US mid-term elections: results – a crushing defeat for Trump, with the Democrats securing a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives

America is the land of firsts, of records being broken, of underdogs who make it. It has always been this way, and it is even more so following this mid-term protest vote, in which the country has decided to change direction compared with recent years. And amongst the new faces – the first Muslim senator, the first openly gay senator, the likely first African-American Speaker of the House – the first woman and the first African-American to be elected governor of Georgia also stand out. The gubernatorial elections – in no fewer than 36 out of 50 states – have received less attention than the races for the House and the Senate, but they are just as important because the powers of the office are such that they shape individual states and, ultimately, the direction the country will take in the short to medium term.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, aged 56, who was elected Governor of Georgia, has thus taken centre stage just a few hours after the vote because she is the first African-American female governor in the United States. She has broken a taboo that may seem unremarkable given that the United States has already had an African-American president, the Democrat Barack Obama. Her achievement is significant, however, because the issue of race remains ever-present in the United States (and has been exacerbated by the policies of the Trump administration) and because Lance Bottoms won in a Southern state marked by slavery, segregation and the civil rights struggle, in a race that seemed insurmountable: her opponent, the Republican billionaire Rick Jackson, poured far more money into the campaign than she did (100 million dollars from his personal fortune alone). Moreover, no Democrat had won in this state for more than 25 years, and no woman had ever been elected governor, but Lance Bottoms paved the way well, drawing on her experience as mayor of Atlanta and as an official in the Biden administration.

Tusk: ‘Today, democracy has triumphed in America’

“Democracy has triumphed in America today,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, commenting on the results of the US mid-term elections. “Democracy is fantastic; I love democracy, it’s a marvellous thing,” said Tusk, advising US President Donald Trump not to “abuse his right of veto”.

Women and voters under the age of 45 turned out in large numbers to vote for the Democrats

According to the ‘Voter Poll’ survey, carried out on polling day, the national figures show that 58 per cent of women supported Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives, compared with 40 per cent for the Republicans. Men, on the other hand, appear to be split, with just under half of the votes cast for each party. By age group, nearly two-thirds of those under 45 said they had voted for the Democrats. The 45–64 age group backed the Democrats with 51 per cent of the vote, compared with 48 per cent for the Republicans. The polling firm SSRS collects data, the BBC reports, on behalf of a consortium of news organisations, and the poll represents a representative sample of American voters, with exit polls conducted for both those who voted early and those who went to the polls on election day itself.