Democrats take US Congress as Vance blames Iran war for losses

Democrats won control of both chambers of the US Congress in Tuesday's midterm elections, The Associated Press projected, and Vice President JD Vance blamed the party's heavy losses on the war with Iran while President Donald Trump said he would have done "nothing different".

The AP called the Senate for the Democrats after Republican-held seats in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Kansas and Iowa fell, according to the calls Nikkei Asia reported through the night. That cleared the 51-seat threshold in the 100-seat chamber. The AP called the House once Democrats passed 218 seats, a call it did not make until eight days after election day in 2022 and 2024.

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton, the attorney general backed by Trump and Elon Musk, giving the party its first statewide win there since 1994, the AP said. Sherrod Brown took Ohio's Senate seat from John Husted in a state Trump carried three times. Roy Cooper won North Carolina's open seat, pediatrician Annie Andrews won in South Carolina and Troy Jackson unseated Susan Collins in Maine. In Michigan, Abdul el-Sayed, who beat Mike Rogers, became the first Muslim elected to the Senate, according to the AP and other outlets. Jon Ossoff held his Georgia seat against Mike Collins, and Mark Warner won a fourth term in Virginia.

"The reason we lost is the war," Vance wrote in a long post on X. "Everyone knows why we lost." He said Republican data showed turnout was not the main problem, and cited party polling in which former Trump voters who abandoned the party wanted the war ended and the cost of living addressed.

Trump told reporters the conflict was necessary to stop Tehran obtaining a nuclear weapon. "As far as that war is concerned, I would have done nothing different," he said, adding that he was "OK" with Vance's post. In a Fox News interview he said the Democrats "did a good job" and "fought hard", and that "I don't view it as a hit on me". On Truth Social he posted an image of a red hat reading "VETO" and said Republicans would have won "IN A LANDSLIDE" had he been on the ballot.

US stocks opened sharply higher on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 2% at the open, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite each gained more than 1%, though Nikkei Asia reported lingering concern that Democratic control of Congress could bring tighter regulation of artificial intelligence and data centres.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called the results an internal US affair and said Beijing was willing to strengthen communication with Washington. Nomura economists expected "more aggressive trade-related headlines" after the vote, including possible duties from Section 301 investigations, such as a 7.5% rate on Chinese imports that Nikkei Asia reported Trump had held back before polling day.

The Justice Department said it deployed about 1,000 election monitors and observers across all 50 states, the largest such effort in its history and the first to cover every state.

Al Jazeera reported that Iran hailed US voters for rejecting the war, while Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that hostility towards Tehran would not end.