressional District in Tennessee, where Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat, stepped down after conservatives carved up the city of Memphis. State Senator Brent Taylor, a Republican, narrowly held off a Democratic challenger. But it is not clear if Republicans will win all nine of the state's congressional seats, which was the goal of the redistricting.

Nov. 5, 2026, 2:40 p.m. ET

Jessica Killin, an Army veteran and former senior staffer in the Biden administration, defeated Representative Jeff Crank in Colorado's Fifth Congressional District, a longtime Republican stronghold around Colorado Springs, according to The Associated Press.

She will be the first Democrat to represent the district since its creation in 1973, illustrating the steady leftward movement of the state. Crank, a first-term lawmaker and longtime Republican operative in Colorado, came under criticism from Killin for his support of the Iran war and Trump administration policies that have driven up costs.