Ahead of the midterms, Democrats wargamed dozens of scenarios looking at how President Donald Trump might try to undermine the election, everything from seizing voting machines to falsely declaring a foreign attack.

But when the blue tsunami arrived Tuesday night, Trump seemed to let it wash right over him.

In a series of late-night interviews, the president said he would accept the results. He acknowledged that Democrats had performed well as they retook the House and Senate. And while he refused responsibility for Republicans’ newfound misfortune, he also spoke of cutting deals with Democrats.

“Yes, I’ll accept them,” Trump said on Fox News when asked about the results. He added a short time later, “Congratulations to the Democrats, they did a good job.”

The comments marked a stunning departure for a mercurial president with a long history of alleging elections were stolen in response to unfavorable results. 

They also stood out because this year’s midterms were his first election while in office since 2020, when he led a campaign to overturn his loss that helped spur the mob that sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“My first thought was, ‘Well, I’m glad that’s on tape,’” Pamela Smith, president and CEO of the election security nonprofit Verified Voting, said in an interview.

Fears of federal interference

Election officials spent months planning for the possibility of federal election interference on Election Day. After the FBI seized ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, in January, state and local leaders across the country weighed how they would respond if the Trump administration tried to take their ballots or voting equipment. 

They mapped out what poll workers would do if federal agents showed up at the polls. Some states even passed new limits on federal law enforcement and military servicemembers at the polls, even though federal law already prohibits armed personnel at election sites.

“There have been so many different kinds of threats and it’s just been so far to get to this day, far too hard for the election officials,” Smith said Wednesday.

None of those extreme scenarios came to pass on Election Day. Instead, Democrats won resounding victories up and down the ballot.

As of midday Wednesday, Democrats had secured 54 Senate seats, according to The Associated Press. Democrats had also won at least 228 seats in the House, well above the 218 necessary to control the chamber. 

The not-close race for control of Congress and a high voter turnout “made it impossible to challenge these results,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, told reporters.

Trump blamed the loss on his absence from the ballot, even though he had exhorted Americans to vote as if he were on the ballot. Vice President JD Vance blamed the war with Iran. 

“The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026,” Vance wrote on social media.

Both men sought to explain Republicans’ deep losses — not claim that they didn’t happen. 

Ballot fight consumed officials

But despite Trump’s pledge to accept the results, voting rights advocates said the Trump administration very much attempted to interfere ahead of Election Day and influence how states ran their elections.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued California over the ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizens and Alaska over alleged voter confusion in the U.S. Senate race. 

California election officials had warned the Justice Department’s demand would have thrown the election into chaos and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the request Monday. Meanwhile, a federal judge tossed the Alaska lawsuit on Sunday.

Justice Department lawyers raised the possibility that election officials could be prosecuted if they counted the ballots of noncitizens or if they failed to follow federal recordkeeping laws. They issued subpoenas to election workers in Los Angeles County, demanding records that suggest prosecutors are examining whether election officials were “aiding and abetting” noncitizen voters.

The DOJ also sued dozens of states for unredacted copies of their voter rolls containing sensitive personal data. Federal judges have rejected those lawsuits in at least 27 decisions so far, and the Trump administration has won none of its cases.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran election-related field operations that federal judges found could intimidate voters. The department also launched a powerful computer program to identify possible noncitizen voters, but Democrats and election experts said its results were unreliable and prone to falsely flagging U.S. citizens.

More broadly, Trump urged GOP state lawmakers across the country to redraw their congressional maps to be more favorable to Republicans — a process that accelerated after the Supreme Court weakened limits on racial gerrymandering. But in Alabama, North Carolina, Texas and elsewhere, the new maps did little to shield GOP candidates.

Earlier this year, Trump also pushed the U.S. Postal Service to impose restrictions on mail ballots, a move blocked by the Supreme Court. And he unsuccessfully demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, which would have immediately imposed stringent rules requiring voters to prove their citizenship, leaving states with no time to prepare.

“Despite unprecedented executive branch efforts to interfere in election administration, state and local officials responsible for running our elections have continued to do their jobs and uphold the process,” Michael McNulty, senior policy director at Issue One, a group focused on protecting American democracy, said in a statement.

Some legal wrangling continues

Trump’s admission of defeat may not fully end his administration’s pressure campaign over elections.

Late on Election Day, the Justice Department secured a rare court victory when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a decision by a three-judge panel removing limitations on the Trump administration threatening election workers with prosecution. 

The decision came after a federal judge in California last week issued an order prohibiting the DOJ from threatening election officials with criminal charges if they didn’t comply with demands related to setting aside the ballots of alleged noncitizen voters.

“We will conduct our criminal investigations without fear or favor,” Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, wrote on social media Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to require California to set aside the ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizens also remains unresolved. Even though the Supreme Court declined an emergency request by the DOJ, a federal judge has scheduled a hearing on Nov. 13 to examine the list that could include witness testimony.

The consequences of any ruling now aren’t clear. California’s ballots are currently being counted, meaning it would be effectively impossible now to identify whether a ballot came from a suspected noncitizen. The hearing will take place several weeks before election officials must certify results, however.

The hearing could reveal new information about how the Trump administration developed the list. The DOJ has said Homeland Security compiled it based on a public copy of California’s voter roll that was checked against government records and data from the Lexis Nexis research service. 

California election officials have said they’ve found evidence that U.S. citizens are on the list, and in a court hearing on Monday, a Justice Department attorney acknowledged it has a “high error rate.”

Jonathan Miller, chief program officer of Public Rights Project, which represents Los Angeles County in the lawsuit, in a statement framed the dispute in simple terms.

“State and local officials run our elections — and the federal government cannot interfere,” Miller said.

WASHINGTON — Tens of millions of Americans have already made their way to the ballot box as early voting is underway in a midterm election that will determine control of the House and the Senate, possibly flipping one or both from Republicans to Democrats. 

As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 34 million people have either gone to the polls to cast a ballot or have mailed in their vote, and the current tally is on track to surpass early voting in the 2022 midterm elections, said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at University of Florida who runs the UF Election Lab that tracks early voting.

With one week until Election Day on Nov. 3, McDonald said he’s not sure if voters will surpass record-breaking early voting of 2018, but it’s clear that the surge in early voting will eclipse turnout in the 2022 midterm elections, where nearly 46 million Americans voted early, according to the UF Election Lab. 

“Right now, the data that I can see, it looks like we’re running at least even to the 2018 election. If the voting continues through Election Day, we would be somewhere around that number,” he said. 

“That’s a high water benchmark,” McDonald said, adding that the 2018 election was the highest turnout for a midterm election since 1914. 

Motivations for the surge

Some states are reporting heavier voter turnout.

Twenty-seven states record party affiliation, and of the roughly 16 million early voters in those states, 45% are Democrats, and about 31% are Republicans, with 24% unaffiliated with either party, according to the UF Election Lab. 

McDonald said he can’t tell from the data the motivation behind a surge in early voting, but he has two ideas. The first is a post-COVID 19  explanation, where voters are less likely to partake in mail-in-ballots, so “we’re sort of reverting back to a normal election.”

“The other is the potential that (President Donald) Trump’s potential threats with trying to monkey around with the U.S. Postal Service, has made some people decide that they don’t want to vote by mail and vote in person instead,” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court in September kept in place a lower court’s order blocking Trump’s embattled plan to place new restrictions on mail ballots for this year’s midterm elections.

The GOP is vying to maintain its narrow majority in the House and Senate, though Democrats remain heavily favored to win back the majority in the House, and Senate races continue to move in the party’s favor, according to elections forecasters. 

The party of the president historically loses seats in the midterm elections. Trump is also facing anemic approval ratings amid the war in Iran and its impact driving up gas prices. 

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter shifted 19 House races in the direction of Democrats on Oct. 23. The elections forecaster lists 17 races as toss-ups, with Republicans defending 12. 

In the Senate, the Cook Political Report identified seven toss-up races across the country, including in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas.

Early voting in the battlegrounds 

As early voting continues in key battleground states, Republicans are aiming to hold on to their majority in the upper chamber.

In Alaska, as of Monday, more than 46,000 people have voted already, according to the UF Election Lab. Former House Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola is seeking to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.

In Iowa, as of Tuesday, nearly 307,000 people have cast their vote early, as Democratic state legislator Josh Turek and U.S. House Republican lawmaker Ashley Hinson compete in a toss-up race for the U.S. Senate seat.

GOP incumbents Susan Collins of Maine and Roger Marshall of Kansas are also trying to keep their Senate seats in tough challenges from Democrats. In Maine, more than 196,000 people have voted, according to Monday data from the UF Election Lab. And in Kansas, more than 245,000 people have voted as of Tuesday, according to the UF Election Lab. 

More than 1.3 million people have already voted early in Michigan as of Tuesday, according to the UF Election Lab. 

The Wolverine State is home to a highly competitive Senate race in an open seat between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed that the Cook Political Report has declared a toss-up. 

In Ohio, as of Tuesday, nearly 1.2 million people have voted early as well, per the tracker. A tight Senate race also listed as a toss-up by the Cook Political Report features Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted and Democratic candidate and former Sen. Sherrod Brown. 

In the Lone Star State, more than 5 million people have cast their ballots as of Tuesday, according to the UF Election Lab. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, and James Talarico, a Democrat, are battling it out in a race dubbed a toss-up by the Cook Political Report. Trump was campaigning in Texas on Tuesday.

Big turnout in some states  

As early voting takes shape across the country, some states are seeing sweeping turnout figures during the beginning days of early voting compared with earlier elections. 

In Tennessee, midterm early voter turnout stood 57% higher compared with the 2022 midterms in the Volunteer State during the first eight days, according to a Monday report from the Tennessee Lookout. 

Meanwhile, North Carolina is witnessing an eagerness among unaffiliated voters, who cast 34% of ballots in the first five days of early voting in the Tar Heel State, NC Newsline reported. 

The Louisiana Illuminator reported that Black voters comprised a larger share of participants on the first day of early voting in the Pelican State compared with nearly every other election over the past 18 years. 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday kept in place a lower court’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s embattled plan to place new restrictions on mail ballots for this year’s midterm elections.

The unsigned, one-paragraph order upheld a Massachusetts federal court’s injunction on a U.S. Postal Service rule until after Nov. 3 and did not decide whether the rule itself was lawful. But a majority of the court said the Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenging the rule were likely to succeed.

Two of the court’s stalwart conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented from the decision. Alito wrote that the Postal Service has “broad authority to regulate the mail” and that at this preliminary stage of the suit challenging the rule, its policy should remain in place.

“I express no view on whether the Government would be likely to succeed on de novo review of the Postal Service’s powers,” he wrote. “But for now, the Government has satisfied its burden of making a strong showing that the plaintiff States’ … claim is not likely to succeed.”

In a brief concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the rule, which codifies technical requirements on the envelopes carrying ballots and requires states to collect and send to the federal government lists of eligible voters, may be legal, but was unworkable for the midterm elections 50 days away.

“There is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority,” he wrote. “But applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious …  because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

In a social media post Tuesday morning, Trump excoriated the decision, saying, without evidence, it would allow Democrats to use vote-by-mail to cheat.

“It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do – And now they have an open field to do so.” 

He also complained about other high-profile rulings that he lost and, without naming them appeared to aim particular ire at the justices he appointed to the court: Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

“This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years,” he wrote. “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.”

Case continues

The rule’s challengers argued, in part, that the regulations would be impossible to install ahead of Election Day. Several election administrators, pro-democracy groups and others declared to the court that they agreed with that argument. 

The Postal Service did not bring any evidence against those claims.

Democrats and voting rights advocates also argued the rule was illegal and unconstitutional. The executive branch has virtually no role in elections administration, which is a state responsibility with congressional oversight under the U.S. Constitution, they said. 

The case, tried before President Barack Obama appointee U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, will continue to evaluate the legality of the rule for future elections.

Challengers react 

The groups and officials challenging the rule, as well as other Democrats, hailed the ruling in statements.

“Today’s order from our nation’s highest court makes clear that states cannot be forced to undermine their mail voting systems and risk voter disenfranchisement because of the President’s political agenda,” Massachusetts Attorney General Joy Campbell said. “Mail voting is safe, secure, and reliable, and I will continue to stand up for Massachusetts residents who rely on mail ballots to ensure that they can have their voices heard in the November election.”

Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of Common Cause, one of the groups suing to block the rule, called the decision “a major win for the millions of everyday Americans,” including elderly and rural voters, and those with disabilities, who depend on vote-by-mail.

“This executive order was a blatant power grab designed to silence voters and undermine our elections, but it failed because the people and the law were on our side,” she said in a statement. “Our Constitution is clear: states run our elections, and voters choose their leaders—not the other way around. No administration can strip the people of their power.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose state was the lead plaintiff in the case, said the rule was part of Trump’s “attacks on democracy” for the past 20 months.

“California stood up for democracy and we won,” Newsom wrote on social media. “Today is a good day for democracy, the rule of law, and the American people looking to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.”

Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general and Democratic nominee for governor, said the court “just sent the message that President Trump and the Postal Service need to stay the hell away from our elections.”

California and Colorado are among the eight states that send ballots to every registered voter.

Spokespeople for the Postal Service and U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the administration in the case, did not respond to emails seeking comment late Monday.