Republicans have taken control of the U.S. Senate in the culmination of an intense — and expensive battle — for dominance in Congress.
The Associated Press made the call a little after midnight ET on Wednesday,
The call came shortly after the AP projected MAGA Republican Bernie Moreno to unseat Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Sen. Ted Cruz to defeat challenger Rep. Colin Allred in Texas.
Thirty-four of the Senate’s 100 seats were on the ballot in 2024. Seven of them were open seats with no candidate running for reelection. Democrats have narrowly controlled the chamber for the past four years, but Republicans flipped enough seats on Tuesday to take it back. Republicans gained a second seat in West Virginia, where Jim Justice won the seat vacated by former Independent Sen. Joe Manchin.
The Senate was one of the most expensive in American history, reportedly costing over $2.5 billion. Most of the spending was concentrated on highly competitive races in Ohio, Montana, and Pennsylvania. The contest between Brown and Moreno brought in a whopping $526 million in spending overall, with $310 million spent in 2024 alone.
In the 2022 midterms, Democrats managed to narrowly expand their majority in the Senate to 51-49. Over the last two years, Vice President Kamala Harris has served as a tie-breaking vote in a divided upper chamber. With the House under Republican control since 2022, the split 118th Congress was largely ineffective as a legislative body.
One of the most notable events for the Senate in the last two years had little to do with lawmaking. In September 2023, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) died in office at the age of 90, after serving more than three decades in the chamber. Her death, and reports of the efforts her staff took to obscure her declining health, revived criticism of aging politicians refusing to leave office despite an inability to cope with the rigors of the job. In February, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who is currently 82 years old — announced he would be stepping down from his position in the caucus’ leadership.
But among the more dramatic exits from the Senate this electoral cycle is that of Bob Menendez, who resigned from his position as a Democratic senator for New Jersey after being found guilty of corruption charges in July. The former senator and his wife accepted cash payments, luxury vehicles, and even solid bars of gold from foreign agents in exchange for Menendez’s influence in Congress.
Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) won Menendez’s seat on Tuesday, becoming the first Korean-American elected to the Senate.
With the GOP-controlled House also up for grabs, Republicans could potentially walk away from the 2024 election with the fist unified Congress since 2017, when the party held control of both chambers during Trump’s first two years in office. Should Trump win the presidency, all three branches of the government would be under the Republican Party’s control.
