Democrat Adam Hamilton unseats Roger Marshall in Kansas, as Trump says 'we'll probably work something out'

Democrat Adam Hamilton has unseated Roger Marshall in Kansas, taking a Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country and adding to the majority his party secured overnight in the US midterm elections.

Hamilton sounded almost as surprised as anyone in his victory speech. “How did this happen? How did a Democrat win in Kansas, a deeply red state, for the first time in nearly a century,” he asked, “especially in a state where only 25 percent of the people are Democrats?” He said voters of every party had decided that what was happening in Washington was unacceptable.

A majority of at least 51

Kansas joins South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas and Ohio among the Republican-held seats Democrats won on Tuesday, with Iowa and Maine also falling to them. Going into the vote, Republicans held 53 seats to the Democrats’ 45, with two independents caucusing with the Democrats. Democrats have now secured at least 51 seats, and a few races are still being counted.

One of them is Alaska, where Democrat Mary Peltola is challenging Senator Dan Sullivan. No result had been declared there by late Wednesday morning in India. Alaska’s ranked-choice count can take days, and the Trump administration had gone to court before polling day to stop the state certifying a defeat for Sullivan, a suit a federal judge threw out.

Trump strikes a softer note

President Donald Trump, who now faces a Democratic House and Senate for the last two years of his term, said he would work with the Democrats. Asked whether he accepted the results, he said: “We’ll probably work something out.”

Hours earlier he had written on Truth Social that he was not on the ballot and would have won “IN A LANDSLIDE” if he had been. Chuck Schumer is set to return as Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries is in line to become Speaker when the new Congress meets in January.