Welcome to Ballotpedia’s Weekly Brew. This week, we're bringing you our latest election coverage.
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Today’s Weekly Brew brings together content from the week of November 2 - November 6.
This week’s election results
All results and updates below are as of 12 p.m. EST on Nov. 6.
U.S. Senate
Democrats have won 20 and Republicans 13 of the 35 U.S. Senate races. Two races remain uncalled — in Alaska and Mississippi — both previously held by Republicans.
Democrats won Senate races in eight states that President Donald Trump (R) won in 2024. Four incumbent Republican Senators lost their bids for re-election.
Republicans' loss of seven Senate seats puts the 2026 elections in the top 20% of election years in terms of seat swings against a president's party from 1918-2016 — a threshold we've previously defined as a wave election.
This is also the first time since 1954 that the party that won the Senate the previous even-year lost it in the next cycle.
U.S. House
Democrats have won 248 and Republicans 150 of the 435 U.S. House races. Thirty-seven remain uncalled — eight previously held by Democrats, 29 by Republicans.
Thirty-two Republicans (including Kevin Kiley, who ran as an independent but caucuses with Republicans) and one Democrat lost their re-election bids for the U.S. House. Since 2014, an average of 14 incumbents lost re-election in a general election per election cycle. The highest number of incumbent losses during that period previously was in 2018, when 30 Republicans lost re-election.
New congressional maps in nine states created a net of nine new districts that, based on 2024 presidential election results, President Donald Trump (R) would have won those districts in the 2024 presidential election. If current leads in those states hold, though, Democrats would gain a net of 14 seats across those states.
Governors
Democrats gained five governorships, giving them a majority of state governorships for the first time since 2010. Two of the 36 gubernatorial races remain uncalled — one previously held by Democrats (Kansas), one by Republicans (Alaska).
Two incumbents – Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) – lost bids for re-election. That brings the total number of governors who lost re-election bids this year to three. Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee (D) lost in a Democratic primary.
State legislatures
Democrats gained control of 11 state legislative chambers: both chambers in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin; the Michigan, Minnesota (previously tied), North Carolina, and Texas Houses; and the Pennsylvania Senate. Republicans have not gained control of any chambers.
Nationwide, Democrats are projected to control 50 state legislative chambers and Republicans 45. A coalition is projected to retain control of the Alaska Senate. Control of three chambers—the Alaska House, Georgia House, and North Carolina Senate—remains uncalled. Democrats will hold majorities in a majority of state legislative chambers for the first time since before the 2010 midterms.
Statewide ballot measures
In 2026, statewide elections featured 164 ballot measures in 40 states. On November 3, voters decided 145 (88%) of them. Voters decided the remaining 19 on earlier election dates.
Noteworthy topics across statewide ballot measures this year included abortion, citizenship requirements for voting, criminal sentencing, penalties, and bail, housing, income and wealth taxes, initiative and referendum process, property taxes, sex-based sports eligibility and medical procedures for transgender minors, state constitutional rights, and voter ID.
Steeped in History
Welcome to Steeped in History, a column where every week we'll share a story from America's political past.
Why some states have off-cycle elections
The 2026 midterm elections are now behind us … which means we can all take a break for the rest of the year, right?
Not really. That’s because there are several important state elections in Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia coming up in 2027 — in addition to thousands of elections for local offices across the country. Political professionals call these contests off-cycle elections.
The Constitution does not establish a uniform election day for federal offices. The election day we know — the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November — wasn’t established until 1845 and applied only to presidential elections. It wasn’t until 1872 that Congress passed a law establishing a single election day for the U.S. House of Representatives, aligning them with presidential elections. According to the Congressional Research Service, the main reasons for creating a single election day were to address:
… the potential undue and unfair influence on elections in some states that earlier results and elections in other states may routinely have; and the burden on voters who in some states would have to go to the polls twice for two different general elections to choose federal officers in presidential election years.
That law does not apply to state governments, though all but five have moved their state legislative and statewide office elections to coincide with federal elections.
Why do some states still have off-cycle elections?
In New Jersey, for example, off-cycle elections didn’t become law until the state constitution was revised in 1947. Then-Gov. Alfred Driscoll (R) said:
The importance of a gubernatorial election merits an election that will not be overshadowed by a national contest for the presidency. The problems confronting the state are frequently distinct from those confronting the nation …
Virginia’s off-cycle elections got started accidentally in the mid-19th century. Voters gained the power to directly elect the governor following the adoption of a new constitution in 1851. After the Civil War, a new constitution would have moved Virginia’s elections to even years, but it wasn’t ratified until 1869. Virginia has had off-cycle elections for statewide and state legislative offices ever since.
Mississippi was the first state to adopt an odd-year election schedule. Under its original 1817 constitution, the entire state House and a third of the state Senate were elected every year. A new constitution adopted in 1832 moved legislative elections to every other year, beginning in 1833, and the state has kept its odd-year schedule ever since, even as lawmakers’ terms have grown longer.
Kentucky’s governor has been elected in off-years since 1850, even though the state’s Legislature is elected in even years alongside members of Congress.
Louisiana was the most recent state to switch to off-cycle elections, doing so following a constitutional revision that took effect in 1975. The state had long held its primaries in odd years. For roughly a century following the Civil War, there were far more registered Democrats than Republicans. That usually meant the winner of the Democratic primary was all but assured of winning the general election. Then-Gov. Edwin Edwards (D) pushed to eliminate partisan primaries entirely, allowing all candidates to run in a single, open primary, which he said would save both time and money. This also meant keeping the state on its long-standing off-cycle election calendar for state offices.
In other news
Go beyond the Daily Brew with Ballotpedia News. Explore this week's headlines below:
- Twenty-six states complete unofficial results reporting by Nov. 4
- Democratic Socialists of America-backed positions prevailed in 23 of 26 called state and local ballot measures on Election Day, with 11 still too close to call
- How statewide ballot measure results compare with candidate results across five policy areas, including taxes, abortion, voter ID, and more.
- Where state parties disagreed, Democratic positions prevailed on 33 called ballot measures (62.3%) and Republican positions on 20 (37.7%); 17 measures remained uncalled
This week’s watch
Why Mississippi Has No Recount Law, and What It Means for a Razor-Thin Senate Race
On this episode of On the Ballot: Ballotpedia’s Andrew Bahl joins Host Norm Leahy to explain why the count doesn’t end on election night, starting with Mississippi’s close U.S. Senate race. They discuss what affidavit ballots are and why Mississippi is seeing more of them, why it’s the only state in the country without a recount law, how recount rules work in other close races like North Carolina’s 5th and Minnesota’s 1st congressional districts, what the canvass is, and how often recounts actually change the outcome of an election.